Espionage Investment

Hmm I pretty much a newbie myself I had no idea you could steal techs with the espionage ability I thought they were just used for spying..

It's been a long time since I played DL regularly, and spying changed by TA.

I have a vague recollection that 'back in the day,' the word was that any money you spent after getting Advanced was wasted. The tech steals after Advanced are random events, and the question is whether you need any spending at all for them to be possible.

Maybe Loupdinour or one of the other guys who knows more than I do will jump in here. (Loupdinour's Espionage in DA/TA thread is a great resource for the later versions, but I can't remember if there's something similar for DL.)

I ask because in the initial default Dread Lords game, I invested more into espionage of my enemies than my allies -- as one might expect.  However, once I achieved the Advanced level against all of the other races, I ended up stealing just about as much technology from my allies as I did my enemies...even though I had considerably more invested in spying on my enemies.  Up to now, I have generally left the sliders where they were when I got to the Advanced level for an alien race, but lately got the impression that I was wasting money.  Will I still be able to steal alien technology if I reset their Espionage slider to zero?

I think so, but I'm hoping to see a sharper player like Mumblefratz or WIllythemailboy say something reassuringly authoritative.

I've never played around with tech stealing, but as far as I know you can drop the spending and still steal in Dread Lords. Obviously DA and TA are quite different, and that is where most of my playing time has been spent.

Hi!

For Dread Lords you need to invest about 2.5k money to get an advanced level of espionage. Then you should drop spending for that race to 0, because you'll not get anything higher.

Techs steals happen randomly after you have achieved the advanced level, and are very rare. IIRC I got them more from the second or the third race I got advaced espionage, and very rare from the first one. YMMW and again IIRC. It has been a long time I played that game.

BR,  Iztok

I've been neglecting the boards lately..sorry.  Um, As Iztok said, in DL once you hit Advanced, stop spending entirely.

I have GalCiv2 Ult and was also wondering about espionage. I have placed four agents, intel gathering only, in the Drath Legion and have attained advanced intel.

Do I just pull my agents out and reassign them or keep them in place? Does my advanced level of intel continue if I do remove my agents?

Also, what does 'IIRC' mean? I have seen it in replies to posts.

IIRC = If I recall correctly

In DA and I think TA, if you have patched the game to where you have passive and active agents, there are no gains past "Advanced".  I generally shift those 4 spies to another empire's "box".  When I have "Advanced" on them all, I pull all the spies back for offensive use.

BTW, you can deploy spies on a world the instant before you invade it to lower morale, which gets you more turncoats when you use "Information Warfare" in invasions.  I also use them on worlds with more than 6 pop one turn before that to trim the population I have to fight. The former does not risk those spies to nullification, but the latter does.

Oh, and as Loupdinour has posted, if you have passive spies on a race when it ceases to exists (surrenders or is conquered) you do not get them back.  They become, as L coined, archaeologists.  That is one very good reason to pull the passive spies out of the boxes once you achieve "Advanced".

I have yet to check out the new patch to see if they fixed this in 2.03.  Perhaps some day I should boot gc2 back up.

Thx LT.

Stealing techs is generally counter productive i find. Why? because i often manage to 'skip' allot of techs via diplomatic trading. Then the techs i steal always seem to manage to be obsolete techs!! So i just don't bother anymore.

I agree that the techs are rarely directly useful.  However, spies are needed for invasion preps and for defense.

In many cases, I have found that i have been able to sell/trade the stolen techs to other races, especially minors, so I am often able to obtain value from such thefts, albeit indirectly.

Hmm, will have to try some of this.  My experience so far (VERY limitted I know) I tried putting spies on a planet, and they got killed almost immediatly.  I never had a spy last more than 4-5 turns.  Glad I stumbled across this, will look into Loupdinour's guide.

Im finding I like the TBS forums/support/groups better than most other games.....much mroe adult sounding forums 

How do I use Spys for defense?

You can't use them for defence against passive spying by your opponents.

However, you can use them to remove any spies planted by the AI on your planetory improvements. Is that what you are asking?