Rate of success of technology stealing, results of a basic test

I have performed a test to have a better insight in the rate of success of techology stealing. For that test I used a PBEM game that reached the end of the Industrial Age (Jack Merchant - Aggie). This game had 'Preserve Random Seed' switched off. I simply reloaded the game 100 times per situation I wanted to test. I know that for a certain result I probably should have choosen to test every situation a 1000 times, but that would take to much of my precious time. This was done in PTW, patch 1.27.

I tested the following situations:

- Stealing safely with a diplomat
- Stealing carefully with a diplomat
- Stealing immediately with a diplomat
- Stealing safely with a spy while in Republic
- Stealing safely with a spy while in Republic and at war
- Stealing carefully with a spy while in Republic
- Stealing immediately with a spy while in Republic
- Stealing safely with a spy while in Communism
- Stealing carefully with a spy while in Communism
- Stealing immediately with a spy while in Communism
- Stealing immediately with a spy while in Communism and at war

These are the results:

--------------------------------Success---Failed---Failed
-----------------------------------------got away--caught
safely (diplomat)-----------------49--------15-------36
safely (spy, Republic)------------68--------12-------20
safely (spy, Republic, war)-------64--------20-------16
safely (spy, Communism)-----------77--------18--------5
safely (spy, Communism, war)------84--------11--------5

carefully (diplomat)--------------51---------9-------40
carefully (spy, Republic)---------65--------12-------23
carefully (spy, Communism, war)---63--------21-------16

immediately (diplomat)------------29--------11-------60
immediately (spy, Republic)-------41--------11-------48
immediately (spy, Communism, war)-58--------10-------32


Things that strike me about the results:

1. When at peace with the party you want to steal a technology from, always choose to steal a technology with the spy and NOT with the diplomat! This is very tricky, because when you open the espionage screen, you will see the diplomat options, including the steal option:



When you choose the spy option, you pay the same amount of cash for the attempt, but the chances are higher! When you fail and get caught, you will lose the spy in both cases!

The espionage screen with espionage option checked:



2. Communist spies steal better than republic spies. I didn't test spies from other governments, but I would expect the same results for democracy and monarchy as for republic (all three have regular spies while communism has veteran ones).

3. Although I did test it only for safely stealing: a spy has about the same chance of success in war as it has in peace.

4. You have about the same chance of success when stealing carefully as stealing safely in republic, both with and without a spy. Safely stealing increases the chance of survival after a failed attempt though. A communist spy has a higher rate of success while stealing safely (than stealing carefully).

Below are the games I used for the technolgy steal test. I stole from France.

Tech Steal test saves

Feel free to comment. I know that I should have done more attempts to have less uncertainty about the results. But still these figures give you a nice insight and certainly should be informative.

EDIT: changed the rate of failure for immediate, spy, republic to 48 (typing error)

Good pointers, I guess spying really does pay off.

Excellent test!! Although I too wish you did 1000 tests as opposed to 100. That still definatly gives us a great basis with all percents no more then 5% off.

Thanks for doing that test Aggie. (worth more than an aggie, I would think something like a tennie )

One question though: will a spy get a vet status from sufficient succesful steals? And from vet to elite?

Originally posted by Gengis Khan
Excellent test!! Although I too wish you did 1000 tests as opposed to 100. That still definatly gives us a great basis with all percents no more then 5% off.

Click to expand...

Feel free to finish what I started. I included the saves

Originally posted by a space oddity
Thanks for doing that test Aggie. (worth more than an aggie, I would think something like a tennie )

One question though: will a spy get a vet status from sufficient succesful steals? And from vet to elite?

Click to expand...

No, spies don't get promoted. You could have elite spies if using a mod, though, as there is the possiblity of making a government have elite spies.

The thing that struck me the most was that the odds weren't a whole lot better between safely and carefully. I think the most cost-effective (considering the odds) would be 'carefully', unless you have the money and very paranoid about starting wars, of course (then choose safely).

Ah, that was only in the good old days of civ2.

Yeah, unveiling this will save us all a lot of money, thanks again aggie.

Thanks Aggie. I never thought the odds were so high. Further tests would be neccessary though. It seems the escape odds are different between times of peace and war but it's not clear.

I might do some tests, then again I might not do them.

Edit: Chance of success from spy missions (inference based on Aggie's results)

Edit: Change for Oystein tests

Rate of success
Base (Diplomat) 50% (safe and carefully), 30 (immediately).
Spy 66% (safe and carefully), 40% (immediately)
Veteran (Commie) spy 75% (safe), 66% (carefully), 60% (immediately). Still needs verification. Check if war has implication over vet spies only.

Chance of escape in case of mission failure
Base (diplomat/spy) 33%-50% (safely), 20-40% (carefully), 15-20% (immediately)
Veteran (commie) spy 75% (safely). Others need verification because state of war might change results.

War seems to INCREASE chance of escape to 60% (spy), 66%-75% (vet spy).
Some other factors might be involved as Oystein tests showed some inconsistencies with Aggie's.

I know that my tests only gave an insight on the chances of success and failure. Especially the results for careful stealing during communism seem a bit low to me, compared to other results.

Your "immediate, spy, republic" test appears to have 110 iterations.... Unless I'm horribly mistaken, 41+11+58 = 110, which makes that result semi-difficult to compare with others.

Would be nice to test against a commie/non-commie foe, too, to see how that affects things.

Surprising and interesting results of safely vs. carefully, especially for non-commie.

Like everybody's said, more results would be nice, but thanks for doing the 1000+ steals of your tests! Some data is definitely better than no data.

Arathorn

Originally posted by Arathorn
Your "immediate, spy, republic" test appears to have 110 iterations.... Unless I'm horribly mistaken, 41+11+58 = 110, which makes that result semi-difficult to compare with others.

Click to expand...

Yes, a little mistake. It should be 48, not 58.

Originally posted by Arathorn
Would be nice to test against a commie/non-commie foe, too, to see how that affects things.

Click to expand...

When I have time, I may test it, other are welcome to do it as well and I'm happy to add it to results

I have done some tests on vanilla v1.29f

I made test scenario, and tried to steal tech from a civ with nearly none, with about half of all techs (just a few more than me), and from a civ that know everything. I also tested civs with strong army and with a large impire.


----------------------------success------caught
immediately (many techs) ------39-----7----54
immediately (average techs)----40----12----48
immediately (few techs) -------45----11----44

carefully (large, strong) -----65----14----21
carefully (strong) ------------52----16----32
carefully ---------------------54----21----25

safely (many techs) -----------65----17----18
safely (average techs) --------68----20----12
safely (few techs) ------------65----19----16

The chance seems to be independant of how technologically advanced the opponent is. (But not the price)

But it is easier to steal from large civs. Needs more testing.

The results from the immediately and safely stealing are about the same as I had using a spy in a non-communist goverment. Is that correct?

However, two of your results with stealing carefully are different. Can you explain this yourself?

You are right, I used spy in despotism and republic. But for carefully rep, we now have 2 tests with about 65% success and 2 with 53%. The diffrence in my test was the size of the civs, 65% civ had 11 cities, while the other had just one. Easier to steal from large civs? Does not seem rational.

great work, Aggie! Excellent info on an underresearched area

Originally posted by Oystein
I have done some tests on vanilla v1.29f

I made test scenario, and tried to steal tech from a civ with nearly none, with about half of all techs (just a few more than me), and from a civ that know everything. I also tested civs with strong army and with a large impire.


----------------------------success------caught
carefully (large, strong) --------65----14----21
carefully (strong) ---------------52----16----32
carefully ------------------------54----21----25
...
But it is easier to steal from large civs. Needs more testing.

Click to expand...

I would say that for 100 results, these results are too close to make that kind of conclusion...

Originally posted by anarres
I would say that for 100 results, these results are too close to make that kind of conclusion...

Click to expand...

Agreed, thats why I incuded "needs more testing"

What government did the victim have? (Or has someone already proved that this doesn't make a difference?)

In my case the victim was a republic. As I've said this should also be tested on a communist government, but I haven't had the time.

I think the money is better spent on researching the tech coz spying can be pretty expensive and I'm bad with money.