So... I've tried taking a peak at some top rated countries just to see how they are built and apparently the 3 I tried have all failed (I know I'm not going to stay this high very long as its my first set in primary in over 10 years). I thought my SPAL was pretty high so I was wondering what the formula was for successfully spying on other countries or if there is a pretty big random element to it.

random event (spal 10 can get op on spal 100 country and 100 can fail to op 10) and also big countries have very nice spal and nice intel allies.

Fair enough. I guess I'm wondering if its equal footing through intel network ect. Say 20SPAL against 20SPAL is the success rate 50% or does it favor the defender or anything like that.

Unfortunately, nobody knows the formula, other than the 2 game admins and H4.

Thanks for the replies.

I can't give you specific figures, but if you're failing on simple informational ops with high frequency, you must have far lower SPAL than your target(s). It seems to me that success rates for a regular spy op are actually greater than 50% when the two countries have equal SPAL.

If your sample size is still only three though, then you may have just gotten unlucky.

And, if you are trying to spy the top countries on Primary right now, there's a pretty high chance you're attempting ops on commie indies. Commie indies usually tend to have higher SPAL than everyone else.

NEEDS MOAR CAPS. I EXPECT BETTER MR. DANGER.

-RATTLEHEAD
SR HEAD OF DANGER

May well be imagination but the first mission seems to have a better chance than the second, third, fourth whatever.

Not sure that this remains true, i.e. that the second has any better chance than the third.

One thing you can do is to watch out for how many spies you lose. If you have equal SPAL and just lose out on the dice roll the number of spies you lose is likely to be modest. But if you see that you dropped a whole bunch of spies on a failed mission your SPAL is almost certainly a lot worse than your target.

Another tip is this. Message those guys and ask how they configure their countries. They'll be flattered and very likely tell you what you want to know w/o any need to spy.

Yeah, I respond positively with real feedback to anyone who asks for it. I also sometimes offer advice to people I grab if I see they are built inefficiently and have an easy simple fix - ie get more tech, build more CS, specialize, etc. I do this at least a couple times every set when I am grabbing.

I guess the most direct route is sometimes the best?

I actually just sent a fairly detailed explanation of exactly how I ran my country to someone because he asked nicely. Literally about the same time I posted in the thread right under this one.

its random and of course depends target's spal, many times i've gotten normal op on 1st attempt against high spaller but when doing ally op it takes several attempts to get op.

The more spy ops a country has suffered in the last 24 hours, the lower the chances of the next spyop for success as well.

This is called being "spied out".

I thought that didn't affect informational only ops?

I don't know about that one, heh. I've never had or needed to spy someone in war that I know for certain was in deep spy DR.

Edit: Since EE is not quite the same as E:2025, the spy formulas are different since nobody knows how the original game worked either.

by qz ~4 years ago:

Spy Changes:

Non-Harmful spyops (spy, alliance spy, market spy, military spy) are no longer affected by Spy DR (diminishing returns), nor do they contribute to spy DR. We added this basically because, as non-harmful ops, they should not need to be diminished, as they do no harm.


of course he has changed things quite a much after that so who knows.

Sounds good. :)
So they did used to be affected by DR!

Thanks for that, Marshal, very useful.

And I guess that was why I used to think the first spy had a better chance. But no longer (unless there is something buried in the way the dice roll is operated which did not get taken out with the removal of dr).

yea all spying used to effect on spy dr (mehul's legacy) but after that change ~4 years ago no more although what is current situation is somewhat mystery due changes past 4 years (alot dr changes (landgrab and special attack) and some spy changes so ....).

I can't be 100% sure, but it also seems to me that if you send harmful spy ops seperated out, even if by just a few seconds, you are more likely to succeed than if you send them all at once.

Interesting Zorp. I always send them one at a time and have generally felt that I succeed more often than I ought. Which supports your impression.

I also have a preference, when possible, to send different ones each time. Although an enemy with whom I am duelling at present has had almost 100% success with multiple Espionage missions. He is a dictator with 600k spies on 7k acres though, so perhaps no surprise there.

I created the spy success formula many years ago, but I don't remember precisely how it works. I doubt that any of the admins know how it works either. They could look it up if they needed to, but we deliberately didn't look at it after it was written.

From memory, it's based on land, SPAL, and SPAL DR. Sending ops one at a time versus in groups does not have an effect. That would be making players jump through unnecessary hoops.