Odds of stealing

[Elear]

Hello,
In my current game, I'm in a position where I could spend most of my gold (16,000) purchasing Education + Astronomy from the tech leader -- I could wait, but if I don't get Astronomy this turn, my prebuild for Copernicus will fail, and it is key to deny it from the AI to ensure I can stay on top for the Space Race.

Thus I'm considering stealing the two techs instead, which would be much cheaper (about 3,000 each @ safely). However, I want to know how "safe" is "safely", not that I fear war, but because I have an ongoing deal with the tech leader involving GPT. This brings up my other question: if the steal fails and war is declared, will the loss of the GPT deal fracture my reputation?

Both questions are critical to have answers for before even making one more move. Getting to Astronomy would be extremely helpful, and even more vitally, I cannot afford to have my GPT reputation smashed or I will not be able to continue to broker techs.

-Elear

 

[Lord Emsworth]

Can you afford a DoW from the tech leader who has Astronomy and Education? If so, you might be able to buy the techs for gpt and then try to bust the deal by failing to steal something and being DoWed (either this turn or one of the next ones).

It will not break your reputation.

 

[Spoonwood]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/strategy/espionage_missions.php

 

[Elear]

Both of these posts were helpful.

I ended up making the choice to pay out the GPT to China for Education as Emsworth suggested, then I stole Astronomy. The only problem was that in subsequent turns, I couldn't get China to declare on me and thus they kept my GPT though I did manage to get a steady income again from trading. This ALMOST ruined me, as China was able to sustain 4 turn research up into the early Industrial Age. Luckily, I managed to steal and broker techs to finally catch up to them, though China declared war at some point when I had failed enough -- an uneventful war culminating in about 10 turns and 0 losses on each side.

The key, I think, was going for "cautious" instead of "safe" for most of my steals, knowing the odds with an embassy aren't terribly different (thanks Spoonwood!). This saved me enough gold that I was never quite out of money.