Effects of Infiltration Missions

The recent playtests involving the Infiltration mini-game (used during Espionage and Sabotage missions) have been really fun.  However, an area that still needs more work is the overall campaign effect of Espionage and Sabotage in terms of benefits to the Stronghold.  This is an area that needs work on the whole, but is particularly poorly defined for those two mission types.

I had envisioned Espionage as primarily making it easier to build certain developments (the "tech tree" stuff that builds the kingdom up), essentially by stealing information from the target faction.  This would most likely translate to some sort of build point bonus (build points being units of "work" necessary to create a development).  Coming up with an exact number might require some revisions, but it should be good enough to merit attempting the mission, such as reducing the cost by half or something similar.  It's also possibly to get added build points by using Diplomacy with a faction, and having them directly aid your Stronghold.

It seems like not every development would benefit from Espionage (although, just glancing through them, I can justify some benefit to stealing secrets for all of them).  The specific effect of Espionage might need to be development dependent.  That also opens the door to effects besides simple build points.  For instance, maybe using the Espionage mission on a target castle plants a mole there - a mole who might be able to lower the defenses at a critical point during a future military campaign.  Similarly, it might be possible to learn some sort of forbidden lore through an Espionage mission.  That opens up the idea that one development might have more than one type of Espionage mission attached to it.

For Sabotage, the general idea is to inflict damage on a development, rendering it useless.  This is a little more problematic for the factions - since the GM doesn't keep track of their developments, and many of them really have no function for the faction.  Factions are really only described by two main attributes: stability and population.  Factions also have regions, with resources, although the resources aren't spent on anything - rather they exist only as locations to fight over.  A faction also has leaders.

So, most Sabotage missions function to lower the target's stability or population or both.  It's possible to assign some stability loss to developments (for instance, taking out their Improved Mining doesn't affect any resources, but drops their stability by some amount).  Another option for Sabotage might be a mission to assassinate a target leader, which would also have lasting consequences, to both Warfare and Diplomacy missions.

In order for this method to work, each development would need a list of all results of Espionage and Sabotage (could be none), as well as a general level of difficulty, which is used to add adversaries in the Infiltration mini-game.

Here's a sample development entry using this method:

• Mages Guild
• Build Points: 240
• Mana: 8
• Ore: 9
• Timber: 8
• Luxuries: 2
• Prerequisites: Mana Forge (Advanced), Expert Casting, Expert Channeling
• Effect: Caster may double effect of all mana expenditures (spending 4 mana now as the same effect as spending 8).
• Infiltration:
• Steal Secrets (Security: High) - Gain 120 BP toward building a Mages Guild.
• Destroy Ancient Library (Security: High) - Faction loses 3 stability as well as all effects of Mages Guild.

Most of the complexity in WotA comes from the choices available between missions, and this continues that pattern.  So, while play is fairly straightforward, it will probably be necessary to include some rough strategies to expose players to a few of the options that are available.