Intelligence: how it works

All numbers on this page are resolved at build time from the game's own common/defines/00_defines.lua — they cannot go stale.

The four intel types and their caps

Your intel over another country is tracked separately as Civilian, Army, Navy, Airforce, each hard-capped at 100. Every source below contributes its own capped pool (order: Civ / Army / Navy / Air):

Dynamic sources (combat, air recon, captured operatives) accumulate day by day and decay. Tomorrow's pool is:

and each day's new intel is aggregated as:

Air recon decays slowest (×0.995 per day); captured-operative intel fades fastest (×0.95 per day).

Why army intel matters: the combat bonus

Army intel advantage between 5 and 50 scales linearly up to a 0.15 (=15%) attack and defense bonus in land combat. Intel is a direct force multiplier, not just information.

Building an intel network

An operative on Build Intel Network adds 0.4 strength per day to their state. The gain spreads outward, halving per step — $\text{gainAtStep}=\text{gain}\times {0.5}^{\text{depth}}$ — and neighbouring states pull each other up by 0.5 × the positive strength difference. The network's target strength is:

Losing the state's controller costs -10/day; a state out of operative range bleeds -1.75/day.

Getting caught

An operative building a network can only be detected once the network covers ≥ 0.02 of the target nation and the local sub-network has ≥ 10 strength. Detection chance scales with coverage, sub-network strength (× 0.1 on its coverage share), and the defender's agency defense, all multiplied by the global factor 0.01 against a 0–1000 roll. A captured operative is held for 270 days and leaks { 0.3, 0.3, 0.3, 0.3 } base intel per day to the captor.

Raising your intel — checklist

1. Decryption: research the three decryption techs; agency crypto upgrades add decryption power (+25 to form the department, up to +60 more from the two boost upgrades). A fully broken cypher gives full bonuses for 30 days before the enemy resets.
2. Agency departments: each branch department upgrade (+25% per intel type, e.g. Army Department → army_intel_factor) multiplies everything you gather.
3. Intel network: cover the enemy's core states — coverage is weighted 0.6 core / 0.2 controlled / 0.2 victory-point worth.
4. Air recon: fly it persistently — slowest decay of any source (see table above).
5. Combat + recon companies: every land battle generates intel; each recon company adds 0.075 to it.

Denying enemy intel — checklist

1. Encryption techs + agency crypto_strength upgrades make your cypher slower to break.
2. Counter-intelligence mission at home: each point of your counter-intel subtracts 5 from raid target detection and suppresses enemy network target strength (see formula above).
3. Passive Defense agency upgrades: four levels of intelligence_agency_defense (+1.5/+1.25/+1/+1) raise detection of enemy operatives.
4. Interrogation Techniques upgrade: +100% capture chance — a captured operative is out for 270 days.
5. Some advisors, doctrines (e.g. Maskirovka: army_intel_to_others −10) and decisions directly reduce the intel others gather on you.