It was my understanding, you just had to get to advanced on a race and you would periodically steal techs, even if you no longer used spies. Now though, i've had 2 occasions where i put a bunch of spies on a races research labs, and i stole a tech from with only a "medium" espionage level. Has this been changed in TA? 2nd question is a little more complicated. If my race has a bonus to social production, will that basically also mean i have a military bonus if the social production is being turned into military for that planet? Or is this social bonus specifically only come into play on buildings? I'm wondering if its best to get a social bonus, and then put my production bar all into social instead of military, and then let it self convert.