When should espionage replace research?

[InFlux5]

In one of the recent high-level walkthroughs (I can't remember which) the player shut off research after Alphabet and just spammed spies, stealing techs instead of researching them. He had built the Great Wall and sent the GSpy on a mission, so those points certainly helped.

But what I'm trying to decide is when it's a good idea to do this. Only if you build the Great Wall? How about shutting off the research slider and pouring everything into espionage? When would I do this and why would it be better than straight up research?

 

[KMadCandy]

i haven't yet replaced research with espionage. but the game that i did the most teching via espionage was a recent one where i got an early great spy. i was on a continent with monty and HC, and monty died really early (thank you barbarian uprising!). that meant HC didn't know anybody else, so he wasn't going to trade with me even if i chose the perfect tech path. so, i used my GWall GSpy to infiltrate him and i stole gobs of early techs. i didn't turn off my own research, i just directed my beakers to things he wasn't bothering with. obviously that was easy since i could see what he was learning.

so imo that's one factor for how valuable it is to steal rather than research. if you can't trade what you're researching, stealing is a way to supplement research and replace those freebie beakers. note that i don't play with no-tech-trading, so i was going to really miss those trade beakers! people who are used to not trading wouldn't miss that of course.

but i'm certainly no expert. and i've definitely never tried an all-out spy economy. i just made sure my first GP would be a spy, and then i ran spies where i could to keep earning points since they were coming in awfully handy . it's only easy to do it that early if you do get an early spy from the wall. without that you're limited to the slider and one spy specialist per city after CoL.

 

[Bhruic]

Well, there is no one right answer. First you have to figure out what your over-arching strategy is. Are you going for a full espionage-economy? Are you simply trying to supplement your normal research economy with a little spying?

I'm going to assume the former, from your description. From this point of view, no, you don't have to get the Great Wall, it just gives you some extra GSpy points you wouldn't otherwise have. You can run Spy specialists in your cities and use those to get GSpies as an alternate method.

Switching from research slider to espionage slider should happen somewhat soon after you get Alphabet - which you should have bee-lined (beyond the immediately necessary worker techs). The trick is to decide who is going to have the techs that you want to research, and focus your EPs on them. Do not use any GSpies to infiltrate the enemy! Do not settle your GSpies! When you are going for a full Espionage economy, using GSpies to build Scotland Yards is the most powerful use you can make of them. Build SY in your top espionage cities, and you'll easily get more EPs from them than settling/infiltrating would ever give you.

Remember that there are a lot of buildings that have low or no priority because of the espionage focus. Libraries, Universities, Monasteries all have extremely low priority. All they really do for you is give you extra culture - nice, but not a ncessity. The research bonus does nothing for you. So save your hammers for building spies - don't bother building those buildings.

Once you've made your focus on espionage, the only necessity is to keep track of who's doing what. You'll see what everyone is researching, so it'll be easy to figure out who you need to steal from next. You'll see what everyone is building, so you can tell if someone is building a wonder you are thinking of trying for. And if they are, so what? You can easily afford to trash their building so that they never finish. You'll be able to see all their cities, so you can easily see how much research they are generating, what they are defending their cities with, what cities have their wonders, etc.

Spying is incredibly powerful. The only real downside is that because you never research anything yourself, you don't get any of the benefits from being "first" to a tech (religions, GP, free techs, etc). But that is more than offset, imo, by the fact that you'll be able to track what everyone is doing. Knowledge is power!

Bh

 

[Levgre]

another drawback I see is that you can't beeline to techs if you depend on other civs

 

[InFlux5]

Well you won't be seeing what everyone researches if you concentrate your EPs on one civ.

I'm not quite ready to experiment with a full "espionage economy" yet, but I think I will soon. I'm curious how it would play out.

 

[Bhruic]

Well you won't be seeing what everyone researches if you concentrate your EPs on one civ.

Yes you will. The amount necessary to see what another Civ is researching is quite low. And "concentrating" on one Civ doesn't mean putting all your points into them exclusively. It means they get the majority of your points. The others still get some.

I'm not quite ready to experiment with a full "espionage economy" yet, but I think I will soon. I'm curious how it would play out.

It can be quite a fun/powerful variant. It just requires that you play towards its strengths. I've seen a lot of people try it, but try to play the game in a "normal" fashion, which really doesn't work.

Bh

 

[Diamondeye]

I believe you should contact Axident, he seems to be good at spy economies...

 

[InFlux5]

I suppose Financial and Organized are best. Also several high-production cities, as opposed to high-commerce, would be good for Spy spam.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I think the main downside is the diplomatic penalties that you will accumulate while spying on a neighbour. That doesn't have to be a problem when you're the strongest civilisation in the world, but it might be a problem when the main candidate for stealing technologies is a lot stronger and already doesn't like you very much. The technology leader usually isn't one of the weakest civilisations.
Getting bad relations can also have serious repercussions when you want to trade for resources or want to have open borders for foreign trade routes in your cities. In this way the negative diplomatic effects can hurt your economy.

The other negatives of a full espionage economy have already been mentioned:
-You don't get freebies for researching a technology first
-You won't get many technologies that the technology leaders don't have because stealing won't get you a (big) technology lead. So technology trading and bribing civilisations into war will be more restricted.

The main advantages are:
-It's cheaper than normal research when you know how to get the discounts on stealing technologies
-You can get lots of information through spying and can sabotage enemies/competitors when it would be beneficial

 

[InFlux5]

Well I just tried one test game; didn't bother finishing. A few things I decided:

1. Tech normally to Alphabet, then CoL. Courthouses are important.
2. Pick a neighbor that you want to wipe out eventually. Allocate all EPs to them ASAP.
3. A Great Spy would be very helpful as you don't have many EPs early in the game.
4. You will be a straggler in tech to the degree that you rely on spies. Use this to your advantage. Go for mass troops and REXing.
5. Commerce is hugely important, to generate EPs, support your troops, and support upgrades to your troops.
6. Next time I try I'm going to focus on generating GSpies as much as possible.

My first shot was with a random leader, and I drew Khmer (which I seem to about 50% of the time) which is definitely not the ideal civ for an Espionage Economy. Financial, Organized, Philosophical are all good. No big surprise there!

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I've played three games now with Espionage economies:

- On Monarch where I had a hybrid self-research / espionage economy. It worked extremely well but I won that game fairly easy through warfare and dominating the AP.

- On Emperor where I got caught in a long and painful war, eventually won it but found myself 8 techs behind the other continent. Switched to a total espionage economy and eventually caught up and won.

- On Emperor where I had an isolated start, teched normally and then switched to espionage to catch up. I eventually caught up but lost a tight spaceship race due to inferior land.

Its a very powerful tactic. But I would only recommend it in a catchup situation. It helps you catchup because stolen techs are cheaper than researched ones. But if you aren't behind then stealing techs is less useful for you than researching monopoly techs the AIs don't have.

So to answer the original question - when to do this? I would say that its a good strategy when you are 4-5 techs behind the leader and likely to remain so because they appear to be researching as fast or faster than you. Its particularly good when there is one clear tech leader to steal from and you stand a good chance of being able to trade the techs you steal.

Some other factors not mentioned above:

- You can select the tech you steal immediately before you steal it. Which means you can select a tech that you are going to be able to easily trade. With research you have to choose your techs many turns before you get them and the AIs might all decide to research the same tech.

- It really helps if the tech leader you want to steal from is close. It can be good to leave some poor land on your own continent - chances are the tech leader (who gets Astronomy early) might well send a settler and give you a close city to steal from.

- Steal from weak cities rather than capitals - they are less likely to have infrastructure that increases the cost of the mission or have enemy spies to detect your spies.

- Steal from cities you have trade routes and religion bonuses with.

- Works well with Nationalism and with castles - which makes it good for protective leaders. All three of my espionage games were with protective leaders.

- Eventually you will hopefully catch the AI and will need science infrastructure prepared for your switch to 100% science. But build your espionage infrastructure first.

 

[InFlux5]

Nice post Invisible, thanks. Makes sense that it would be best for playing catchup. Makes it sound very useful for isolated starts where you are behind on first contact.

 

[Refar]

Uhm... i kind of dont get it... How are stolen Techs cheaper than researched ?

I regulary steal early techs to backfill, but in midgame the costs of stealing a somewhat adwanced tech are becoming insane, even with a good ratio granting me a discount on epionage missions. Are EP's that much easier to get than beakers ?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Uhm... i kind of dont get it... How are stolen Techs cheaper than researched ?

I regulary steal early techs to backfill, but in midgame the costs of stealing a somewhat adwanced tech are becoming insane, even with a good ratio granting me a discount on epionage missions. Are EP's that much easier to get than beakers ?

If your spy settles in a city for 5 turns you get a 50% discount on the tech. Other modifiers come into play as well - usually techs stolen from spies cost about 60-75% of what they would cost to research.

It may seem like a lot of EPs - but are you diverting all your commerce into EPs? My Emperor game with Charlemagne, running Nationalism and lots of castles had me generating enough EPs to steal a tech every 3-5 turns. Thats faster than I could research them. Plus I could pick a tech that I could trade for a couple of others.

If you are trying to run an Espionage economy these late game techs won't seem expensive. But if you are just dabbling in espionage they will seem unattainable.

Another factor is that you can get the maximum modifiers for EPs with the Communism tech - a lot earlier than you get the maximum modifiers for science. And you can get free espionage points just by building certain buildings - you don't get that with science.

But you have to make a choice to focus on espionage - you build completely different buildings and it means you will be weaker at normal research.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

One key factor for that is the more EPs you have Ever made, the cheaper it is to steal techs, so after commiting to the espionage economy it is worth it... one other possible benefit is that it is the only way to destroy a space ship part...
Meaning that it might be best in the space race.. your 'research' not only gets you techs it can ruin your opponent's parts.

 

[xanadux]

Espionage is also a nice late game boost for any economy. Building all the espionage buildings gets you 40 EP per city. AIs tend to beeline up different paths late in the game. So while you research the military techs, one AI might be researching up towards Medicine and Refrigeration while another is teching radio and mass media. Just keep enough EPs on the AIs with good tech rates to see what they are researching, and switch the rest to the one that has the tech you want. Once you have enough EPs, steal it, and if a different AI now has a tech you want, switch the EPs to them. The late game espionage buildings give a very nice output, both in base EPs and multipliers. And it is slider independent. Once you have the buildings, you get your 40 EP/turn/city. This is a great way for production cities to contribute to the economy.

 

[alpaca]

I think an Espionage-based teching is mainly good in circumstances where you are behind in techs. This will usually happen if you have a lot of land to claim early on, or you wage an early war, or just have high-production but low-commerce land (not much grass to cottage and not that much food). Spied techs, if used correctly, can be gotten at huge discounts. I can for example usually pull off to get stuff for maybe 40%-50% of the normal cost if I really go for it (you get 20% trade route bonus, the overspending bonus for investing more than your enemy which is often around 25% and the camping bonus of 50% vs the distance malus and possible spy defence later; besides: your chances of succeeding also seem to scale somewhat with overspending)

I usually play on Immortal/no tech trading/big and small map/normal/normal lately where I'm most of the time relying on espionage to be able to keep up with my opponents because I can't trade with them, while still maintaining the ability to sometimes do a beeline to things like Liberalism or Military Tradition to pull off a rush or get an extra tech, so after deciding to use Espionage (which happens in almost every game) I will set both sliders at about the same rate, maybe a slight advantage for Espionage. I usually go for cottage economies if it's feasible, but I often don't get a lot of great spies because you can only set one spy specialist until you get Representation or Communism. One is enough though: Putting a Scotland Yard into your bureaucracy capital really shines.

By the way, Espionage gets a bit weaker after everybody gets Democracy because the opponent has a larger chance of detecting your spy and therefore you have to invest more hammers into it (it also becomes more expensive but that's more than set off by the extra EP you get with the new buildings).

What's important is not to get Alphabet asap but to get COL quickly for the extra 2 free EP in each city and the spy specialists (which are really good at 1 beaker and 4 espionage). Therefore I value Organized highly which allows you to build them more quickly, too. Otherwise you should look at getting Communism and Representation/Democracy as soon as you can because they give you more bonuses. The 25% bonus from Nationalism is interesting, too, especially if you want to draft-rush.

Spiritual is very good for Espionage because you can switch religions sometimes for the holy city/state religion bonuses and to offset the diplomacy effect a bit by agreeing to change religion or civics.

A small benefit can also be gained by moving your capital somewhere nearer to your opponents' borders if it makes sense from a maintenance point of view (spies travel faster and you get techs cheaper).
Wonder-wise on the lower difficulties you can try getting the GW but on Immortal I rarely do that (read: unless I have stone in my first or second city and good production). Otherwise there's nothing that really benefits Espionage in my opinion, except maybe for pyramids but they benefit all specialist-strategies. Each wonder that gives you money is a winner.

Another interesting strategy is to have a SE for beakers and focus your slider on espionage for the second kind of hybrid EP-economy.

 

[SenhorDaGuerra]

it should never replace research. it should be stricken from the game forever. put in a little box in a big warehouse in indiana jones and forgotten about.

 

[ungy]

Speaking from limited experience, I would add the following:
early on there is a significant hammer cost to the spying.
relations are another big piece of the equation. Your relations will deteriorate and that has to be factored in. More war, less trade, etc.
You lose the "first mover" tech advantage--i.e. ability to draft/rifle rush.
That said, it seemed pretty powerful and a credible alternative to research.
Worked especially well with the model steal your neighbors techs then take them out.
A couple of parallel SG's both easily beat emperor with no research other than worker techs+alpha and no player tech trading/extortion.

 

[m4gill4]

Upon reading this thread, I wonder what the optimal civ/leader would be for an espionage based economy?

It seems philosophical would be quite useful here for the great spies. Other than that, perhaps expansive for the extra health, or industrious for great wall/other wonders?

What do you all think?