Spies and Agents

Radar watches the ground and scans probe from outside. Spies get you inside. They are the covert arm of intelligence: instead of estimating an enemy from a distance, you place an operative in their territory and let it work over time. Spies are slow to set up and demand ongoing investment, but a well-placed agent is the deepest source of intelligence and the gateway to covert operations.

Training a spy

A spy is a specialist, not a soldier, and you train one through your covert structure. The cost is about 1 worker and 25 energy, and training takes about 24 ticks. That is a real wait, so start spies early rather than the moment you need one. A trained spy is mobile: it can travel to an enemy colony or outpost and attempt to embed itself there as an agent.

A spy travels the way a squad does. It crosses the map over ticks with an ETA and an oil cost based on distance, and it moves at defender speed, so it arrives quicker than an attacking march. If you hold a Teleport Gate, a spy can jump between valid gate endpoints just like a squad.

Planting an agent

When a spy reaches a target, you can have it infiltrate and become an embedded agent. Planting an agent costs energy on top of the spy itself. Once embedded, the agent is immobile, it stays at that target and works from the inside.

There is a ceiling. You can have at most 10 active agents at any time, so where you plant them is a real decision. Spread thin for broad awareness, or stack pressure on the one enemy you intend to break.

Infiltration over time

An agent does not arrive at full strength. Each tick it remains embedded, it gains infiltration, a measure of how deeply it has worked into the target. Infiltration is the currency behind covert power: the longer an agent survives undetected, the more it can do, including enabling the strongest denial operations. Patience is rewarded. An agent left in place for many ticks is far more dangerous than one freshly planted.

The agent lifecycle

An agent moves through clear stages:

• Infiltrating. The spy is embedding into the target and the agent is being established.
• Embedded. The agent is in place, gaining infiltration every tick and available for covert use.
• Discovered. The agent has been caught, by enemy spy protection, a counter-operation, a spy battle, or a nuke at the target, and is no longer effective.
• Disbanded. The agent has been pulled out or consumed, ending its presence at the target.

Agents can also be lost to events at the target. If a nuke hits where your agent sits, the agent is killed. Capturing the target does not currently cut a surviving agent's infiltration in half; treat capture as a territorial change, not an automatic partial counterspy action.

The cost of keeping agents

Embedded agents are not free to maintain. Every active agent reduces your worker growth (about 1 worker of upkeep per agent), so a large agent network quietly taxes your economy. Run the agents that earn their keep and pull the ones that have gone stale.

Covert operations

Infiltration is spent on covert operations. Basic operations are direct damage or disruption:

• Spread Virus costs 20 Energy and 4 infiltration and reduces infantry at the target colony to 1 HP.
• Destroy Vehicle Fuel costs 30 Energy and 6 infiltration and reduces vehicle HP at the target colony to 50%.
• Destroy Heavy Vehicle Fuel costs 40 Energy and 8 infiltration and reduces tank HP at the target colony to 50%.
• Boo! costs 10 Energy and 2 infiltration and sends a notification-only scare to a colony or outpost.

Advanced operations require the advanced covert unlock:

• EMP Overload costs 80 Energy and 12 infiltration and drops the target colony's Energy to 0.
• Burn Oil Reserves costs 60 Energy and 10 infiltration and halves the target colony's stored Oil.
• Lockdown costs 50 Energy and 6 infiltration before protection is counted, lasts roughly 3 to 6 ticks, and stops squads or nukes from leaving the target.

Covert operations are agent-driven, so shields do not stop them. You cannot run covert operations or Lockdown against your own alliance, the only exception being the havoc phase at the very end of an era. Spy protection still matters too, and it is resolved as a battle, covered next.

Spy protection and spy battles

The same system runs in reverse against you. Enemies will try to embed agents in your colony and outposts, and your defense is spy protection: a charge held on a target that resists incoming covert work.

When an enemy attempts an infiltration or a covert operation against you, it does not just compare numbers, it fights a spy battle. The attacker's infiltration is spent against your protection first. If protection holds, the attempt fails. If it is beaten, the attack moves on to your own agent stationed there, and then to agents from your alliance, strongest first. Agents on either side can die in this fight, and an attacker who loses the battle loses the spy making the attempt. Protection is spent whether the attempt succeeds or fails, so a defended target wears the attacker down even when it eventually falls.

Building protection

You raise protection two ways:

• Station a spy of your own. A friendly spy sitting on your colony or outpost adds 1 protection per tick, every tick it stays. Leave it in place and protection climbs on its own. After five ticks you have five more protection, after fifty you have fifty.
• Add protection directly. Once you have unlocked advanced covert operations, you can spend to place protection on a target in one action. Placing it on an alliance mate's colony or outpost is discounted to 20 energy, so an organized alliance can harden its weak spots cheaply. Both a spy and an agent must be stationed there to do this.

Keep protection up on anything that matters, because an undefended colony is an open invitation for a patient enemy spy.

Removing an agent

You are not stuck with an agent once it is planted. You can pull your own agent out of a target at any time, which frees the slot toward your cap of 10 and stops its worker upkeep. Remove the agents that have gone stale and re-plant them where they will earn their keep.

See also: Intelligence and Radar for where covert intelligence fits among your other tools, Scans for active intelligence, Movement and ETA for how spies travel, Alliances for allied protection and the no-covert rule, Jamming and Lockdown for denial effects, and Heavy Weapons for how nukes interact with agents.