You have to take a more refined view of their use. But through that interface, you can do all your old favorite spy things along with a few new twists.ДЄnd you can no longer create an army of spies to overwhelm your opponent via an espionage war. Instead, there is a new interface to manage your espionage activities. Spies are no longer units on the field of play, to be moved around and thrown at enemy cities. You can tailor your religion, and there are details to master there, but it does not come up until your empire has reach a given status, so the game is well under way when you have to pick, rather than it being yet another starting parameter with which you can tinker.ДЄnd spiesвЂ¦ spies are very good. And for the most part I am happy.ДЇaith, in which you essentially found a state religion, is good. The expansion dropped on Tuesday and I have had a chance to play a bit. I was not so interested in other potential kingdoms or new technology, but the introduction of spies and faith into the game was big to me. Well, some of the features sold it to me as well. It also left me susceptible to ValveвЂ™s next pitch, which was for the Civ V expansion, Gods & Kings, marked down 10% if I pre-ordered. The game was fun and I ended up pretty much as King in the North. I ended up starting north of Winterfell, so I was in the NightвЂ™s Watch position, which did leave me dealing with a horde of barbarians almost constantly throughout the game.ДЄnd City States, which I remain unenthusiastic about in Civ V, at least make sense in the context of Westeros, with its many nobles pledged to one liege lord or another and switching sides at awkward moments. It is a standard size map only, and it played pretty well. Some Ais are completely untrustworthy, however (Shaka, Genghis) and will gladly continue spying even after giving their word they're stopping and even if you have declared friendship.I grabbed a few custom maps, including one of Westeros, which I immediately tried out. If you are willing to take the diplomatic hit, telling everybody not to spy on you as soon as you enter the Renaissance era can be a good way to delay the AI tech stealing if you are the tech leader.

Unless your relations with them are really bad, most AIs will then actually live up to their pledge and not spy on you for a large (30+?) number of turns. One thing worth noting about espionage is that you can ask other civs to stop spying on you even before they have actually stolen anything, by going into the 'discuss' menu in diplomacy with them. However, if an AI has managed to steal several techs from you you need to get one of your 'special agent' level spies back in the capital ASAP since your recruit there likely won't be able to stop them before they steal several more. A human opponent/better AI would of course stop sending suicidal 'recruit' spies to level up yours after the XXth time they've been killed but since we're stuck with what AI Firaxis felt was sufficient, killing their spies over and over is indeed a good way to level up your own spies (followed by the absurd and meaningless dialogue of whether you want to 'forgive' their espionage, I mean, WTF?). No sir, no suggestions - what you're doing is indeed optimal. Using this technique I've managed to get 5 agents, two maxxed out with with 2 promotions, the other three with 1 promotion.ДЄny thoughts or suggestions on improving this? When you get your second agent, move the experienced one to another civ or civ-state and place the new one in your capital. If your in the lead, there is always someone there to kill. If they manage to kill an enemy agent or two they get a promotion. This technique works best if you are near or leading in the tech tree, but even if your not in the lead it can definitely be applied as the turns advance and your own tech gains on the leaders.Д«asically, what I do is rotate my agents through my capital. The best means I've discovered to promote agents is place them in your capital and let them kill other civ agents that are trying to steal your hard researched techs. It seems the best way to handle all of these is to have the most advanced agents in the field. Providing diplomatic support in other civ capitals Improving relationships with civ-statesД¤. Protecting your techs from stealing by other civsДЈ. It appears that agents are good for the following actions:ДЎ. I'd love to learn more about how other people maximize their agent use in game, so please correct and expand on the following as appropriate.

Looked to see if someone else had already mentioned their uses and didn't find anything so here is my attempt to give something back to the forum. In my recent games I've done some experimenting with spies/agents, essentially seeing how to get the best use out of them.

Civ 5 how to get spies