Espionage questions

Ya these are all good questions that the devs didn't bother to tell us, I have yet to figure out why some of my spy promotions don't appear like kill an enemy citizen or blow up an enemy building? Thus far, I was only able to disable a building or use the infiltrate option.

That may be connected to ideology, but I don't know for sure ...

I have put everything I can into security and some turns I'm losing three techs. It's game and heart breaking.

I understand that feeling and agree there must be a possibility to defend against tech stealing enemy spies.

Yeah i'm done with this game because it's just not fun this way.

I just researched a 26 turn tech and i can't do anything more to protect myself against tech stealing and it was taken and there is nothing i can do about it. I can defend my planets against enemies and culture, i can increase research & production but i am simply unwilling to accept that there is simply nothing you can do about tech stealing and just have to put up with it.

Sadly game breaking.

You can reduce the chances of tech stealing by putting your spies as counter-espionage in the govern/economy screen. It's suppose to tell you how much chance the enemy has to steal your tech, the more spies you invest in counter-espionage the less chances enemy has to steal your tech. 

Yes that's what I'm saying, if you use 10 leaders you have 60% security which is the highest possible and then you can still lose three techs in one turn! In GC 3 you can prevent everything else but it is not possible to stop tech stealing and when it is stuff you have bust your balls to get and the AI won't even try on their own, it's game ruining.

Well ok, your saying it's game breaking, but just cause your techs are being stolen it doesn't mean your going to lose the game against the AI? There's so many ways you can win like economy and influence. You can go to war and reduce their empire power, or steal their techs also? If in fact the spy promotions are based on alignment, then pragmatic usually are the on'e who steal tech and you can go to war against the civilization with pragmatic trait. I usually make sure I have a diverse citizen roles and keep my military up so I can be effective with my spies and in case I have to go to war, I can compete with my military also.

So I just don't agree that just cause your techs are being stolen the game is broken, since I had a game also that I was stealing tech from enemy every few turns but enemy AI still was able to keep its military stronger than mine.IF you want, you can disable all tech trading, which seems that it helps a bit from your techs being stolen since the AI doesn't trade techs at all so it won't be eligible for stealing as much.

The game is not broken as such, but I can surely understand that people hate it when their tech is stolen and they feel that they canot do anything against it. If at 60% defense still three techs per turn are stolen that looks like a serious balance issue.

I assume there is a base chance to steal a tech after reaching ultra espionage level, say 10% per turn. Probably the Security rating of a counter spy reduces that chance. A level 1 spy hase a Security rating of 5%. Perhaps its implemented that the resulting chance to steal a tech is (base chance) * (100 - security), in this example 10% * 95% = 9.5%.

If you now have a spy from 10 enemy AIs trying to steal from you every turn, you would lose a tech nearly every turn on average.

That could be balanced by reducing the base chance or by changing the mechanic. I. e. if the security rating would not lower the chance that a tech is stolen, but is the chance an enemy spy is captured and executed then this would make spying much more expensive ...

Perhaps that is moddable somewhere  - and if not, it could be made so?

Low Espionage - 5% base

Medium Espionage - 10% base

High Espionage - 20% base

Ultra Espionage - 50% base

Set in EspionageDefs.xml as Threshold, then in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml StealChancePercentPerPoint is set to 1.

Factor in Agent level too, not sure what impact this has right now, can not find it in the xmls atm.

Are those the tech steal probabilities without regarding counter espionage? While only ultra levels allows stealing or so I have read.

And how exactly is StealChancePercentPerPoint working then?

i don't believe I am in any danger of losing the game because there is a big difference between getting the weapons and being able to use them granted. However virtually everything else in the game can be fought like enemies having better tech or a larger military. Influence can be overcome, a tech advantage can be caught up, lack of resources can be fixed but here there is NO way to stop tech stealing which is my point. Who wants to be penalised in such a way that they cannot prevent it? I know you can destroy them etc but you cannot stop them from stealing your tech or maybe break them down to a manageable level and then make friends because they will continue stealing your tech. It means as soon as someone becomes unfriendly, you have to destroy them to stop them stealing tech. 

That is broken. 

Yep not counting counter espionage. They are the thresholds for tech stealing (I think), 5, 10, 20, 50, which is then converted by StealChancePercentPerPoint into a % chance. Thats how its seems to read via the xmls, thats not garanteed to be the way it is, since I can not see the internal code

Do you need an active spy or more to be stealing techs from someone? Or just be at ultra?

I've not been able to steal anything with less than ultra. 

Also I have discovered a way to get 105% security and I still lose techs..... 

Broken as hell!!!

just be at ultra

I managed to steal at least one tech but it is very rare (as I suppose it should be). But when you get to a certain level eg. Ultra - it seems ok to reassign all spies and the level remains forever at Ultra? I was expecting the level to degrade back down after a while but it doesn't seem to be the case? So can tech stealing still happen at ultra with no spies assigned or do spies have to be assigned. More text explanations needed in-game imo, especially for spies.

The developers have been rather poor at explaining any of the changes beyond frogboy bragging about his monitor playing ludicrous.

Stealing techs at ultra without active spy I consider a bug (although it might be intentional ;))

I brought my espionage level to ultra on two AIs and I steal a tech every couple of turns - but just as often tech is stolen from be. Sometimes the AI name is displayed (presumebly because I have ultra against them), sometimes not.

Atm I'm expecting more bug fixes so I don't deem it worth while to mod my game, but if the espionage mechanics are not balanced more I will try do do something about it with Horemvore's infos in the near future

Now I'm in my own game (2.14 opt-in, ludicrous, gifted AIs, turn 308) at the point where it becomes annoying: I lose two techs every turn to espionage with five defending spies (what admittedly gives me only 25% security). Definitely needs balancing ...

GalCiv 3 Retribution v3.96. Late game Turn 400+. I own most of the Ludicrous map and have researched all techs. I promoted one of my spies to Infiltrator and that spy stole a tech from myself. LOL!

Lol indeed, seems he became a double agent