2metraninja
Defender of Nabaxica
Unless you think outside the box. What if we were to forge a tech trading alliance where trading is done with espionage? It could work like this:
This is completely untested method as I just came up with the idea. Obvious drawback compared to tech trading is that trading is not instantaneous. So for limited period of time there may be unwanted gaps in the tech tree. This also requires a trustworthy ally and at least NAP until "trade" is complete.
- Teams A and B create a Great Spy and zounds of normal spies.
- Teams sychronize their teching relatively far in the future. Both keep EP:s towards the other player to the minimum.
- Team A dumps the Great Spy to team B's city and uses all EPs gained to steal unresearched techs.
- When team A's EPs are spent, team B repeats the process.
Compared to normal tech stealing this method would be much cheaper if the teams can agree to keep EP as close to zero as possible before the exchange.
I like your way of thinking. And this is not untested at all. I myself am using this for many games, currently using it too. And I know a lot about the ways to be implemented.
One glitch is that it becomes hard for the one partner to steal techs, because the other have way too many "espionage points spent" factor. It does not matters how many espionage you spend on specific player, but cumulative all point you ever generated.