Actually, my recollection is that tech stealing is actually decoupled from the level of intelligence you have on a rival.

The word, as I last understood it, is that you need one agent in a Civ to have the chance to steal tech each week. Extra agents do *not* make a difference, so having one agent in Civ 'X', two in civ 'Y', and three in Civ 'Z' gives you an equal chance each week to steal a tech from each of them, but that chance is the same (re, pretty damn slim) regardless of the level of information your 'analysts' have given you, whether you have any analysts currently assigned, et al.

If I have that wrong (And I really don't care for the implentation, so I certainly don't object to being wrong) hopefully someone will correct me, but that's the way I understand it at the moment.

Jonnan

Thanks for the help guys

I had clear feedback in DA 1.80 that spies could tech steal.  Each game would see me gain 2 - 5 techs by spying.  Oft they were useless to me, but I did get them.

I recently patched to 2.00 and the new spy system and, in about the dozen games I've played since then, I do not recall having stolen a single tech.  In each of those games I had the max number of spies working passive on all the races (up to 8), keeping them working after gaining the highest level of intel, and with usually 10 - 20 spies active on the planets of my chosen victim.

Perhaps I've simply been unlucky.

Loupdinoour -

OH!  So the only time I've had the chance to steal tech has been during my spy blitzes! 

(jim picks up his lower mandible from where it had dropped)

Is there any reason to have even one spy set on an empire passively once the highest intel level is reached?

I am so going to have to entirely rethink my espionage tactics.

Thank you so much!

Newp.  Once you hit a level you like, pull those passive spies out.  Especially since you cannot attain higher levels than the number of passive spies set.  That is, under no number of years can you hit Medium while only having 1 passive spy placed.

Jonnan001, that would do great for your chances for tech stealing, however I cringe at what it'll do to your economy as well as if you would be able to keep up with the other race's spy training.  As you train each spy, the cost jumps up.  So while near to the end you'll be working on spy # 80 or such and just started on a race, they may only be on spy #10 and can much easily get a spy...unless you are THAT much an economic dynamo.

Anyway, fingers into too many pots itself is hard.  You are capped at 1 spy possible to be trained a week.  I don't care how awsome your economy or +espionage skill is...1 spy is the max, any over spending to training goes back into your treasury.  That said, if you got your fingers into 2 opponents, it's possible that you can have 2 of your spies nullified a round, while you can only replace 1 a round.

Not shooting down your thoughts, just wanted to let you know what the road looked like up ahead.

I've limtied my planetary spies to sabotage prior to invasion, or in MASSIVE waves (I'm talking dozens) to shut down their economy, every farm, morale, econ and influence building getting it's doors closed.  I've once defeated the Dregin due to cutting off their purse strings while they were at war w/ 2 races.  They ran a negative debt to try and hold off my spies and eventually couldn't make new ships due to the -500bc threshold.  The AI's that were attacking them then steamrolled them.

Huh?

You can get P+1 techs per week if your research is high enough (in DA/TA, P in DL), where P is the number of planets you own.

We had a discussion on it in the ZYW thread, or something close to it.  Someone noticed they couldn't get more than one or two techs to research per turn (I think they were on DL, so it'd be one) and it turned out that they didn't colonize their secondary.  I tested and verified-that's the limit.

DL's theory that you can only research as many techs per turn as you have planets actually makes a decent amount of sense-provided you have the research capacity, of course-whereas apparently it was deemed not quite enough for DA/TA so it was changed from P to P+1.

Since this isn't more than P+1 (in this case 5+1 or 6), it does not contradict our findings.

Sawdust5 -

I can answer that one!

The spy system was revamped in a patch.

I had been playing 1.80 and the choices were what you said.  When I patched to 2.whatever, the spy system changed.  So, in late DA and all TA versions, there is a passive pool for each enemy race.

There are 4 boxes per race into which a spy can be placed.  They build up levels of intel (low, medium, high, and advanced).  The levels allow stuff like seeing destinations of fleets, enemy stats (like economic bonuses), etc.  However, to steal tech, one must have at least one living spy on an enemy world.

The system is such that one must have 4 spies in an empire box to eventually get to advanced.  Once there, they yield no new intel and produce nothing.  Thus, one pulls them out of the empire's boxes and either puts them in another's boxes, leaves them in the pool, or deploys them to planets.

In practice, if one has, say, 5 enemy empires with four spies filling all those boxes, then one pulls out the spies at "advanced".  Thus, one could have 20+ ready to swarm one echosen victim empire with.

SDC doesn't hold either of the 2.X updates (DA or TA), only Impulse has them.  I haven't had any problems with Impulse as of yet.