The World Wars age is where the spy business really starts. Enemy agents will infiltrate your country and start doing things like blowing up buildings, sabotaging production, and stealing money. You can stop them by detecting them and using arrest/bribe/kill etc commands to thwart them. They have their own special red spy symbol like crime lords.

As for your spies you can do things to the other countries like steal money, steal technology, and steal secrets (increases relations with opposing country.) Of course performing spy missions on other countries lowers relations.

These are the new buildings and their uses.

Colonial Age

Dungeon - This new building has the ability to detect hidden roles and automatically arrest rebel leaders and crime lords

Rangers - This unique military building provides a squad that will automatically explore your island for you. It costs 10k to build then the exploration is free. It basically works in a pattern that explores outwards in decently placed sight circles.

World Wars Age

Security Checkpoint - This building detects roles and slows traffic down slightly. You can also upgrade it so it charges a toll that goes to your swiss bank account.

Spy Academy - This unique building trains citizens into spies. Then they can be sent off to perform missions. The number of spies you can have depends on the effectiveness of the building. Free market + a level 1 tycoon manager was 16 spies.

Ministry of Information - This build has a couple good uses. It has a doctrine you can implement that increases faction like towards you, but reduces the opposing faction (ie raise religious and lowers military.) It also gives a % chance to negate rebel attacks, coups, and uprisings (based on effectiveness.
This has to be THE most useful building ever made in a DLC. I placed a dynasty level 5 tycoon as a manager, then set max budget and used free market in constitution and it gave a 60% chance to avoid rebel attacks, coups, etc. Especially if are like me and always end up making enviromentalists or nationalists mad because you made too many buildings. To give you an idea, I had a 3500 population with a relations of 6 with the nationalists, I saw 2 rebel attacks.

Cold Wars

Radar - Provides both research and spy defense.

Police Blimp - Converts voters during elections and prevents protests. Each blimp can increase crime safety where it hovers and you can move the blimp (not the building) to anywhere on the island.

APC Garrison - Mechanized military unit

Modern Age

Drone Command - Unique building that automatically disposes of spies, rebel leaders, and crime lords without any negative effects. It places a black target marker on the person before shooting them. Can be upgraded to "accidental strikes" which eliminates the person with the lowest approval rating if no spies, lords or rebel leaders are present, without any penalties.
Great clean up tool in sandbox mode it has a double effect really, it will kill the lowest approval rating right, well it also has a nice side effect of the person removed belonged to X faction. So over time the amount of people in that faction will dwindle a bit.


Espionage in Sandbox Mode

Played a few games in sandbox mode since I beat the campaign. I was curious to see how espionage worked in sandbox game mode. Foreign spies will NOT start attacking your buildings and such until you ♥♥♥♥ them off. So if you are looking to do the spy stuff in a sandbox mode you got to do things to make countries mad at you. This is easily done if you start sending spies at them. So if you want to get the DLC and not have to worry about having to do the spy stuff in sandbox just keep foreign relations above hostile. Soon as you hit hostile enemy spy operations start.

+ can arrest people from the start with the dungeon
+ police blimps are cool
+ rangers are cool (probably too expensive though)
+ 'socialist state' objectives giving me 20 free gardens makes me happy - I love gardens
+ quest is penultimo based

The spy actions are neutral, sure you can steal stuff from others, but they also steal from you.

- quest story was dissapointing; very weak plot
- APCs are meh
- enemy spies blow up expensive buildings (always my distillery and sometimes the cigar), only an issue early in game
- rangers don't vernture far enough to make their exploring function worthwhile
- DLC is too expensive to say it's worth $27 AUD I paid for it

OVERALL
Not bad, but nothing fabulous either. Only thing I really care for is the dungeon to fill that annoying niche of being unable to deal with criminals early on. And my free gardens. Recommended if you really love tropico, or if it goes on sale.

I’ll be honest – I actually do like Tropico 5 and I do look forward to new DLCs. Sure, I write a lot of negative reviews and criticise their pricing, but I’m happy to get more of my dose of Tropico – even if others aren’t as keen. So when a hefty $20 “expansion” comes out, it’s going to draw some curiosity from players who are fed up with the monthly DLCs.

As you can expect from a Tropico 5 expansion, it doesn’t really do much to overhaul the game. As the name suggests, the theme of the expansion is providing the player with more control over liberty and crime, along with an expanded spy/diplomacy function. The expansion includes a new tab of buildings spreading across the eras and a new campaign with six missions.

Some of the new buildings are actually quite interesting. The Dungeon serves as a colonial-era prison, allowing you to arrest citizens (something you couldn’t do until the Cold War). The Ranger Corps provides a squad of soldiers that automatically explore the island, clearing the fog of war that you would otherwise have to pay to explore, while also providing combat troops and crime safety. The Ministry of Information reveals hidden roles in citizens and prevents rebel attacks, and the modern-era Drone Command automatically eliminates rebel leaders and crime lords without any negative penalties. There are several other buildings that provide more passive benefits.

The big one is the Spy Academy. Like an education building, the Spy Academy attracts citizens and trains them to become agents. Agents passively protect your island from espionage actions from enemy factions, such as stealing money from your treasury and destroying buildings. Your agents can be sent out on missions to steal technology, steal money or gain faction relations through exposing secrets. Additionally, you can bribe enemy agents on your island and turn them into double-agents.

Some of these actions can be helpful – money doesn’t hurt and stealing tech allows you to progress through the eras faster, though this comes at the cost of relations with other factions. If you’re not careful, you can plunge yourself into an invasion scenario due to deteriorating relations. To make things complicated, the spy operations are buried in the Diplomacy tab, which is a tab I rarely use. Without on-screen information regarding your spy actions, it can be easy to forget that you’re ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ off the Russians.

By design, enemy spies won’t take action against you unless relations are low. This can be misleading in the campaign missions, as the level that introduces the Spy Academy punishes you heavily with lots of destroyed industrial buildings and stolen funds, making it a very frustrating mission. Thankfully, it isn’t as bad in the base game.

For the most part, however, the functions of the new buildings and espionage ability aren’t that important. Several buildings are really useful (Dungeon, Ranger Corps, Drone Command), but others won’t suit players who prefer a high-liberty, democratic playstyle. You can safely ignore the espionage features and concentrate on playing the game as you normally would – though arguably this detracts from the $20 price tag.

With the espionage features only getting so-so approval, what about the campaign missions?

The premise is the recovery of the “Maltese Toucan”, with the plot based around Penultimo. It’s a little silly, and later becomes funny-silly, and tries really hard to showcase the new buildings rather than putting together a cohesive plot. By the end of the campaign, I largely got rid of the Espionage buildings I didn’t like. That said, some of the later missions were quite creative and fun to play, and while they weren’t as challenging as some of the Waterborne missions, the campaign was certainly a fulfilling experience for a tired Tropico player.

If only there were more campaign releases rather than single-mission DLCs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP7nzdVAyoA

The main addition of this expansion is the new game mechanic, "Espionage". The main focus of most of the buildings revolves around this mechanic. Even the campaign served as sort of a tutorial for "Espionage". It's an interesting concept, but poorly executed IMHO.

"Agents from the USA blew up your textile factory."
"Agents from the USA stole $7,500 from your treasury."
"The USA sends $15,000 in foreign aid."

With this expansion, espionage becomes an integral part of the game. The flip side is, unless you build a Spy academy VERY early, and leave a few agents to roam, enemy spies will constantly be blowing up your most precious buildings. There is no "live and let live" option.

In addition, it doesn't seem like there is as much correlation between foreign relations and espionage actions. In fact, one game my declared allies with a relations score of 100 kept sending their spies and destroying my buildings. The enemy nation never sent any spies, only land invasions which, ironically, did infinitely less damage.

Other buildings do provide more "control", which I enjoyed. It is now easier to create a totaltarian system, where you abuse and enslave your populace, instead of before when your nation was "forced" into more of a democracy or communist system. Still, I think Kalypso should've bundled this heavily with some of their other DLC to make it worth the price.

If you play tropico a lot - it's great! If you used to play tropico a lot and are wondering wether to get back into it- it's great! However, if you didn't like it before, this isn't going to change your mind.

The price is a bit salty, but the new features are interesting and the new buildings have special functions and ways of operation, for instance toll gates, which check cars coming trough them. Good to see it's not just new skins, but actual meat.

More music is always great and the islands are fun to play. New character outfits and such are just decoration, I wouldn't either add or dock points just for that. If you like tropico, you will like this. If you are unsure maybe wait until the price drops. I liked it, but I am a tropico fan. No matter how you look at it, the new features are a definite step forward, but the question you must answer for yourself is wether or not that step is worth 20 euros. For me, it was.

Espionage feels like couple of Tropico tiny DLCs packaged into one mini campaign. Some new buildings, some new avatar items, some new music and some new isles. Missions are rather challenging, taking long time to complete and with some worse cliches from earlier DLCs, like clicking at lot of people in almanac or building lots of certain buildings. Player can develop only one island at time unlike in the original campaign. Espionage mechanism is integrated to the existing game nicely, but doesn't feel like terrific addition. Most of the spy buildings can be used in sandbox games, too.
Overally - not a bad expansion, but I expect better in future.

Edit 8.6.: The sountrack is awesome!

New buildings make discovering hiden roles easier. With Spy Academy and spies you can steal money or technology.
Problem is when you can steal money , foreign power can steal your money.With rangers you can easier discover island. Beter buy on sale.(like me)

Of all the DLC tropico 5 has to offer, this is probably the best out of the bunch. Most other DLC dont really have alot of meat to them, one outfit, one building, one map. This DLC offers alot more and covers several missions. I personally was satifsfied by the new buildings and such and the story missions were pretty fun. I would say, if you enjoyed the main story missions you will almost certainly enjoy this DLC.

The nsa wanted there own DLC now they got it

I find playing the new campaign which comes with this DLC lots of fun. Well worth every single dollar.