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They are a really cool unit, and I was wondering what people think of giving them a buff. The devs obviously intended for them to have a bigger role in the game, as evidenced by the fact that all the Euro civs have access to the Agents/Assassins upgrade card. I have heard that an Otto age 1 spy rush was quite OP back in the TWC days, which is why they were moved to age 2 and nerfed into the ground.

We have seen them used effectively in a couple of games, but in most situations they don't pay off because they're expensive and do poorly versus non-merc units. Possible buffs could be lowering their cost, increasing their HP, increasing their range resist, increasing their multiplier against mercs, etc.. It would be nice if certain civs didn't just automatically get a great trade by sending jaegars, black riders, or mamelukes.

Thoughts?

Edit: spies also have a ranged attack, but it was never implemented (though it can be enabled via modding). While that kind of change is probably way too extreme for the EP team, it's interesting to think about what the game would be like if it had been implemented when spies were introduced.

I think we should add a shipment that allows you to go healing dance and town dance at the same time.

I think we should have a card that allows monitor to navigate on the earth

i think we should add a card that make wilds animals have guns

@Interjection smackdown patch ideas?

Gave me this crazy idea that boats move around on the land and units move around on the water lol

Kynesie wrote:I think we should have a card that allows monitor to navigate on the earth

Better yet, just grant flight to all warships.

I think improved buildings mixed with kami card sounds nice

Ranged attack matches spies' avatars, but I think people have got used to their assassin ninja melee, combined with stealth mode.

They are situational and I think there's no way around it. Like you said, they used to be OP in age 1 etc., so that's not really a way to go. Instead, I'd agree with your moderate approach: what I'd like to see most is a cost decrease — ideally to 100 coin. Population space change to 1 should also be considered. Other options include increasing their resist (to 30%, for instance) or HP.

pecelot wrote:Ranged attack matches spies' avatars, but I think people have got used to their assassin ninja melee, combined with stealth mode.

They are situational and I think there's no way around it. Like you said, they used to be OP in age 1 etc., so that's not really a way to go. Instead, I'd agree with your moderate approach: what I'd like to see most is a cost decrease — ideally to 100 coin. Population space change to 1 should also be considered. Other options include increasing their resist (to 30%, for instance) or HP.

Spy is 2 pop? This must be the only unit in the game that I didn't know how much pop it takes. And that tells something. If they were originally age 1 unit, revert it. Not that they can rush villagers with a pathetic 5 melee damage. Even built in "great numbers" with a 300c shipment... they would get whacked by Gentle Pete / Kermond the monitor lizard shipments lol. They would at least be a viable, not risk-free counter to ATP and finally a valid European answer to shrines. Spies being melee-only is likewise pathetic, but so are poor landsknechts for example. In some mods they had a crackshot instead of ranged attack

Age 1 spies sounds cool.

HUMMAN wrote:Age 1 spies sounds cool.

They used to have high siege that was why they were removed from age 1- but it would be a nice balance for euro civs to not just get wrecked age 1 vs war chief & asian explorers? Sioux vs otto for example?

Imo the only buff spies need is to just shadow tech so they dont just sit at 5 attack when the explorers have like 1500 hitpoints and maybe 1 pop instead of 2

Age 1 spies would probably be overpowered as seen in Smackdown #1 where Aiz just shutsdown all attempts by Kaiser to build TPs. And there's still the issue that they're pretty useless against what they're supposed to counter - mercenaries.

I think there's two ways to go about changing them:
-HP boost
-Cost reduction
-Or a mixture of the two

Well you can build tp with vills, if necessary give negative multiplier against vills. Bear in mind age 1 spier gives up market+hunting dogs by investing in spy.

I think a good way to improve spies is to make them trainable from a barracks. If you see mercs from your opponent and you still have to build a production facility for 100w, you are already going to be too late. Could make a church free as well, but perhaps that's too big a change for some.

If you make them available in age I, it boils down to a boost to Ottomans. It is already useful to put down a mosque due to xp gain. Now you could also use the mosque to use 100 starting gold + small treasure to build a spy and hunt down enemy explorers.
That sounds quite op to me, but I could be wrong.

If you want spies to remain an anti-merc unit I see no reason to make them available in age 1. Also I think we make age 1 strategy less interesting if it ends with a single hit from a spy.

free church, make it happen

free religion Kappa

sooner a grenadier will walk out of barracks than a spy
So at the same time Otto will be OP age 1 because they can build a spy, and suck because their opponent can build a spy too? lol

I'd say spy original goal is :
- Killing mercs/explorers
- spying/scouting the map

They are definitely ok for the point 1, they already do insane damages to mercs/explorers.
However, they are not great for scouting.
I'd say mostly because you don't want to be spotted when you scout, hence the stealth mode ability, but on the other hand stealth mode makes your unit move too slowly for scouting properly.
I'd try to make stealth mode ability lowering speed by 15% (instead of 50%) and eventually a cost and attack decrease to see how it goes for spies

I see it the other way around. They are already better at scouting than the french scout. Also you can build multiple ones to scout more/faster.

On the other hand, spies are not upgradeable and their dmg output against explorers is static while explorers themselves auto-upgrade and get more hp/dmg. Further, there are some merc units which cannot be countered by spies such as Ronin/Highlanders/Fusiliers (due to melee resistance, high hp, etc.).

If you do a speed buff on stealth units you might have to ensure it only affects spies, otherwise the warchief civs will have a huge buff to their stealth units (along with shinobi but those are less significant)

Spies are fine

Garja wrote:Spies are fine

Are they better than rams?