Defending against tech theft

If I have multiple cities, how can I defend against tech theft with a limited number of spies? I know some buildings can reduce tech theft. It seems AI take the whole tech from any of my cities.
Is this correct. Any ideas?

The only surefire way to prevent tech theft is to build the Great Firewall, and of course that only applies to one city.

The AI can send its spies to any of your cities, but they usually target the capital/biggest city, so keep a spy there, as well as building a Constabulary and Police Station. But yeah, the AI will still steal techs occasionally. If you're far enough ahead in tech, then it won't matter much as they will only be able to steal from the bottom end of the tree.

Turn off Espionage. Also solves the problem with endless CS coups, so it's like a win/win if you ask me.

Great Firewall in an OCC challenge

If you're tall and have the science advantage, you should immediately station your first spy in your capital, put in a Constibulary (sp?) and hope for the best. If they kill an opposing spy, they'll promote and you'll have much better protection from theft. If they don't catch a spy and promote, you're...kinda boned, unfortunately.

The only other way to promote a spy is to steal a tech, which you likely can't do if you're in the lead. Or build the National Inteligence Agency, which takes forever. By the time that happens, the AI spies will have promoted twice by stealing your techs and will be darn near unstopable.

It's the curse of being in the lead. Wide empires have it worse to a degree.

I haven't tended to bother with this too much...but I can see that it is better to develop strategies to try to stop it. Allowing them to continue kind of has a "snowball" effect....

I think I'll make a concerted effort to deal with this...focus more on building Constabularies and Police Stations...

Though like everything else in this game, there are trade-offs. It means not being able to rig elections in some CS...or possibly steal a tech from some other civ.

I almost never bother trying to built the Great Firewall...and maybe it doesn't matter that much... By that point in the game...at least in my games ...it is usually pretty well a case of: "Iacta alea est."...

[Edit: I should add that I play at the King level...maybe at higher levels, effectively dealing with foreign spies might be critical to winning some of those games.}

That`s what espionage is all about... having to make the best decisions for the situation. You cannot prevent every single enemy spy getting through, but you can at least guard the important city and hopefully catch an enemy spy of two. Once you get them, the enemy Civ has to start and build them up to skill all over again. Sometimes it`s even worth moving spies around to generally cover areas. Also if you play as England you get an extra spy.

It`s the same security headache real lifegovernments must deal with.

bcaiko said:

... hope for the best. (...) If they don't catch a spy and promote, you're...kinda boned, unfortunately.

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Which is exactly why I hate the espionage system so much. All you can do is sit back and hope luck favors you, and if you're unlucky, the ball will roll and you'll get less and less chance to stop it, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's some great gameplay right there.

kaspergm said:

Which is exactly why I hate the espionage system so much. All you can do is sit back and hope luck favors you, and if you're unlucky, the ball will roll and you'll get less and less chance to stop it, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's some great gameplay right there.

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I found it wierd that you're spies don't get promoted by couping succesfully really He did a dangerous mission (failed killed) ?

Just make coups like tech steeling : if a defending spy is in a city state it can kill a opponent spy who is trying to coup simple as that.
And when there is no spy you have a higher change of succeeding.

kaspergm said:

Which is exactly why I hate the espionage system so much. All you can do is sit back and hope luck favors you, and if you're unlucky, the ball will roll and you'll get less and less chance to stop it, and there's nothing you can do about it. That's some great gameplay right there.

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Is it all that different when you go into combat, you are expected to destroy your enemy, but the unit survives, ends up killing YOUR unit, and you get pushed back. If you're unlucky, the ball will roll and you have fewer and fewer units to stop it.

Religion is pretty well exactly the same, getting huge amounts of faith (and its worse on faster speeds) by luck. I do believe on quick I got a pantheon once 2nd turn by meeting Vatican City.

My religion was enhanced before more than 2 other religions (on a huge map) could be founded, and 2 civs without a pantheon founded a religion due to that luck.

If you just happen to land in a poor production area, you can't easily build troops or settlers to reach richer lands, making production snowball in the same way, as well.

At least with espionage you can do a lot in your own lands to stop the enemy from stealing techs, and the AI doesn't know how to target different cities, making it even easier to stop them.

It doesn't snowball too badly, it missing out doesn't hurt you all that much if you can't get much out of espionage. I'd agree with apocalypse105 in that if a spy has a chance of dying, they should get promoted for success, though, so long as CS coup chances are properly balanced so that you can't get 10 less influence and coup with a good chance, just for a spy promotion.

apocalypse105 said:

Just make coups like tech steeling : if a defending spy is in a city state it can kill a opponent spy who is trying to coup simple as that.
And when there is no spy you have a higher change of succeeding.

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That would definitely go a long way towards making it more balanced I think.

Rooftrellen said:

Is it all that different when you go into combat, you are expected to destroy your enemy, but the unit survives, ends up killing YOUR unit, and you get pushed back. If you're unlucky, the ball will roll and you have fewer and fewer units to stop it.

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Yes, it is very different from my point of view, because in normal combat, I can control my own chances of succes by adjusting the number of units, promoting/upgrading the units accordingly, I can use my units tactically to help my own advance, or to prevent the advance of the enemy.

Espionage is just a toss of a coin, and what's worse, I can't do anything actively to control or influence it. I can't recruit more spies. I can't do anything actively to upgrade them. The only thing I can do is sit back and wait - oh yes, I can build a couple of buildings that make it go slightly slower, but still it leaves me completely passive. In my optics, that's just horrible game design.

kaspergm said:

That would definitely go a long way towards making it more balanced I think.

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Yes and let you're spies get promoted by it the defender if it killes the spy and the offensive spy if it if it succeeds in couping

Like a review said :

Espionage is like a extra cherry on top of your sundae, but in placing it the chef left a couple of fingerprints in the cream. Given the choice I expect I'd still eat the cherry (play with the feature), but I wouldn't pay extra for the sundae (the expansion) because there is a fingerprint (an underwhelming implementation

Religion is in my opinion the same its just who has the most fate