My vote for a different version would be simply to allow a piece to move back to the square it came from. I think the attacker is always at a disadvantage in closed espionage, particularly the small version and this would eliminate this.
Justaminute: This was discussed many years ago. the majority of the players wanted a more aggresive version of espionage\sabotage. Allowing the move back and forth to the same spot could equate to many more draws. Also it creates a more defensive style ( which i prefer) but being realistic it makes the game bit dull. The game already prefers the aggressor by allowing ties to go to the attacker and not like the original game of stratego where both pieces are removed. This is also an issue with small espionage. the game is broken, more so on IYT, the random volcano fixed that problem to some point. Many other players can comment on this better than i could and with examples...hint hint....
An idea for a new piece, though it may only be interesting on a larger board.
Engineer - Automatically builds a 'road' when it moves. Any piece on a 'road' may move to any other square lying on the road in one turn.
Not sure if each army should have their own roads and/or be able to destroy roads. Having recons (spies?scouts?, whatever they are called here) positioned on a road revealing enemy pieces that cross the road is also a possibility.
There seems to be both some potential for speeding things up as well as introducing a new level of complexity with this. I think larger boards / piece counts would also be possible.
happy hermit: sounds great! Will there be speed limits? What will the strength of the engineer be?
I was thinking of a 'super' recon/spy able to see all pieces in the row and column it stands in. The view is blocked by vulcanoes, by bombs and by 'block pieces'. Maybe the 1s could be the blocking pieces?
happy hermit: you could also just give that road creating power to an existing piece. everytime a 2 moves he creates a road and when ever an enemy 2 moves into that road that road is destroyed. the 2 is the forgotten piece. but when you are on the road you are vulnerable to attack or perhaps you will be able to lose to a sab regardless of the rank. perhaps the road give you scout abilities from stratego.
Justaminute: I don't agree with you. As some of you may know I have quite an agressive style. When I attack I use the fact that my opponent cannot move back. For example when I move a piece of the same strength right where my opponent's piece came from. When my opponent can endlessly move back and forth to escape there are several ways of attacking I can't use anymore. Like when the opponent moves between 2 bombs, now it takes 2 moves before this player can move out again. Also if both players keep moving back and forth the game ends in a draw. This will happen a lot.
I think this rule is one of the strong features of espionage. Changing this in an added new version would be very confusing.