I hope you own a filing cabinet. For all the movies and TV shows of people with the initials J.B. doing thing that would make the Intelligence Support Agency blush, most case officers spend more time refining their filing systems than going to the range. Espionage is a slow, methodical discipline where things only get exciting when they go wrong.

Waiting for the Raven seems to understand this, and careful planning and deliberate action will carry the day while jumping the gun will see the jaws of the trap snap shut. While you can learn on the job, life will be much easier if you know what you're walking into. You know . . . the job of Intelligence.

I'm going to assume this is your first run-though with the originally unlocked character, Juliana.

First, I'll rip the bandage off quick: Your handler isn't doing you any favors. Ignoring his use as a tutorial device, if you're waiting for him to tell you what to do or immediately following orders, you'll be falling behind. If you think you have a better idea, do it.

Second, you're without support. All you brought is all you have. Don't expect cash inflow or reinforcements. Every resource must be spent efficiently, especially time. Property is expensive, but the opposition is buying it, too. Acquiring property that's already been purchased is costly, both in money and in infrastructure.

Third, the world isn't on your side. Pirates will raid your ships, constables will execute your people, and bad things will happen. This is before you anger another faction and they act against you. If you stretch yourself too thin, you can find yourself in a hole you can't get out of.

Fourth, spies are predator and prey. Your agents will be attacked. If they get too big for their britches, they'll defect, taking their assets with them. If they die, you lose everything they owned. Of course . . . same goes for opposing spies . . .


That's a lot of problems. Apparently running a ring of spies from a closed room isn't easy, but it happens all the time. Your first task is to prevent failure. There are plenty of ways to fail, but they all stem from a lack of planning. You need to retain your personnel, increase your resource flow, and prepare for future action.

Insurance comes in many forms. Sometimes it's money, often it's a closed fist, and it can be a barrel of liquor or a slip of paper. As you spend more time in the game, you'll learn what you should keep an eye on, but as some free advice, if you have a bar, you should always have spare liquor.

Morale is also important. As they say, without loyalty, all your agents' strengths belong to the enemy. A good reputation, an equal distribution of properties, and routine upgrades to those properties will keep your agents under your control. If an agent comes to whisper about disloyalty, it's worth keeping your eye on both of them.

Finally, keep hidden and keep the peace. If you're harassing the constabulary, raiding other agencies, or running a smuggling operation in every port, you're asking for trouble. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.


Okay, so you messed up. It happens. Your bartender's in prison, your agent flubbed a mission and is facing the gallows, and they're breaking into your manor. First, ask yourself what mistake brought you here, then punch back.

Bookkeepers can forge release documents to get your agents out of prison, but it's expensive. Sometimes you have to ask yourself if it's just better to make sure a prisoner doesn't talk. Ever again. Of course killing all the witnesses can lead to more killings and ends in the city being on fire and you've lost your hat. It's worth having the option, but cycle back to asking where you went wrong and don't do it again.

You should have patrolling guards street toughs to keep the incursions down to a dull roar, but good personnel choices and researching defensive doctrine can give you a tremendous edge and make an attack much less likely to succeed. And who knows, maybe that'll reveal a thread to find an unknown threat. Then you can have a nice little sit-down and discuss the price of failure.


Your bar is on fire, your orphans are scattered, and your agent suffered a dagger-related death. Welcome to Tuesday.

You can replace them, right? You have stored resources to rebuild your bar, hire a new agent, and "acquire" another orphan, right? Well, you'd better. If you can't rebuild your critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR), then your little adventure is over. Every resource in your pocket is not doing work for you, but if you can't get back to a positive resource flow, it's over. Always have a second facility, resources to replace the loss, or the ability to run without. If you have six agents, losing one isn't a game-changer. If you had only two, you just lost half your production in one breath.

Generally speaking, this game has a foundation of resource management, both human and other. Your Agents work directly beneath you and acquire Assets, both businesses and personnel. While you have direct access to modifying these assets, the day to day affairs are not your problem. The most important aspect of the game is to increase these resources, and owning 50% of the city will result in your victory.

Progression: Likely what your manor should always be focused on, this allows you to purchase upgrades. Some of these allow you to purchase property (absolutely required ASAP) while others greatly increase the effectiveness of your agents.

Rumors: Used for scouting, investigating, and special actions. A constant flow of 6 per turn can fund a long-term investigation into a target. An orphanage is a good starting place.

Connections: A good network is the difference between success and failure, and connections are the difference between a good network and a few yahoos in a basement. A fully upgraded tavern can produce 3 connections per turn, or two turns per new hire (at base reputation).

Gold: Used for purchasing goods, property, upgrades, and bribery. One of the most important early-game resources.

Agents: Remember when I said your handler wasn't doing you any favors? Welcome to your disposable tools! An agent can be used for scouting, investigations, and working at the manor. It costs 200 gold to upgrade to allow for four slots istead of two, but it's an important step for the long-term stability of your organization.

When you've researched street gangs, you can hire additional agents that can patrol and do all other common activities besides work in the mannor. Be advised: Since they have a handler in employ, all their forces cound as their handler's.

Assets: Your boots on the ground. Each worker at a property produces resources, so a tavern with three workers produces three times the resources as a property with one.

Gangs: Lowlives can patrol, scout areas, and extort money. It's important to note the workers can perform these actions, as the guards only guard the location.


Taverns: Yes, I know it's cliche, but it's cliche for a reason. Your base tavern produces a single gold per employee, while level 2 (food and alcohol) produces two gold and one rumor per employee. At level 3 each employee produces one contact, one rumor, and three gold. With a maximum of three employees, this means an Inn can produce 3 contacts, 3 rumors, and 6 gold per turn. Two of these support a continuous tailing of a single subject, a new hire each turn, and 12 gold. A pair of inns make the fundamental building block of a network, and should be considered a primary goal.

Orphanages: An orphanage is a great way to convert an excess of contacts into rumors. Each orphan produces a single rumor, to a maximum of six per turn. If you have an excellent flow of contacts, this can be a good way to run additional investigations. You can also use them to make money, but as noted below, I don't recommend it.

Brothels: Money. Just money. Until maximum level they produce only money, but they have a large employee cap and produce significant income. Maximum gold per level is 4/9/12/24, and level 4 produces 6 rumors per turn. It never really replaces an inn, but it can double the financial income at the cost of connections.

Bookkepers: They can find opportunities at the cost of contacts, but their primary purpose is to encourage the powers that be to do your work for you. With one you can forge legal documents and with two you can add more force to a hostile takeover of a business.

Trade ships: Produces an average of one contact and two gold per turn. They're . . . okay.

Luxury ships: Information pending, but a better trade ship.

List is currently incomplete.


Yeah, that's convincing.

Investigating people results in rumors which can be linked to various attributes via their info panel (open the panel, telescope on the right, then the button on the bottom left). Some of these are less clear than others, and you can sell some for profit while others aren't worth anything. There's no notification of which are worth money until you try to sell them, and they're consumed either way, but it seems each bit can only be sold once, putting a real bottleneck on income from information.

Once you have this information, depending on your progress, you can extort people make a case for being the legal owner of someone else's establishment. Much of this is explained in-game or too complicated for this section, but it's enough to note the first step is always gathering information on your target (or if a business your target's owner) then making a move when you're prepared.

Spies are a tricky sort. If things aren't going their way, they may turn against their handler and strike out on their own. Part of this is their on perceived importance. They they think they don't need their handler, they'll turn around an bite them for personal advancement.

Yes, I'm talking about both you and your agents.

A balance in your organization is critical. If one actor becomes too powerful and you don't listen to their requests to make them even more powerful, they may take their assets and strike off on their own. Usually this means not providing more than half of your assets to a single agent, but this isn't always clear. My current understanding is as such:

Alice owns two full large orphanages, and Bob has an inn and gang hideout with two agents under their employ. One has a dozen orphans and the other has two trained field agents, three tavern workers, and a complete passive income system. Guess who thinks they don't need you? The person with 12 children instead of five competent employees and a functional economy. I could be wrong, but . . . why else would my orphanage owner start talking treason?

Try to keep any one person from becoming too powerful.

There are books that are heavy enough to destroy small bridges devoted to cryptography, but fortunately all of the methods are documented in game. They're all variations of substitution cyphers, so the key is knowing how to solve these sorts of codes. Letter frequency, double letters, and short words are big helps. Two letters in particular can limit the options as one of the letters is always a vowel and the other an consonant, typically an/in/on, if/of, is/it, etc.

And remember context. Many historical codes were broken by things like protocol, weather reports, and the like. If you know the subject, a location, or a person, it may help break the code.

Sun Tzu wrote that first you make yourself invincible, then you remove the opponent's invincibility. You have the initiative, you choose the time and place for action. Only strike when you have the forces, defenses, and research to make a decisive strike and absorb the inevitable counter attack.

You should very strongly consider unlocking from the progress tree before any direct action, as I've had attacks where a rank 1 defender has countered my rank 6 attackers multiple times, and my Master of Self Defense triggered a half dozen times, meaning instead of losing my entire team, I lost only one person.

Attacks are costly. Defeats doubly so. Choose the time and place, and as they say "nicht kleckern, klotzen." (Don't tap on the door, pound on it) Focus all your power where it can do the most good and you'll succeed.

Just don't. Do not break cover, as an arrest costs an agent, a bookkeeper's time and 30 contacts, and/or an information leak. From a risk/reward standpoint, it's not worth it. You'll get enough heat from actions against other networks. Soak that up with orphanage events, bookkeepers, and progression perks.

Be curious. Look around your room at different times of day. Click on things. Try to do things. Some stuff will break the game, unfortunately, (report those bugs when you can) so make sure to save frequently. I won't spoil too much, but a lack of curiosity can put the game in hard-mode while too much can get you killed . . . or soft-locked. Welcome to espionage!

As a real world aside, Intelligence takes a special kind of person, as it tends to be a combination of highly intrusive and very boring. My initial tactics in this game were overblown, compartmentalizing contacts and the like, as this is mostly a business simulation, but Musclebird dared greatly and made something pretty fun and different from other offerings in the genre. If you're interested in the field, I'm happy to suggest reading, but I'm still waiting for a game that captures even a taste of it. This tries pretty hard, and almost gets there. You can also contact me out of band through https://www.betweentheborders.com

Happy hunting.