just for reference, i have 1mil spies, the other person in question has 250k spies. I have atleast 1500 acres less than him pre attack, and he still gets through my spies in minimal attempts. so how does spal work?

In short, it doesn't work very well, IMO.

Harmful spy ops have a large success window just like the information ops. It is not like the attack formula where you need to send 10% over to break. A person can have far less spies than you and they will still succeed on some Spy-Ops.

Try stopping spy ops at 30k+ land, with over 1.2mil spies, both allies with over 1mil spies, and spy tech at 150%. It is impossible to netgain competitively and stop these spy-ops from countries who run low land and high spies. The worst part is the spy ops not covered by GDI, so any fluffer can do it regardless of whether you have hit them before or not.


But here is the formula anyway..


SPAL implies Spies Per Acre Land

(spies*govtbonus*spytech + 1/4 allies)/land

vs your enemies

(spies*govtbonus*spytech + 1/4 allies)/land

it just sucks, because im trying to grow slowly, and as soon as i grow i get attacked by a couple people and lose most of the land i gained. So a while back i invested heavily in spys, and in short it seems like a cost that i can cut because either way they are getting through.

Correct, you can't stop countries from grabbing you by going heavy spies. It may work against some countries who don't spend to many tries to get in, but they could also get lucky, or with persistence they will get a spy report eventually.

The idea is to get enough SPAL to where you can spy into the majority of countries you are grabbing without failing much. Depending on the strategy, turns are precious and you want to save as many as you can doing other things like Teching, Cashing, or Building.

I have passed up countries for grabs if I fail ~3 ops and am taking heavy enough spy losses to indicate it won't be easy to get an op through. I've also blind grabbed those people though heh.

Today ive killed like 70k spies, and they were persistent enough i suppose. Any tips on growing in primary now?

Build construction sites early (at least that is what I do), and keep up with the top guys for your strategy in land and tech for production. Try not to fall below 1/2 of the top guys networth and you will avoid most attacks I think.

Well that parts obvious. I was the unlucky one to be spam attacked early on, so im in a no wn spot

It is brutal server, once you fall behind it is very hard to catch back up. Set is over in a fairly shortly so you will get to try again.

Sadly, i also didn't realize the gdi rule so i screwed myself day 1.owell i guess

Unfortunately, no one can proof whether this formula is accurate or even the one in use. In fact, I'll probably guess it isn't. As far as I know, only 3 people know the formula: Pang, qzjul and H4.

Note that luck bonus also affects the probability of getting a spy op (this is written in the help page for bonuses).

No one knows the formula without deliberately looking it up. I created it then forced myself to forget it.

How do you create the formula and force yourself to forget it?

As bad as it is, I wouldn't be publicly taking credit for it.

Bad, you say? Explain to me how it works.

Here's how it works ;)

Haha, i have to feel a little bad, but thats just a tad hilarious.

I'd say its a little off by that post.

I've never tested it though in war here.

Pardon my ignorance, but do your allies spies work the same as your spies? Meaning your total SPAL would be your spies + your allies spies over your land vs the same for others?

Maybe its your allies SPAL that is aided to yours, rather than his spy count?

If they ever blocked bomb banks/espionage from being used on countries in GDI, a GDI player could sell all his spies when finished attacking with no fear.

What is the difference? Spies don't do anything to stop the thieves currently anyway. I could of sold off all my spies this set and my aggressor would of gotten maybe 4-5 more successful ops in (the number he failed so far).

Would the cash you get from selling your spies be worth it? Can you buy a different military unit for that amount of cash which would give you more than 1 networth each?

Well, if they fix success rates so that you COULD prevent them with proper spy defense :) If you're safe from espionage/bomb banks then selling spies is worth it - especially for techers since they stop using them early - because they have heavy upkeep. But I don't think one should be able to get away with that risk free.

I have 500k turrets and I got landgrabbed.

I bought up to 600k turrets and I still got landgrabbed.

I bought up to 700k turrets and I still got landgrabbed.

omg impossible to stop!

I dunno Slag, with enough defense I can protect myself from most grabs. If I have the defensive equivalent of 50 SPAL I'm not really going to be attacked a lot, but I can still have all my money and tech stolen daily with hardly any fails happening.

In Tournament a player who outright had a lower SPAL than me succeeded 70% of his ops for several days running and blew up thousands of buildings. That's like if someone does a run of SS on me and sends fewer jets than I have turrets and destroys me. And difficult spy ops should take a rather significant advantage to succeed routinely.

There's also the fact that in the instructions it says a player with far more spies in raw numbers won't be at the mercy of a smaller guy with a better SPAL.

"However, tiny countries will not be able to consistently use large spy networks to unreasonably destroy larger countries."

It's clearly not working as described.

Allow us to buy and sell spies and we can make this comparison.

We have to actually produce our spies, which means we actually have to build Industrial Complexes. For any other strategy other than Industrialist, this presents a problem in that the more land you have as Indys the less money you can make producing your main good.

Taken from the Primary thread on the B&S area:


By this logic, I would need to have about 40% of my buildings as Indy to get a SPAL of 120, and match this guys SPAL of 118. Then according to Blid's tourney numbers, this would still let in 70% or more of the spy-ops. Since Blid says he actually had a better SPAL than the guy succeeding 70% of the time, I assume the success rate would be more than 70% if you just match their SPAL.

I think we are wasting our time here. He wrote a crappy code so bad that even he forced himself to forget it it was that bad. I think that is all we need to know.

I dug up the data from when it happened. Tournament (no intel allies).
His land 5681, Spies 79,293, Spy tech 114%, Dict 130% rate
My land 12,392, Spies 309,291, Spy tech 0%

So my SPAL is 25 even, his is 20.8. So his SPAL was only 83% of mine. You would think he would fail the majority of his ops, but he succeeded the majority.

13 successes, 22 ops, 60% success rate - ops pasted below.

0.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

0.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

0.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

2.1 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

2.1 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

2.1 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

3.2 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1604 enemy spies.

3.2 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1624 enemy spies.

3.2 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

3.2 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

4.7 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1574 enemy spies.

4.7 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1593 enemy spies.

4.7 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1611 enemy spies.

4.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

6.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

6.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

6.7 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1562 enemy spies.

6.7 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 43 buildings!

10.3 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1539 enemy spies.

10.3 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1556 enemy spies.

10.3 mins ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 1575 enemy spies.

10.3 mins ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 44 buildings!

I suppose if you add back in all the spies he lost on the failed ops, 14,238, he gets to 93,531 spies... which is a SPAL of 24.4, STILL worse than my SPAL was. But if you want to be even MORE accurate, you'll look and see he failed 4 of the first 6. After that he was at a lower SPAL (22.77 vs my 25) and succeeded a very high rate - 68.75%.

This was from August last year and that's the only data I found in my old PMs, but this continued for several days the same way.

I know, I know, it's a gaussian formula or w/e, it's not a clean lesser SPAL bounces vs greater SPAL sort of thing. And this is a small sample, so it's like the guy who says he didn't make any missiles in 500 turns - just bad luck with the random factor (except, as I said, this continued for days).

But lesser SPAL shouldn't succeed, no matter what the random factor, at 60% on a harmful op like bomb structures against a better SPAL country. The formula works for intel ops but for harmful ops it just doesn't. That was 10% of my buildings lost that day, to a guy with a worse SPAL than me, that also took out tons of CS, and it happened again the next day and the next. A country with similar but worse SPAL should succeed something closer to a 15% rate on harmful ops imo. 60% is absurd.

And here's my deadly response:
Most worthless ABs ever.

AB Aug 23, 01:37 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:38 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:38 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:39 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:40 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:40 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:40 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:41 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:41 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 01:42 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 12:03 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:03 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:03 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:03 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:03 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:04 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:04 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:04 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:04 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:05 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:06 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:06 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 12:06 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:01 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:02 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:02 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 15 B
AB Aug 23, 22:02 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 22:02 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 22:02 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B
AB Aug 23, 22:04 The Marshes (#33) Road Rage (#39) 14 B

Oh here's some more of his spy ops:
6.9 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5526 enemy spies.

6.9 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 64 buildings!

6.9 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 64 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5574 enemy spies.

7.1 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5666 enemy spies.

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 64 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 64 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5610 enemy spies.

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5682 enemy spies.

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.1 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.2 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.2 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.2 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.2 hours ago
Enemy operatives destroyed 65 buildings!

7.2 hours ago
Road Rage (#39) attempted to bomb your structures! You killed 5626 enemy spies.

Prosecution rests.

If I was like crest23 (can't win on a real server) I would blame the game code too.

hi slagpit, long time :)

i can add to this discussion: it isn't just due to the larger countries in primary, as blid's post attests, and i can vouch for from low-acre wars.

the spy op balance is best at present in express server, with a 1/4 of the active set dr period. the success rate is still too high, but the long dr mitigates this slightly.

the same effiacy on servers with only 60 turns per dr-period is really what makes this overpowered.

when you also factor in the larger land in primary it multiplies the power even further (you mentioned in the primary thread high land was one of the causes - although, not knowing the formula, i don't see why)

last set i was decimated by a player with far lower spal (i.e. less than half my spal), through GDI, both on high acres.

while i agree with teh need for skepticism to temper knee jerk fixes causing further problems etc, this isn't a new issue, it's just more people have started exploiting it, and it is becoming (has become) a huge problem.

to say 'it is impossible to stop a determined op', may sound like a grand overstatement, however i think there is a general agreement that you WILL always get through if you try, so the statement may actually be true. if not, then it is true for all practical purposes.

To be honest, crest should have a Primary win. His second place finish should have been a first and only wasn't because of the problems with research alliances.

Road Rage hit me with harmful ops daily and ruined me last set. As I recall, he had way lower SPAL than me. :(