Please help me understand 2.02 Espionage

1. Active spies only disable an improvement; they cannot destroy it.

2. That's pretty much it.  If you don't want your active spies to be nullified, don't ever drop any less than five on a given civ.  Ten is even better.  You'll still lose one or two, but they can't keep up.

3. Passive (civ-level) spies cannot tech steal.  Active (planet-level) spies cannot increase your espionage level.  (Don't ask me, that's just how it's working.)  The benefits of achieving advanced via passive is that you don't wind up losing scores of spies in the process, as opposed to the old all-planetary system.

4. You're still going to be sabotaging things, but generally you'll want to pick things the AI doesn't care about-which can change from game to game, but if you can find a stock market that's normally a safe bet.  One other hint is to spy on an improvement that's in the process of being built (particularly if it's a counter espionage center), as the AI generally will not check back on such improvements and simply leaves spies there alone.

5. It's either high or advanced-I think it's advanced.

6. Essentially, yes.  It will be a pseudo-random tech from the opponent's tech tree.  It would seem that this follows the same general mechanics as tech stealing from invasion, in that late game you're much less likely to steal techs, presumably because you already have the vast majority of them and it keeps rolling one you already have, but this has neither been proven nor refuted, to my knowledge.  The chance of tech stealing is low enough that you can assume when it happens you'll get something you didn't already have-whether it's useful is another question entirely.

I have no idea what you mean by "present on the planet"; planets don't research individually.

You can't choose what tech to steal, nor what type, level, etc.

7. Korath and Drengin don't get counter espionage centers in their trees.  The AI as a whole doesn't prioritize yellow techs, other than the Terrans, so they won't have them very early.  The Krynn start with the tech due to their SA.  As far as spies actually battling it out, I haven't noticed that much of a difference-the primary factor is economy.  Krynn and Iconian will pretty much kick your ass there, though, so concentrate on the others.

8. He is informed of its presence on the next turn.  If he looks at the planet in question, he can find it on the turn you place it, before it does any "damage" (apart from morale/farm structures, at least), but to my knowledge this is not something the AI does-while I don't recall ever having a spy nullified on turn 0 of its placement, I've nullified more than a few AI spies on said turn.

-Firstly, you would have brought the Drengin economy to its knees (dependent on how many other planets he has, certainly, but if he doesn't want to lose homeworld pop [<20% approval] he'd have to lower his taxes somewhat, which means less money from all his other planets), both by forcing him to have his taxes lower and secondly by having him spend 25% of his income on fighting off your spies.

I have yet to see any indication that a planet's morale significantly increases a planet's tendency to revolt, although it may do so marginally.  If it did so, the AI would choose a new capital in relatively short order-sometimes it forgets, but the empire is still alive, just without a "capital".

I've seen stories of planets branching off of a race in TA, but I've yet to see it based on my own playstyle-basically a duplicate of the original race with a different name and perhaps different ethics/etc.  If the planet had simply revolted due to a combination of neighboring influence and low morale, it would (probably) be the strongest neighboring influence (>4x as much as native).  To my knowledge, other than the instance where one race becomes two, there's nowhere to revolt to if there isn't a stronger neighboring influence.

I'm not sure if the split counts them as a major or a minor, though, particularly as I've never seen it.

That's an interesting hypothetical for me to game out - which civ a planet will flip to if more than one civ has 4x influence on it. I suspect they will go to the one with the higher influence, as I have never seen a planet flip and go to anyone other than the dominant (highest local influence) civ.

I see a few cakewalk games in my future.

You get to look into the other guy's starbases and ships (wow, big deal....).   For that matter, I don't think High espionage level is that important, either.  Medium is the all-important level--that's where you get to track all his ships' autopilots.

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply!

3.  What I don't understand about "Advanced" espionage level is that at "High", I already have a pretty detailed civ report on my opponent, can look at their planet tiles, improvements, shipbuilding activities.  What additional intel/benefits do I gain by spying on them up to an "Advanced" level?  If it's not much, my strategy might more commonly be to only spy on each opponent up to the "High" level, then move on to the next one.

[edit] NM, tetleytea just answered this.... thanks!

6.  "I have no idea what you mean by "present on the planet"; planets don't research individually.

You can't choose what tech to steal, nor what type, level, etc."

Sorry, I should have been more clear, I was trying to ask too many questions at once.  What I was getting at, is that planetary improvements are (often) directly related to technology research advances.  So, I was asking if the stolen techs would be dependant on which planetary improvements are on the spy's target planet.... the idea being that, by observing and infiltrating that planet's improvements, a spy would be able to send home useful intel on the techs/research efforts that underlie them.  In any event, you answered my question .... that apparently tech stealing can't be directed, but at least won't spam me with techs that I already have.

-Odd about morale.... I thought that morale contributed to loyalty.  If a low-morale world isn't especially more likely to rebel, what's the necessity of keeping morale/approval high?  Can I just tax the tails off my population and crowd them together with no good TV shows, with no consequences?

Works in America.

Wrong, sir!  "Lost" on ABC's netowrk is engaging, suspenseful and keeps me looking forward to filing my 1040 forms each year.

I'm serious.  What consequences will GCII enforce on me if I let my approval rating tank?  If it's only a decline in population growth, that would sometimes be acceptable depending on the current game situation.

Tech stealing: From what I can tell, and the various contributions of others, each turn you meet the requirements to steal (active spy, at least high espionage), you have a random chance of stealing a tech. There is no evidence that having more spies increases this chance; for stealing tech, one spy is as effective as 40.

Once the game rolls a successful steal, it randomly chooses a tech that A) is stealable, B ) the target civ has finished researching (or acquired by some other means), C) you have not finished researching or otherwise acquired.

Approval: Really, population growth and government elections are all that are affected. There are a variety of things I think SHOULD be linked to approval, but that's all that actually IS linked.

Regarding morale/approval, the kicker is that if it's under 20% you actually lose population.

But very few players ever have it that low, and even fewer as part of a strategy.

The morale mechanic is definitely lacking, but it is what it is.

Willy, I can't wait to see the results of your next few games. 

I'm predicting extremely low scores

And lots of math, unfortunately. I'm planning to finally nail down some of the constants in the influence equations. God, I hope there's something good on TV tomorrow, I don't think music's going to cut this one.

I'll trade you.

I'm working on military might currently...

WHY would you have the civ-wide military might be held in a thirty-one bit variable?  WHY?

*goes to beat his head against the wall some more before getting back to work on it*

And don't even get me started on the depreciation...

At least you don't have to deal with gathering data by extrapolation. There's no convenient way to determine exactly what a civ's influence *is* at any given square, let alone how much of it is coming from different sources.

Which leaves me highly INconvenient means. Wonderful.

About the only thing I've found espionage consistently reliable for is to disable all of their morale centers immediately before a ground invasion, combined with information warfare. It helps if you've already bled off their supply of spies earlier, of course.

Actually, the spy is only needed for less than a turn.  Place it, re-click the planet t osee the morale drop, invade, get your spy back.  They can have 100 spies on hand, but if you don't hit the turn button, they don't got a chance.   Heck, even killing a farm to starve out billions of people over a turn click is brutal to them and still is even nearly flawlessly able to get your spy back.

I must have been sleeping at the wheel the day this post hit...I never got a word in edgewise.  Good repsonses to all on the espionage-front.

Thanks for all the useful info, tips. Some more questions:

9.  If I invade or influence-flip a planet and have a spy on it, do I regain the spy?  If a 3rd opponent has a spy on there, do they lose their spy?

10.  If I set a spy to sabotage the food production, will the population die off down to the level that the planet can support?  If that spy gets nullified or removed, will the population immediately replenish, or have to build back up gradually?

9.  All of your spies will return to you.  Any other race's spies on that planet though, from my memory, will remain on those improvements.

10.  On the next turn the population will fall to what it could support without that farm(s).  Once you remove the spy, it will gradually regain the population via it's normal population growth.