So Espionage in most 4x games is shit. Its not even a debate. Paradox is all about waiting for timers to tick and dice to roll. Civ barely has one. Dominions only has what is essentially magic espionage plus scouts.
Lets talk about the way the world should be instead of the way it is. Granted I'll be using some game specific mechanics from my game since I'm describing the system I myself am making as the best way to do it.
First, you have characters. These are the rulers and nobles of nations, archmages and possibly regular mages, important merchants and factors, and various religious dignitaries. These people have both known and secret desires, said desires generating based on the history of their religion, state, etc. Nobles want to own the land their grandfathers conquered but their fathers lost, plus of course more land if the opportunity presents itself. Same for leaders of state. They want to reach or exceed their days of glory. Mages want money and resources for their research, access to ancient texts, and other things. Merchants and factors want trade deals, tax relief, access to new markets. Religious people want to expand their religion, recruit important characters as members and so forth.
Other characters will try to enact plots if the conditions are right but since the game part is essentially the same, I'll focus on the player.
As a player you want stuff. You could buy it/trade for it or conquer it. But you can also use sneaky dealings. First you as the ruler of a state have intelligence infrastructure. You can invest in it, research it, try to trade for the knowledge of others. Also like all systems in my game, the more you perform espionage the better you become. Having a well funded and long running and active intelligence organization provides slow growth in their ability, this represents training and internal culture. Your spy agency will study nobles, either randomly or if you have a specific goal then as you direct. As you allocate funding, human capital, and time to a given important character you will slowly dig out their dirty secrets, hidden desires and possibly catch win of their own intelligence activities. You can blackmail them with dirty secrets, support or counter their plots, and bribe them with their wildest dreams. Assuming they have something of value that you want.
You could also sell your knowledge to another character, perhaps their long time rival or the target of their plot, in return for that character's favor which you can then use later to get them to help you in your own plots. Note that if you make a deal with someone you don't have to follow through at the end, but then that person won't trust you and may tell their friends and allies, or even the whole world, of your duplicity depending on how angry you make them. Note that you need to break several deals before no one will work with you, early on you just have to give them better deals for their assistance. And deals you keep counteract deals you break, at least a little.
Perhaps you find out that some noble in another kingdom desires a certain piece of land owned by your or his liege. As it is one of his secret and not open desires, its worth a lot to him. He is quite powerful, perhaps he owns the 3rd most land in the kingdom. You are an empire. You make a deal to get him that land and make him king in return for backstabbing his current ruler. His acceptance will depend on how people view you as a liege, his own moral alignment, how his people feel about you and his current ruler and so forth. But he'll ignore quite a bit of negativity to get the land stolen from his great grandfather which was returned to the crown when the son of the thief died without an heir. You either invade openly and make him your puppet king when he turns to your side or provide troops and money, he seizes power, and swears as your vassal. The political consequences in his kingdom depends on how the people view you, him, the old king, and the way shit went down. Note that, since technically your overall plot was to take the kingdom without an all out war, you could have other plots such as certain nobles arriving late to the enemy's assistance, or abstaining from conflict, or swearing allegiance to the puppet king or w/e. Even multiple traitors. Also other nations finding out through their own intelligence operations could intervene or get negative opinion modifiers after finding out about the bribes and blackmail you employed. Maybe someone else knew about the secret desire of the noble and that counts as them realizing you bribed him.
There is also a propaganda system you can play with that will effect the opinions of your espionage and military actions but that's another thread.
Plots can also be directed at your own citizens, like mages and merchants and your own nobles. Maybe a noble is getting to strong so you have him killed, reveal a dirty secret to turn off his allies, or something. Maybe a mage has a book you want for the national magic academy so you bribe or blackmail him or something. You can also catch traitors, if your intelligence infrastructure is good, and blackmail them into double agents, have them hanged for treason and their property confiscated, and so forth.
This all derives from the secret desires, dirty secrets, open desires and general desires. Everyone wants a higher rank or more money or land or w/e. But open and secret desires carry more weight when met than general ones.
Secret desires can also be met diplomatically of course. If a noble loves his firstborn daughter you can get him a powerful match, a match that will treat her well, or marry her yourself if the noble has a good opinion of you, thus gaining his favor and even political support. Marrying her yourself meets both a general desire of increased prestige and/or rank if she is the heir, and his specific desire of a good man to make her happy. Granted, if you divorce her, or have her killed and he finds out, then you lose both the favor of the act itself, and double penalties for breaking your previous agreements.
Also, you have 3 sort of reputations that affect how people view you. Fear, how much they are afraid of your armies or your torture chamber or your rampant executions, respect, how they view you as a leader based on your accomplishments, and opinion/influence. This includes stuff like your dynasty/personal/national right to be their liege, giving them money or land and all the stuff that you might see in a Paradox game like royal marriages, plus extra like fostering kids and shit. Each person has a separate value for each. Someone who really fears you will be more likely to fall to blackmail, someone who respects you will trust you to keep your word, and in the case of becoming a vassal, to treat them well.
The main goal of the espionage system was to make it more like war. Doing recon, finding out who is willing to side with you, gathering your forces, like in the case of rebellious nobles, and so forth. There are unfortunately some timers like applying your spies and waiting for find out info, but info you find is forever so in some cases you might have the info before you formulate the plan and then you don't have to wait. But ideally its all focused on actions you take with direct results. Marry daughter, get support of father, bribe greedy noble for support. Next Imperial election become Emperor.
Ideally you could be a noble in a state similar to the HRE or the Eastern Empire of the Valdemar series and spends hundreds of years working with building alliances and bribes and assassinations and not fighting a single battle but still having the joy of becoming the Emperor through planning and skill. Of course you CAN fight battles and the combat and conquest systems are large parts of the game.
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