How do I deal with Siphon Funds?

Question

I've recently started playing Civ 6, and am playing on Settler difficulty, as I believe it is the best way to get to know a new Civ game and its mechanics

But despite being the easiest difficulty level, I'm now facing bankruptcy because of spies constantly siphoning my funds.

At first I thought I had dealt with the problem by placing a spy of my own in my commercial district. In the beginning, my spy couldn't catch them all, but she eventually got promoted to Master Spy rank, and theft became much less frequent. I also helped her by adopting the Police State policy, which lowers loyalty in my cities, but makes it much harder for enemy spies to complete their missions.

Unfortunately, Siphon Funds appears to work very much like a time bomb. While I still had thousands of gold and a GPT of +380, my treasury eventually ended up empty, and my spy left my employ because of that.

I am now bankrupt, with spies from 11 different nations coming back for more, and even lost my only counterspy. I've asked every leader to stop spying on me, and fortunately they all agreed (although there's no guarantee they won't try to siphon more funds). I've also trained a new spy, but who knows how long she'll stay...

How do I deal with this situation, both short term and long term?

I need a strategy to replenish my treasury fast, otherwise my new spy isn't going to help for very long. And since the UI doesn't show me how the siphoning affects my GPT, I have no idea how much money I really need.

And once I'm back on my feet, I also need a better strategy to defend against future attack on my bank account. Obviously, employing a spy isn't good enough. Even my former master spy couldn't stop all attacks, which is what got me into this mess in the first place...

Answer 1

Spies are generally the best way to prevent other spies from stealing your stuff, however, spies can only counter spy for one commercial district, so if you have multiple commercial districts, you need multiple counter spies.

To get the best results for counter spying, if you can get the Quartermaster and Seduction upgrades for your spies, they will be much more effective at counter spying. This will allow you to capture or kill enemy spies with more frequency, and to prevent your coffers from being drained. A bonus to this is that enemy civs will generally offer lots of money or other goods to get their spies back which they will promptly send back for you to recapture.