For your consideration, I enjoy using the spying system both for the added game play layer and the imagined narratives it evokes, but I do have suggestion: If another empire is able to discover your spy mission, could there be a chance that that empire captures your agent? So if there was a 0% chance of detection, there would be no chance of capture, but if there was a 25% chance of detection, and the agent was detected, that would trigger a 25%( just an example value) chance of capture, for an overall chance of detection and capture of 6.25%. I think this would add an extra level of risk to spying forcing you to weigh the benefits of spying against the potential ransom payment needed if the agent was captured. Also it makes for fun stories. -Alium
Thanks for your suggestion. The reason the spy system was designed like this was to guarantee that a spy action would always get through, to remove a bit of uncertainty. The uncertainty is on if the spy attempt will be detected, which causes a significant diplomatic hit each time this occurs. On top, there's a chance a spy leader may attempt to frame another empire for the spy job. So, the spy leader is never killed or captured and it is assumed that some of their special forces and other operatives in the field may actually be the casualties during the time it is required to setup the mission. This was preferred to not cause frustration on the player for losing such a unique and precious asset in the game. This also works better from a balance perspective to what the leaders system is concerned, in my point of view. That said, we acknowledge that your suggestion has been a common request so we decided to implement it, or a version of it, through a new feature that is available in the Natural Law expansion, called the Investigation unique ability. With this ability, an empire can defend itself from spy attempts as upon activation it will discover and imprison all leaders currently spying on the empire, including when they are setting up their missions. A ransom is then requested for all captured leaders, which the other empires may or not attend. If the ransom is not paid, the leader is dismissed from their services. So, when playing against an empire with that ability, and conducting spy attempts against them, there's always a chance they will detect and capture your spy leader. Having a leader being discovered and captured outside the scope of the Investigation ability is currently not envisaged, or at least it's considered an unlikely feature to implement at this point. However, we're always hearing the community, taking notes and reprioritizing things, so there's still chance that we'll do it. We'll see.
The spy leader as the brains of the operation rather than the operative or special forces was my head-canon anyway and does make sense. I can see how capturing spy leaders randomly might be unbalanced; if you make the capture chance too high, players will not want to risk their leaders and so will not use the spy system, but if you make the capture chance to low, it will have minimal game impact, making the capture mechanic meaningless. Finding the right balance might be very difficult. Maybe the captured leader could also have a chance to escape and return to the service of their empire before a ransom is paid, except if captured using the Investigation ability of course. If the ransom is not paid in time, they are dismissed. I will have to think more on your points. The spying system works quite well at the moment, so I would not want any changes adopted without thorough consideration. For now, I will play more Cerixx if I really get the urge to capture some leaders! -Thank you for the detailed reply.
