The Spy unit is the James Bond of Civilization 6. This is a unit you can plant in rival civilizations’ cities for intel. You can carry out various espionage missions with your spies in Civilization 6. These espionage missions can come in handy for securing some victory conditions. So, playing the spying game can give you an edge in Civ 6. This is how you can utilize spies in Civilization 6 for some serious espionage.
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Is it Worth Planting Spies in Civilization 6?
It’s worth planting and utilizing spies in Civilization 6 if pursuing the cultural or scientific victory conditions. Spies have mission options for stealing great works, pinching technology, pillaging Spaceport districts, and disrupting city production, enabling you to obtain more cultural pieces for your galleries and slow down other civilizations in a space race. You can also utilize your spies to steal gold from nations, which is always handy. However, spies aren’t much use for players going for the Religious Victory.
The worth of spies in Civilization 6 primarily boils down to mission success rate. Low-level spies will fail their missions much more frequently than higher-level ones. So, the key to good espionage is to raise the levels of your spies in Civilization 6 so they have higher mission success chances, which is measured in percentage terms.
How to Plant Spies in Civilization 6
You can start utilizing spies after unlocking the Diplomatic Service civic. However, unlocking that civic will only enable to recruit and utilize one Spy unit. To increase the number of spies your civilization can have, you’ll need to unlock more civics. Most civilizations can have up to five spies, but France and China get an extra sixth one with their unique bonuses. These are the additional civics you’ll need to unlock to utilize more spies:
- Nationalism
- Ideology
- Cold War
- Computers
- Castles (France only)
- Defensive Tactics (China only)
When you’ve recruited a Civilization 6 spy at one of your cities, click on that unit to view an Embed Spy sidebar on the left of the screen. Then you can select another civilization’s city on the sidebar to plant your spy in. Select to send a spy to a city with a suitable district for the kind of mission you want to do and click Confirm Placement. For example, a city must have a Commercial Hub for your spy to steal gold.
It takes a few turns for a spy to reach the selected city. You can view the turn travel time for a settlement by hovering the cursor over it on the Embed Spy sidebar to reveal tooltip info. Alternatively, click the Espionage (eye) button at the top-right corner of the screen to view the spy sidebar that shows you the remaining travel turn time for your operatives, as in the screenshot below.
The Espionage sidebar
The Spy Mission Options
Your Civilization 6 spy will reveal the surrounding tiles of the city you sent the unit to when it arrives at the selected destination. Clicking on your Spy unit in another civilization’s city will bring up the Choose Mission sidebar. That bar includes a range of missions you can carry out at the spy’s target city. These are the Civilization 6 spy mission options you can select from in the base Civ 6 game (no DLCs):
- Siphon Funds: Steals gold
- Gain Sources: Spy operates two levels higher for 24 turns
- Great Work Heist: Steals great works of art, literature, or music
- Sabotage Production: Pillage production buildings in an Industrial Zone
- Steal Tech Boost: Steals a eureka boost for a technology
- Disrupt Rocketry: Pillages a Spaceport
- Recruit partisans: Causes two to four rebel units to spawn around the target city
- Listening Post: Raises the diplomatic visibility for the city’s civilization by one
Spy mission options
You’ll see a percentage chance success figure beside each mission. Listening Post and Gain Sources are the only missions that always have 100 percent success chance. All other missions have variable success rate chances that largely depend on your agent’s level. The four levels of agents are:
- Recruit (the rookie)
- Agent
- Secret Agent
- Master Spy
Missions for a Master Spy
Your new rookie Recruit spies will always have the lowest mission success rate chances. The highest Master Spy level has the best mission success rate chance at the 90 percent mark. You can promote your spies after they complete successful missions that don’t have a guaranteed chance.
So, select a mission for your spy to complete. It will take a few turns for that spy to finish the mission. You’ll then see a success or failure mission report. If the mission is failed, your Civilization 6 spy will be dead or captured. This will also damage relations with the nation that detected your spy.
A spy mission report
However, you can select to promote a spy after a successful mission by clicking the Promotion Available button, shown directly below. Clicking that button will reveal a random choice of three promotion types from a possible 11 in the vanilla game. Select the promotion type you like best.
The Promotion Available option
A captured spy is one you can recover after a failed mission. To do so, contact the leader of the civilization that captured your agent. You’ll then need to offer him something in exchange for your agent. A lump sum of 400 or more gold is usually needed to buy back a captured agent.
A spy exchange deal
How to Spy Better in Civilization 6
Your spying missions won’t always succeed, particularly when utilizing rookie spies in Civilization 6. So, first focus on raising the levels of your rookie Recruit agents with minimal risk to spy better in Civilization 6. Doing this will reduce the number of failed missions, making your espionage more effective.
A good way to raise a spy’s level is to always select a guaranteed Gain Sources mission for a new agent. This will temporarily enable your spy to operate two levels higher after completion, increasing the success percentage chance of his next mission. Then select Siphon Funds for stealing gold, which usually has the highest success rate chance of those non-guaranteed missions. Doing this will maximize the chances of a new agent having a successful non-guaranteed mission and earning promotion.
Most promotion options for spies also enable you to increase their levels for specific mission types. For example, the Cat Burglar promotion enables spies to steal great works at two levels higher than their actual EXP level. This is a good promotion option for players seeking cultural victories. So, choose spy promotions for your preferred mission types when you can.
Choose promotion options for a spy
Never assign low-level agents to do missions with the lowest success rate chances. They almost always fail missions when you do that. Try attempting riskier missions after levelling up your spies.
You can also better utilize your spies in Civilization 6 by selecting two espionage-related diplomatic policy cards. Select the Cryptography policy card to increase your spy level by one for offensive spying and reduce the espionage levels of enemy agents in your nation by two. To reduce spy operation times by 25 percent, select the Machiavellianism policy.
The Machiavellianism and Cryptography policy cards
Overall, spies in Civilization 6 can be valuable units when promoted to higher levels. Having some good Secret Agent or Master Spy operatives will enable you to regularly plunder and pillage rival civilizations without going to war. Utilizing them will also likely damage your relations with other nations, but it’s a price worth paying for stealing cultural treasures, technology boosts, and gold.
