I spent a little time thinking about our espionage plan today. Here is a list of techs that we could steal (obviously there will be more as the AI research techs off our Communism beeline):
Code:
Philosophy Gandhi 1248 beakers 113%
Communism Mao 4368 beakers 137%
Nationalism De Gaulle 2808 beakers 120%
Constitution Roosevelt 3120 beakers 122%
Military Science Stalin 3120 beakers 115%
Steam Power Churchill 4992 beakers 111%
The other factors in the equation include:
- Base Cost: +50% of base beakers
- Stationary spy: -50%
- State Religion: -40% (doesnt apply to Mao (-25% if running our state religion in one test game and 0% in another test game I ran???) or Stalin (-15% if running no state religion) in our game unless we get them to convert to a religion other than Confucianism)
- Trade Route: -20% (for Gandhi and Roosevelt only)
- Culture: -7% for Galley City in test game (should be higher for 2S+SE of Moscow, which was 50% in LCs test game)
- Distance: +6% for Galley City, +4% for 2S+SE of Moscow
- EPP differential: as shown in table above (LCs example had 79% for Roosevelt, which likely arent achievable in our game since we are currently at 122% for him)
So, if I understand it correctly, the plan is to gift the city 2S+SE of Moscow to the appropriate AI (except for Gandhi) after having a spy stationary for 5 turns, steal the tech and then capture the city back that same turn. Rinse and repeat. That would give us the following espionage points for each tech with the formula being:
Beakers * 1.5 * stationary spy * state religion * trade route * culture * distance * epp differential
Philosophy (Gandhi): 1248*1.50*0.5*0.6*0.8*0.93*1.06*1.13 = 500
Communism (Mao): 4368*1.50*0.5*
0.75?*1.0*0.50*1.04*1.37 = 1,750
if we get Mao to convert to another religion and our epp differential goes down (which it should), we get:
Communism (Mao): 4368*1.50*0.5*0.6*1.0*0.50*1.04*1.05 = 1,073
Nationalism (De Gaulle): 2808*1.50*0.5*0.6*1.0*0.50*1.04*1.20 = 788
(should be less as differential gets better)
Constitution (Roosevelt): 3120*1.50*0.5*0.6*0.8*0.50*1.04*1.22 = 712
(should be less as differential gets better)
Military Science (Stalin): 3120*1.50*0.5*0.85*1.0*0.50*1.04*1.15 = 1,189
(should be less as differential gets better)
Steam Power (Churchill): 4992*1.50*0.5*0.6*1.0*0.50*1.04*1.11 = 1,296
(should be less as differential gets better)
There may be some mistakes here, but I think its pretty close.
So, I assume our tech path will be something like:
Construction -> Education -> Philosophy (stolen from Gandhi) -> Engineering -> Feudalism -> Guilds -> Gunpowder -> Chemistry (opens up stealing Military Science from Stalin) -> Printing Press -> Scientific Method -> Liberalism (take Biology) -> Communism (stolen from Mao).
Alternatively, we could Liberalize Scientific Method if things are tight and self-research Biology.
So, should we build up about 500 epp on Gandhi and then switch our epp toward Mao? If we stop assigning points to Gandhi, hopefully hell stop assigning points toward us, keeping the 500 epp cost for Philosophy? As long as we wait until the last possible moment to steal Philosophy, well still have 500ish epp on Gandhi and well still be able to see his research progress toward Liberalism?
I just found out through testing that if a spy is not successful stealing a tech, we dont end up spending any espionage points. I thought that we would lose the points whether successful or not. This explains why we were able to have enough epp to steal Theology again so quickly in our game
The 7 maces you're projecting is a bit low, I think, but the spy will tell us about that ahead of time.
to build wonders per my 
), which is 75t away. So: 3,657 EP / 75t = approx. 60 ept. Perhaps more. One other thing I'm wondering is if we can use a Great Spy to infiltrate, should we get one. Is there 3,000 worth of tech to potentially steal from any one AI? Presumably stuff like Feud-Guilds-Banking, etc?
