This update is much larger in comparison to previous ones. We have finally completely redesigned the espionage system, which will actually make full use of your spies and eliminate a cheat that allows you to figure out the whole enemy army with a single spy unit.
The spying mechanics are now built similarily to plunder, except instead of resources, spies accumulate "intelligence points", which after the spy battle determine how much information they are able to get.
- Spying for Buildings: Each spy can gather information to reveal one level of buildings. This means that if you send one spy, you will be able to see one random Level 1 building of the enemy. However, if you send 100 spies, you will be able to see random buildings totaling up to 100 levels. Multiple spying attempts might reveal different random buildings. You will not be able to get all the buildings with one spy anymore.
- Spying for Resources: Each spy defines the maximum amount of resources he can detect. For example, if you send one spy, and he can only detect 500 resources max, any additional resources the enemy town has will show as "over 125" (500/4 resource types). If you want to know how much more, send more spies.
- Spying for Army: Again, intelligence points will determine the total price of spying the enemy army. If the intelligence points are enough to cover the whole army cost, you will see the whole army. If the intelligence points only cover a fraction, but not less than 75%, you will see rough estimates instead of hard numbers (few, many, etc.). If they cover 50-75%, you will see a percentage of units, one against another, for instance: Brave = 75%, Hunter = 25%, but it could be either 3 and 1 or 300 and 100. For 25%-50% you will only see unit types without any information about quantity. If it is less than 25% you will not be able to get any information at all.
I did not post a specific amount of "intelligence points" spies actually gather and specific corellation between those points and the actual information received because this type of information is subject to change. I don't want to be obligated to updating it each time in public.
Furthermore, battle reports now have similar information grades as espionage - if your army was very small and everyone is dead, you will not be able to know what killed you. This will also eliminate a "one explorer attack" cheat.
Another important change in this update is the game interface change. Since Alpha 1, people have been asking for the ability to collapse parts of the interface to have more visual playing space. This time it has been implemented. Let us know if this is what you wanted.
Finally, some internal tweaking allowed us to speed up some graphic user interface. Take a look at the rankings tab and let us know if it opens faster for you now.
A full list of today's update changes are in our update log thread.
Let us know what you think about the espionage redesign in the comments below.
