Would Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor/War count? You can obtain a skill that will allow you to dominate enemy ork captains. They will either fight for you directly, or you can send them to do tasks for you, like attempting to duel other captains (which you can interrupt or help with) or threaten other captains so they drop better loot when defeated. You can convert a warlord's bodyguards so they will turn on him during an ambush. In Shadow of War your converted captains will fight alongside you when taking over forts, and sabotage them from the inside. You can't directly control the orks though, they're still NPCs.
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oh ya, forgot about that one, yes it counts. Thanks.
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Civ 5, while its not the main focus but it has spies that can infiltrate your opponents cities/capital and neutral cities. They can steal technology, spy on a cities stats, unlock new negotioation options or destabilize neutral cities.
If you want a stealth / action game maybe try Splinter Cell Double Agent. Its not the best in the series but it has you infiltrate a terrorist organization and you have to balance out your trust with the terrorists and your own company by completing different objectives.
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If I remember correctly in Red Alert 2 you got a spy unit that disguises himself as an enemy unit and then you can send him to their base and find a good spot for him to blend and that allows you to keep a watch over the enemy. I think the unit can plant bombs as well to blow buildings up but this is very very long ago so I'm not 100% sure anymore.
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wow, where's my memory been? forgot about that one too. Thanks. I think in later games the spies had a different effect depending on the building, infiltrating say a power supply would turn it off for say 2mins, ample time for your army to invade then without any electrical turrets able to fire back due to the power outage.
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Well, Baldur's Gate 2 actually has a number of infiltration missions. ;)
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Maybe Pizza Syndicate? Sometimes a rat found in a rivalry restaurant can make wonders ;)
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ok fine, lol, the rat can be an spy/saboteur - i know what you mean. Didn't see too much use for that really, its like those actions have very little effect against the computer opponent that cheat anyway.
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Can you describe it a bit perhaps? Don't know game.
I purchased shadow Tactics years ago for the cards I think or it was a good special, not sure.
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intriguing, ok, this will do for now thanks. though it seems very commando-like where you control everything manually instead of just ordering your npc's to go do a mission themselves and come back with the results (enemy head, money etc).
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Yeh i liked this aspect and idea in Seven Kingdoms very much.
edit: 4x turnbased strategies quite often had some elements of this
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also brutal legends, videogame with jackblack as the main character
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sorry, please elaborate? what do spies do in overlord/BL? thanks.
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4 types of minions and an interactive environment, kinda like pikmin+fable. green ones will stealth up when left alone, you can also prep traps and what not or just hammer past everything usually taking massive causalities. best part about the games are your minions will pick up things and wear them as hats
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mm, ok, I had a quick search and think I see what you mean, seems minions can be used to walk past enemies and trigger things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gJfxlqL56s
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Invisible Inc is a game about infiltration but it's too short.
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Thanks, aware of this one, but the specific focus is where you send an npc to do something on their own for results, ie. you don't control the action directly. you don't control the spy 'manually'. But thanks regardless.
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I have a few suggestions:
- Monaco
- Stealth Bastard Deluxe
- Stealth Inc 2
- Gunpoint
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Thank you, if its not too much trouble, could you please elaborate with some examples of what the spies do here like in my examples. I recall in Stealth Bastard you control a spy directly as they sneak around, but the specific focus is where you send an npc spy/agent to do something 'on their own' for results, ie. you don't control the action directly. don't control the spy movement 'manually'
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Ah, I think I missed the intent of the games being less direct control of the spies. All of these games involve spies/infiltrators being directly controlled by the player.
In Monaco, you and a group of 4 spies/thieves are infiltrating different buildings with a top-down view.
You are correct that both Stealth Bastard Deluxe and Stealth Inc 2 have you controlling the spy. It's a side-scrolling game more focused on stealth than direct combat.
Gunpoint is another game that is more stealth-oriented. You control a spy who is given some ability to launch himself at great speeds.
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Deux ex
Batman
Commandos
Shadows tactics
Jydge
Black the fall
Mr shifty
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Thank you, if its not too much trouble, could you please elaborate with some examples of what the spies do here like in my examples. I recall in commandos you control a npc's directly as they sneak around, but the specific focus is where you send/order an npc spy/agent to do something 'on their own' for results, like a commander, but not the actual commando on site, ie. give orders but don't control the spy movement 'manually'
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Casino Inc is a good one. You can send assassins and prostitutes to rival casino’s and businesses
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In Phantom Doctrine, as you go along, you unlock interrogation and then various degrees of mental conditioning. If you take out an enemy conspiracy agent during a mission and manage to extract them, you can then use them in a few ways. Assuming you don't just try to brainwash them of their old affiliation and keep them on your own force, you can use a mind control technique and release them back into the wild.
If you use the 'mason gambit' and later encounter the enemy agent during a mission, they will defect and fight on your side if the alarm is raised. If you use the 'control phrase' brainwashing, upon encountering them again you can activate them as a sleeper agent with any allied unit that has line of sight, putting them directly under your control without raising the alarm (and maintaining their inherant disguise to all observers except other enemy agents). If the enemy agent survives the mission, they can be extracted with you and then kept permanently. Whereas if you use the 'saboteur' subliminal treatment, whenever they venture off into the world and arrive at a conspiracy cell, they will trigger and suicidally destroy the locale without you having to siege it yourself.
On the flip side, if you ever fail to extract one of your own agents the same can happen to them (minus the sabotage one). You don't get to see all of an agents inherant skills / affinities straight away, and learn them over time. One of the little questionmarks you see in their personal skills may in fact be an 'enemy agent' token of some kind, unless through random overworld events you managed to turn someone 'loyal' to your cause. Your HQ can be sieged by the opposing secret agent group, but only if they know where your hideout is. A meter fills up reflecting how close they are to zeroing in on your location, and it fills up at a rate depending on how many enemy cells / operation HQs there are, or if you fail to detect and stop an enemy scouting/intel mission, or much much faster if you have a mole within your ranks.
Phantom Doctrine isn't a great game though. It has the vague feel of an isometric XCom-like shooter, but the missions are stealth oriented, which feels incredibly slow given the turn based nature of things, and how easy it is to totally mess up. Savescumming is key :P
Then again, maybe that's just my tastes speaking and nothing more. I managed to push myself to complete it by alt-tabbing during enemy turns and keeping myself otherwise occupied.
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neat, ok, considering this valid. Thank you as well.
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No worries. I saw a lot of suggestions that didn't really fit the bill, and I saw this one that did, so figured I'd put my spamming superpower to good use in case they didn't follow up, heh.
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After some additional research can confirm this one valid. while game focus on manual tactical interaction on recycled maps with different npc placement, the times when player is not in tactical on the worldmap, agents can infiltrate organizations (a new recruit could be a mole for instance) or captured agents could be converted by either side.. which you can then convert back to your side in missions to fight for you.
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Then another form of infiltration can sort of be seen in the game Gangsters, where you dont have people that you command to infiltrate, but through bribes to city officials, police, judges and the mayor can work for you / ignore your crimes.
If we're talking things that are infiltration-like, then civilization IV (and only civilization IV, unless VI added the mechanic back in and I didn't hear about it) has the ability to take over enemy cities adjacent to the cultural borders of your cities, by surrounding and "swallowing" them with the cultural borders of your cities.
Essentially has an identical effect to the spy infiltration mechanics in certain strategy games, where the end result similarly is one of flipping control of the affected city (or colony) over to you, but with a much more fun visual aspect to it. Really is one of the most fun mechanics I've ever seen in any 4X game.
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Thank you. civ Rise and Fall expansion it seems, not in the base one.
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Ah. I exclusively play games with full DLCs, so that kind of element wouldn't ever occur to me.
My preferences aside, I especially wouldn't recommend buying incomplete Civilization or Paradox-published games, as both tend to feel quite underdeveloped without expanded content. Notably, Civ expansions tend to fix or flesh out underdeveloped core elements (this in contrast to the usual perception of expansions as solely 'adding new things'), while Paradox dlcs feel like they were stripped from the base game to begin with.
Looks like IV, unlike III, still sells a non-complete version, so yeah- that'd definitely be something to keep in mind.
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Satellite Reign
You control 4 crew members with different abilities. Infiltrate facilities to gain weapons/gears. You can sneak in or go in loud. Bribing, mind-controlling, hacking, researching are some of the aspects of the game. It's a real-time tactics game. No pauses tho, so you have to rely on your micro-ing skills.
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Thanks, ok, so this is like commando's where you control agent manually all the way, though the specific focus is where you send someone to do something on their own for results, ie. you don't control the spy 'manually' but instead just order/tell them to go do something and you get the results later when the job's done or failed.
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dnd online? example please.
with regard to mdk. the specific focus is where you send someone to do something on their own for results, ie. you don't control the agent 'manually' but instead just hire/order/tell them to go do something and you get the results later when the job's done or failed. From what i can recall from mdk, you run around shooting things, but nowhere did I encounter a function to where I could hire an npc to go assassinate the endgame boss /enemy leader, I had to go fight him myself wolfenstein style.
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I see. I was thinking of the stealth character in MDK. In DDO, you have classes that can turn an enemy to fight on your behalf for a limited time. There are also classes that can infiltrate some quests via stealth to complete a dungeon with minimal to no kills, depending on quest design.
Nothing of the set and forget style that you are seeking, though.
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mm, "fight on your behalf". I'd consider that one. Thanks. If you get any example of that, please would you let me know? Is it similar to say wow's ranger ability to charm wild creatures to fight for you? https://wow.gamepedia.com/Charm
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There is Charm, which causes the enemy to fight as your ally. It remains stationary if no enemies are in range, and will not follow you. There is also Dominate, which works like Charm, but the mob will follow you through the dungeon as your ally until it breaks free of the spell or dies. There is also a special case of Dominate called Shadow Manipulation, which Dominates the target for one minute, at which time it will die if it fails a save.
The wiki has more information at https://ddowiki.com/page/Shadowdancer#Tier_Five
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In Stellaris you can send geneticaly altered agents to planets that didn't discovered FTL yet. They can replace leaders of the planet and they will peacefully join your empire. But sometimes an agent would rebel and help the natives instead.
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Knights of Honor! Wow I loved that game, wonder how well it has aged.
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still very much playable. more fun also than TW for many. problem with it is that many folks dont know how to play it, they dont understand what to do early game, ie hire merchants first (or make the king a merchant for free, at risk of not getting children due to not being home with wife) to make trade routes with other nations to bring in more money than taxes could. In beginning you cannot really fight wars until you build proper military buildings like Fletcher for archers at least and guardhouse for defence that spawns its own troops in combat, else you have only peasants which should in my opinion not even be in the game. in TW games you for instance don't really have peasants and usually already have troops to fight with right away so even people who didnt know what to do there would have an army available to defend with when attacked.
maybe if people googled for walkthrough tips first it would have been better for the game https://www.moddb.com/groups/knights-of-honor-players-fans-mappers-modders/tutorials/how-to-develop-your-kingdom
ps. number two is on the way:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/736820/Knights_of_Honor_II__Sovereign/
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OMG THEY ARE MAKING A SEQUEL!
Wow dude this is awesome news, I had no idea!
Day 1 purchase for sure!
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aye, happy to help, and semi-part of the reason I'm doing this - I like this kind of aspect in games where one influence things with espionage and wondering If I too are missing out on a titles in this genre that I werent aware of maybe. People wont really know about #2 here because like with the first launch, there's no hype being made unfortunately.
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In Sunless Sea you stablish spy networks in the enemy kingdoms, that helps to get some bonuses or endgame quests.
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yes, suppose I could could that. Seems to add extra mission though. havent really gotten into that game yet, have it on gog and just did some mindless sailing without really knowing what to focus on first; what to trade/where to go first and such. perhaps too many strange concepts compared to other titles.
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It is a really slow burn. Can help do a little research on the wiki, and keep track with pen and paper of the requests of each port the focus is on exploration and discovery rather than grinding resources and money. Just sail, visit ports, read the stories, do que quests, try not to die (a couple of captains will die awful deaths thou, is that kind of game) and use saves, the punishing mode only gives an extra achievement.
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Interesting thing that spy network actually, there's a bit more to this game than meets the eye, call it hidden events with time, islands change via strange events etc.
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Thanks, though to my knowledge, and as the wiki describes: its a tactical "mission type, the player sends a regular squad which they control as usual, as well as the Covert Operative who begins at a different location on the map. "
I have game on ps3, but haven't progressed that far enough yet to confirm. Although from these videos its clearly tactical mission to do the spy job and escort them out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_RQThQuAdg (at 31mins)
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ1L4JjPH3Q (at 10mins in)
The query was more for games where you only send in the agents and they do everything alone and report back without you needing to intervene in a long tactical commando mission. I hoped the numerous examples given would have been more clear on that.
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"infiltration aspects - where you have npc's/crew etc. that you order to infiltrate an organisation / business / nation etc with tasks like assassination/revolt etc. and see direct benefits in the game"
that is exactly what happens in XCOM
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followed by the part: "you are not the actual hitman running around with the gun, nor do you play out long tactical missions controlling each npc's movements."
But thanks again regardless.
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meh
don't play XCOM then. leave it to those who can appreciate a good game, and don't have fetishes
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its not about whether xcom is good/bad lol (I love the original dos xcom, and mainly the apocalypse version because it had a bit of real-time gameplay and organisations you could ally or war with etc).
query for this list is more where spies/infils have a strategic use (send them in to do a mission alone with various degrees of success maybe, then report back on success or failure) while not controlling their movement/ actions/ fighting manually.
Something closer to maybe Sigma Theory gameplay, not tactical commando or as 'hands on' all actions as Spy Party
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Oh, I was just going to suggest Sigma Theory. I will follow this topic to see if anyone recommends a game in the same genre. : ).
And since Knights of Honor II: Sovereign was mentioned, I think I can also indicate Endless Legend here. It is possible (even though it is very difficult) to play only using spies, there is even a faction specialized in espionage that can only access new technologies if they are stolen from opponents.
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mm, yes, i did note your hero can spy on towns, but havent really found them effective at all, just help with a bit of visibility and i think you can poison the town a bit but nothing extreme. or I havent found all their users or related tech. Have mainly seen only armies having to siege everything to have any real effect. plus i think the AI cheat a lot. anyway, tell me how 'you' use the spies please. maybe I missed something.
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The AI really cheats a lot. It's true. :3
A few months ago I started playing Endless Legend again to pick up some missing achievements, but winning the game only through espionage is very difficult (but it should be possible, since you like thi kind of gameplay... maybe you know how to take better advantage of the faction traits better than I was able to)
Apparently you need spies in various enemy cities, to steal technologies (primarily) and to sabotage production, economics, etc. while a unit (which has the advantage of remaining almost undetectable) travels the map to complete the faction quest.
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found a new title called Secret Government that's all about spies and infiltration of governments.
example https://www.gamesload.com/games/real-time-strategy/secret-government-860161.html
among other things like causing wars, spies can start political parties that can be used to revolt/overthrow the governments etc.
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Wondering if you might get better suggestions with "espionage" in the title instead of "infiltration." The latter term feels more hands-on to me, which is apparently not what you want.
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Hi there, I'm looking for a list of games with espionage mechanics - where you send spies to say enemy country with tasks like assassination of leader/ start revolt/uprising / steal etc. and see direct benefits in the game. (for clarity: You hire the thief/assassin/rebel, for a job - but you are not the actual hitman running around with the gun, nor do you play out long tactical missions controlling each npc's movements.
I've seen spies/infiltrators mostly in strategy games, haven't really seen it in any other genre like like rpg/adventure games. Its not like you can for instance in an rpg hire an assassin to go assassinate the end-game boss.. No, they want you to travel all the way and fight them yourself like a warrior, even if you are max level thief class or someone that can just bribe the cook/servant to poison water/food the enemy boss eats.
Examples.
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