How does tech stealing work?

It varies somewhat depending on what expansion pack you're playing and whether you're fully updated, but basically you need to have an Advanced intelligence level with a civ before tech stealing is possible. (You can see your level for each civ on the Relations tab of the Foreign Policy window.) After you get to Advanced, tech stealing is a random chance. You also have a chance of stealing a tech when you conquer an enemy world, but I'm not sure how much your basic intel level has to do with that.

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

Loupdinour worked for half of last year on a good DA/TA espionage thread. I'm a bad student. My reply above should probably have just been the ref link.

Thanks for the help guys

I never did get that answered fully.  As Jonnan001 said though, under the DA/TA spy system, you need to have at least 1 spy on the planet in order to steal techs from that race.

If intel levels give any bonuses, or if number of spies has anything to do with it.... I can't give a thumbs up or down on it from personal experiance.  Tech stealing was actually the last thing I had on my list of things to learn about espionage.  Soon I may try to finish my spy costs though, and once that's solidified, then tech stealing is the next to be hammered on.

Man I need to pick up this game again...even if it's just for the communities sake lol.

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.

Nope, it's because passive spies and the intel level itself doesn't give you tech steal chances.  ONLY having spies on the ground will get it to do the random roll for tech steal.

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!

Yeah - I've started getting ahead on spies, blitz a race, wait for him to kill off his reserve, then drop down to 1-2 spies. Build up my reserve again, blitz race B, rinse repeat, till I have 1-2 spies in each empire. That seems to maximize my chance of getting 'something' on a given turn.

Have yet to get *anything* from a minor - not sure if I've been unlucky, or if they're immune to tech stealing the same way they're immune to influence, but I don't typically target them till later in the game, so it may just be that by then I'm close to winning - it's not like even this strategy makes tech stealing a weekly event - {G}.

If anyone has stolen tech from a minor, I would appreciate knowing with certainty - thanks

Jonnan

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.

Yeah, it's a mixed bag, but contrawise you can only research one tech a week. Although I will happily do some horse trading with the krynn to get some further espionage bonues, I have actually gotten spies in every empire - generally only one or two have the 'umph' to really keep pumping out counteragents after I've killed off the initial reserve, and spies do seem to sometimes get techs that aren't available for trade - a definite advantage.

Jonnan

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.

I have occasionally gotten more than one, but certainly nothing like P+1?!?

How the dickens does *that* work exactly?

Jonnan

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.

Yesterday, I just got 3 techs researched in one turn in DA.  It was later in a game and I'd gone back to research an "easy" tech that hadn't been researched before.  I guess my civ had plenty of research, enough to develop the 3 techs in a row.  At the time I had 5 planets colonized.

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

Just to be clear, what do you mean by "passive" spy?  I thought a spy was either placed on an enemy building or he was just idling, unused in your spy pool?

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.

Thanks for the spy explanation, LTJim.  I'm still on DA v 1.80g.100, but Stardock Central does not show any new versions of DA available (just "---------"), (nor for any other component of GC2).  Even if I turn on Show Beta Releases there is still nothing.  Any ideas?

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.