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Author Topic:   Infiltrate Datalinks

bradford posted 05-04-99 11:32 PM ET
I am afraid somebody already brought this up, but i'll ask anyway. Infiltrating Datalinks in this game seems to be extremely unfair to me. You get to see cities for the rest of the game, see what techs are being researched and much more. This seems to be totally unfair. The have this info for one turn would be more than enough.
In Civ II, investigating city just showed city for one turn. Am i missing something?
Beta1 posted 05-05-99 10:10 AM ET
Without this the advantage gained from being planetary gov. would be too large. It would be equal to having one probe per city per turn on top of the commerce boost.
I think there should be a way of de-infiltrating the system but this should be appropiately expensive - think of it as reformating the system to remove any bugs.
Anyway it seems to me the AI knows whats in each city all the time - otherwise the teleporting missile trick wouldnt be so annoying.
Zozo posted 05-05-99 07:40 PM ET
I agree with Beta1 that this is just to get the human player on equal footing with the AI since the Ai factions know everything about you already without needing any infiltration . It's fairer if every player is omniscient, not just the AI.
About gameplay, I like this arrangement better than in Civ2. Too many people complained that the spies in Civ2 were simply too powerful and we had to rely too much on them and which made the game imbalanced. I usually stay under Communism in Civ2 until I get about 100 vereran spies before switching to Democracy. Doing the datalink infiltration once instead of investigating possibly multiple times per city actually makes us less dependent on the spies/probe teams for each military operation. I still need the probe teams but not anywhere near the hundreds of spies I used to create when playing Civ2.
Plato90s posted 05-05-99 11:18 PM ET
No, the AI does not automatically know everything about you. I had one game in which I accidentally turned off the Fog of War, which usually obscures areas of the map not under active surveillance. The very next turn, 8 Hive PBs hit my capital, which was far from the Hive and hasn't been explored in the past.
So until the Hive could "see" my home base, they didn't nuke me.
jimmytrick posted 05-05-99 11:23 PM ET
How can 8 PBs hit your capital in one turn?
Can anyone confirm that the fog of war setting has this type of effect?
Wolf Dreamer posted 05-05-99 11:34 PM ET
I had the hive call me up and tell me they would not be intimidated by my planet buster, the turn after I completed my first one. The hive had several planet buster of their own, which seem to have disappeared when I checked on them again.
The other factions know when you have planet busters as well as when you nerver staple your drones. How can a nerve stapled drone call up your enemies and complain about their rights, is beyond me. You would think that my police state would allow me to kill off any trouble makers to prevent that kind of information from leaking out. Even if I am the governor, and have the uh.. that project that lets you have a spy in every base, and no other factions have infiltrated my datalinks, the AI still knows a lot more than it realistically should.
When you infiltrate someone's datalinks, perhaps you are sending in a nano probe or something which leaches on to the computers and sends out coded information disguised as background noise on all of their base to base transmissions. I'm sure if you wanted to make up a believable story to explain why everything is the way that it is, you could do so without too much effort.
Plato90s posted 05-06-99 12:41 PM ET
I personally believe datalink infiltration should be for limited time periods only. You should be forced to re-infiltrate every 25 years or so. But that's Firaxis's decision.
About the 8 PBs, they got there using the "unlimited-range missle" bug in the program. Despite claims from Firaxis, this bug wasn't fixed in the ver 3.0 patch. Fortunately, I had 11 Orbital Defense Pods up. At the end of the bombardment, I had 0 left, but my capital was also saved from the bombardment.
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Author	Topic: Infiltrate Datalinks
bradford	posted 05-04-99 11:32 PM ET I am afraid somebody already brought this up, but i'll ask anyway. Infiltrating Datalinks in this game seems to be extremely unfair to me. You get to see cities for the rest of the game, see what techs are being researched and much more. This seems to be totally unfair. The have this info for one turn would be more than enough. In Civ II, investigating city just showed city for one turn. Am i missing something?
Beta1	posted 05-05-99 10:10 AM ET Without this the advantage gained from being planetary gov. would be too large. It would be equal to having one probe per city per turn on top of the commerce boost. I think there should be a way of de-infiltrating the system but this should be appropiately expensive - think of it as reformating the system to remove any bugs. Anyway it seems to me the AI knows whats in each city all the time - otherwise the teleporting missile trick wouldnt be so annoying.
Zozo	posted 05-05-99 07:40 PM ET I agree with Beta1 that this is just to get the human player on equal footing with the AI since the Ai factions know everything about you already without needing any infiltration . It's fairer if every player is omniscient, not just the AI. About gameplay, I like this arrangement better than in Civ2. Too many people complained that the spies in Civ2 were simply too powerful and we had to rely too much on them and which made the game imbalanced. I usually stay under Communism in Civ2 until I get about 100 vereran spies before switching to Democracy. Doing the datalink infiltration once instead of investigating possibly multiple times per city actually makes us less dependent on the spies/probe teams for each military operation. I still need the probe teams but not anywhere near the hundreds of spies I used to create when playing Civ2.
Plato90s	posted 05-05-99 11:18 PM ET No, the AI does not automatically know everything about you. I had one game in which I accidentally turned off the Fog of War, which usually obscures areas of the map not under active surveillance. The very next turn, 8 Hive PBs hit my capital, which was far from the Hive and hasn't been explored in the past. So until the Hive could "see" my home base, they didn't nuke me.
jimmytrick	posted 05-05-99 11:23 PM ET How can 8 PBs hit your capital in one turn? Can anyone confirm that the fog of war setting has this type of effect?
Wolf Dreamer	posted 05-05-99 11:34 PM ET I had the hive call me up and tell me they would not be intimidated by my planet buster, the turn after I completed my first one. The hive had several planet buster of their own, which seem to have disappeared when I checked on them again. The other factions know when you have planet busters as well as when you nerver staple your drones. How can a nerve stapled drone call up your enemies and complain about their rights, is beyond me. You would think that my police state would allow me to kill off any trouble makers to prevent that kind of information from leaking out. Even if I am the governor, and have the uh.. that project that lets you have a spy in every base, and no other factions have infiltrated my datalinks, the AI still knows a lot more than it realistically should. When you infiltrate someone's datalinks, perhaps you are sending in a nano probe or something which leaches on to the computers and sends out coded information disguised as background noise on all of their base to base transmissions. I'm sure if you wanted to make up a believable story to explain why everything is the way that it is, you could do so without too much effort.
Plato90s	posted 05-06-99 12:41 PM ET I personally believe datalink infiltration should be for limited time periods only. You should be forced to re-infiltrate every 25 years or so. But that's Firaxis's decision. About the 8 PBs, they got there using the "unlimited-range missle" bug in the program. Despite claims from Firaxis, this bug wasn't fixed in the ver 3.0 patch. Fortunately, I had 11 Orbital Defense Pods up. At the end of the bombardment, I had 0 left, but my capital was also saved from the bombardment.