Four rules in my 4X game that sound like bugs: 1. A starving worker still smokes his cigar 2. Nobody in the world will sell you food 3. A spy at full strength is never caught 4. Conquering the New World wins you nothing Wishlist Imperialist!

Part 2 ... Easier to detect again. So the reward of staying still for time is invisibility, but as soon as you use that network, you risk exposure again.

A spy on a foreign capital increases their network, making it harder for a counter spy to detect and dislodge. When this network reaches a high enough point they effectively become impossible to detect. But as soon as they perform a mission they pay for it using network. This then makes them ...