OK, so war has struck and you want to know how to use spy the most effectively in the war, First you should realize that spies are really useful, only if you know how to use them.


1.Earthquake
This is a very powerful tool in the spies arsenal, especially if the enemy builds heavies then this tool will be your life-saver,(Know you know, why many rank 1 alliances can take down rank 2-3 alliance who build cavalry and infantry.) OK, so you have already have agents in all necessary ops in which you think a big battle might happen, This is how you should proceed, attack an op close to the enemy hive but not to close, like 12 ticks away. The enemy will rush to move to the op. Pull back your squads and and tell every person in your alliance to send the larger portion of their squads to your op. After that, jam the gate and likely then enemy will have 3-4 players defending the gate, with most of their units. once you jam the proceed your attack on the op, i suggest you should attack with no less than 80 squads, once you do and the attack is one tick away, pull up your agent screen and choose earthquake, this will drain the units hit point and literally make them useless, you should be able to escape from the battle with no more than a few armored units. ( if you play it right.)

2.Lockdown
This is the most powerful tool your spy has, and I will teach you how to use it, lock down is really helpful when you are in close combat with the enemy and the ops that contain most of your alliance's units and the enemies alliance units, are no more than 3 ticks apart. Given that you have an agent on the enemies op you are able to do this, if you believe you will win the battle if you currently attack their op but will take heavy losses then lockdown that op of theirs until you can muster enough forces to combat them with without taking heavy losses. ( its a sad day when you lose all of your ranged units in a battle) Once locked down nothing can enter or leave that op for six ticks, thus if you have a hyperactive alliance this should be enough time to get the majority of your alliance's units to the battleground. With lockdown you can win wars that were otherwise not possible to win, most alliances have 3-4 early birds which move to ops early, these lay the path for the others in the alliance to follow, if you are able to lock them down in one of their own ops, a decent range from there hive and attack with your entire alliances units, you will be able to slay their entire squadron. This will eventually lead to the downfall of that particular alliance due to the reason that the leaders and influential players have no power and can't order around others with a higher power score.

The only thing to spies, is that you can't decide to use them AFTER the battle has started. What you want to do is expect who your enemies will be. Your enemies can't see your spy, and therefore you can plant it in their colony without them noticing. You want to have as many spy infiltration ticks as possible before commencing a covert operation, just in case your target has spy protection.