Following is a quote from the developers:
Espionage was first added in Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday,
and it was a rather nice addition to the game.
Let’s start with a quick recap of information in previous developer
diaries. Each country generates a value known as leadership. This via a
slider system is allocated into 4 areas, one of which is espionage.
When you have assigned enough leadership to espionage a spy point is
generated that can then be used to spy on people.
Next let’s move onto what we were thinking when we started to design
this system. Espionage was first added in Hearts of Iron 2 Doomsday,
and it was a rather nice addition to the game. However it didn’t mean
we felt we couldn’t improve on it. We aimed to improve in three ways.
These are interaction, interface, and consistency.
We have worked hard to make the espionage system simple to use. Instead
of manually clicking every time you wish to send a spy you simply set
priorities and spies are sent our if available. You can then tweak
these as required; the system is very similar to the autosending of
merchants in Napoleon’s Ambition (if you are familiar with that game).
We also feel that this system is more realistic, leaders of countries
didn’t manually manage their intelligence agencies, instead they would
be given broad direction on where to focus their efforts and given
resources to carry it out (in our case it is setting of a leadership
value in the slider) and then they would do the best they could within
the scope of the orders given. We have taken a similar approach to the
actual using of spies, again for the same reasons of simplicity and
reality. Instead of giving individual orders as in Doomsday you give
your intelligence services a focus and they will continue to execute
this mission until told otherwise. We’ll talk a little bit more about
missions later on.
Then we have the interface, essentially the whole interface was built
from scratch. Our goal to make intelligence information clear, leaving
you more time to decide what to do with this information. We have also
added more information in the intelligence screen, especially in the
economic and political sides. With this is mind we have also cooked up
a handy little solution that allows the intelligence screen to be
saved, so it will update only monthly, or when the amount of spies you
have placed in that country changes. This should make using the
intelligence screen easier, if you just want to double check something
it will still be the same and also avoid you trying to jump backwards
and forwards into the intel system to watch out for enemies.
For intelligence missions we have added a number of options, in your
own country you can search for enemy spies, support your ruling party
or lower your neutrality value. These are pretty self-explanatory. The
first two options are also available for other countries as well, so
you do not have to just use espionage to subvert your enemies you can
also use it to prop up your allies. For those of you who prefer to use
espionage to only gather information we have three options, military,
tech and political that boosts the accuracy and quantity of information
you will receive in these areas.
