Short after finishing the research feature I decided to put my fingers on the espionage part of the game. In the very first drafts this was to be only a minor feature, but I promoted it to a main feature (inlcuding it’s own button in the control center) as it adds an interesting twist to the game. It not only allows you to find weak points of your enemies, it’ll also allow you to sabotage your enemies region and division to e.g. give yourself a small advantage before attacking his regions.
The feature works as follows : Like with scientists you can also hire spies, each one with it’s own stats (the better the stats, the more expensive he is). In the espioange and sabotage window newly added you can now try to infiltrate an enemy region with free spies from your staff, which either will end up with him being captured (and being lost for you, including the money you paid to hire him) or successfully infiltrating that region. From now on then you have one action per spy in each round. As for espionage you can try to request information on either the buildings or a division stationed in that region, with (as above) the risk of the spy being captured. The outcome also depends on the skills of the spy, so a cheap but lousy spy will maybe uncover 2 or even less buildings per action, where a really good spy can retrieve almost all buildings in one try. The information then is stored and you can always take a look at it again, though it get’s outdated. The age of the information last retrieved is also shown, so you can quickly see when you have to update those infos.
You can see it in “action” on the screenshot above, though it’s not 100% finished. It’s mostly done and working, but sill misses the sabotage part. I already have some ideas on what the player will be able to sabotage, but I need to balance it out so that this feature won’t get too powerfull. So stay tuned for more info on this feature.