Good evening. You are listening to Three Moves Ahead, and I'm your host, Rob Zakney. Tonight, we're also joined by freelance writer Julian Rabbit Murdoch. Julian, welcome back to the show. It's so great to be back. I feel like I have been on forever. He realized it's only been like three shows, but three shows is a lifetime in podcast land. And we know how you love attention. I do. I am an attention whore.

I'm unashamed.

Next, we welcome back our friend,

Soren Johnson, designer of civilization for the official strategy game of three moves ahead.

Wow, excellent.

Where is my check?

You know, I'm pretty sure

Fraxas should have passed that right along, man.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Oh, they stiff to you again, huh?

All right, so tonight we continue with a series of topics that Troy and I have been informally calling in chats during the afternoon.

We've been informally calling this our series of topics on things that sound awesome, but rarely are.

And so where better do you go after customization than espionage?

Oh, oh dear.

Yeah, so espionage is one of those features that you often find in a 4x strategy game or a grand strategy game.

It's frequently a requested feature by fans. Why can't I play with spies? And yet, I think it has a

fairly mixed track record in the field. Mixed. Mixed. Oh, dear.

All right, so not mixed.

Lead off, Julian.

Well, no, I mean, I haven't played every game in the world, but, you know, I think of spying in strategy games at least.

I mean, there are plenty of, we should distinguish here because otherwise we'll end up

in these definitional arguments, right?

...