Stealing Technologies

Good suggestion!

Press in the like button, so that there's a bigger chance they do it

Good

But it should be very small chance, like 3% of stealing ANY technology that player possess for one spy at end of the day. Cost.. 5000 ? Max number of spies like that ? Mayby not.

I think those details should depend on the programers and designers decision.

It'd be better to give an outline of how it worked, makes it seem much more plausible and convincing

Chadwik wrote:

It would be interesting if spies in other countries capitals(in intel missions) could steal technologies from the other country. Also, it would give a bigger importance to spies in the game. What do you think?

To me it is way more valuable to know who his allies are, some intercepted messages, see his resource stocks and what units he is making. I research the usefull technologies myself. I would be dissapointed if an intelligence spy would steal a militia/ anti-tank or other useless technology instead of showing me the players diplomacy stats or how much resources he has of each.

I'm not in favour of this idea.

It's a great idea. I'd be quite interested if it was implemented. I currently use no spies whatsoever except in games which are quite slow, but in the world map, where everything researchable is extremely expensive in terms of rare materials, it would be of great help, as you could save tonnes!

Azkazan wrote:

Chadwik wrote:

It would be interesting if spies in other countries capitals(in intel missions) could steal technologies from the other country. Also, it would give a bigger importance to spies in the game. What do you think?

Tbh I think the intelligence spies are already great the way they are. No need to make them more important. The suggested change would actually make them less interesting for me.

To me it is way more valuable to know who his allies are, some intercepted messages, see his resource stocks and what units he is making. I research the usefull technologies myself. I would be dissapointed if an intelligence spy would steal a militia/ anti-tank or other useless technology instead of showing me the players diplomacy stats or how much resources he has of each.

I'm not in favour of this idea.

Pablo22510 wrote:

It's a great idea. I'd be quite interested if it was implemented. I currently use no spies whatsoever except in games which are quite slow, but in the world map, where everything researchable is extremely expensive in terms of rare materials, it would be of great help, as you could save tonnes!

Chadwik wrote:

Pablo22510 wrote:

It's a great idea. I'd be quite interested if it was implemented. I currently use no spies whatsoever except in games which are quite slow, but in the world map, where everything researchable is extremely expensive in terms of rare materials, it would be of great help, as you could save tonnes!

Thanks, it would make the game more dynamic. Also, you would have to be intelligent and more carefull when deciding where to put your spies, since you would have to be cunning enough to know in which country you can get more likely technologies you want, and you would have to be more carefull with counterintelligence.

I dont like the idea. I would hate to have folks gather and steal my technologies. Also, it doesnt sound too realistic for a country to suddenly lose how it develops something. It reminds me too much of Hearts of Iron.... Sorry to burst the bubbles fellas.

Sir McSquiggles wrote:

Also, it doesnt sound too realistic for a country to suddenly lose how it develops something.

But that kinda ruins the point of researching technologies. Why research when you could steal it from your neighbors and max of your technology to the limit of the day?

Sir McSquiggles wrote:

But that kinda ruins the point of researching technologies. Why research when you could steal it from your neighbors and max of your technology to the limit of the day?

Chadwik wrote:

I think you're being really shortsighted; obviously there's a chance it gets a technology you don't want, but also it can get something you did wanted, but couldn't, because of it's cost or because you didn't have the research space. Also, it would make researching much more competitive, and, it would not be just getting new technologies you don't have, it could also give you technologies that improve the level of your units. And, there obviously should be only a slight chance of getting a technology. And if you don't like if it gets you something you don't want, bad luck, games aren't supposed to be done so that you always get what you want, just use more spies. I honestly think your argument lacks support.

Researching is already competitive... Everyone is trying to get the best available stuff for his units as fast as possible. I don't see where it is lacking competitivity at this moment... Please explain...

3% chance of stealing a technology while staying in the enemies capital would take how many days average for an intelligence spy to steal something? It's a 3% chance that the spy is useless on a certain day and that is still to much for me. Besides, at a certain point many players apply counter espionage in their core provinces, most starting with the capital. This will make it almost impossible for a spies to steal something if they have like 30% chance of being discovered. Replacing them will become quite expensive.

There is plenty of research space to research what you need for your army. You can't have all and most of it is useless that you don'even want to have. Too many players research anti-tank, militia, battle ships, naval bombers, artillery and other bad things that isn't worth it if you compare it with the stats of other available units. Only usefull things to steal would be the technologies for nucleair weapons and the new upgrade for your units if you havn't got them already yourself after a few days they become available. this would require immense amounts of luck for your spies to pay off with this proposition. But the most likely thing to happen is that after an average of 15 days of spying for each spy you manages to steal militia/anti-tank/battle ship level 1 research. That is just a complete waste of your spy in that round.

There is no impact on gameplay with what is suggested. Too little chance to pull off and if it is pulled off succesfully, there is most likely no usefull reward, but probably a waste of the spies round, unless it would be able to do it's other stuff.

Azkazan wrote:

Chadwik wrote:

I think you're being really shortsighted; obviously there's a chance it gets a technology you don't want, but also it can get something you did wanted, but couldn't, because of it's cost or because you didn't have the research space. Also, it would make researching much more competitive, and, it would not be just getting new technologies you don't have, it could also give you technologies that improve the level of your units. And, there obviously should be only a slight chance of getting a technology. And if you don't like if it gets you something you don't want, bad luck, games aren't supposed to be done so that you always get what you want, just use more spies. I honestly think your argument lacks support.

I use plenty of spies: espionage/ counter espionage/ economical sabotage and military sabotage. A spy is more usefull than any unit. They are strong already. You can find them under the spy tab.

Researching is already competitive... Everyone is trying to get the best available stuff for his units as fast as possible. I don't see where it is lacking competitivity at this moment... Please explain...

3% chance of stealing a technology while staying in the enemies capital would take how many days average for an intelligence spy to steal something? It's a 3% chance that the spy is useless on a certain day and that is still to much for me. Besides, at a certain point many players apply counter espionage in their core provinces, most starting with the capital. This will make it almost impossible for a spies to steal something if they have like 30% chance of being discovered. Replacing them will become quite expensive.

There is plenty of research space to research what you need for your army. You can't have all and most of it is useless that you don'even want to have. Too many players research anti-tank, militia, battle ships, naval bombers, artillery and other bad things that isn't worth it if you compare it with the stats of other available units. Only usefull things to steal would be the technologies for nucleair weapons and the new upgrade for your units if you havn't got them already yourself after a few days they become available. this would require immense amounts of luck for your spies to pay off with this proposition. But the most likely thing to happen is that after an average of 15 days of spying for each spy you manages to steal militia/anti-tank/battle ship level 1 research. That is just a complete waste of your spy in that round.

There is no impact on gameplay with what is suggested. Too little chance to pull off and if it is pulled off succesfully, there is most likely no usefull reward, but probably a waste of the spies round, unless it would be able to do it's other stuff.

aDudeWhoDoesThings wrote:

It'd be better to give an outline of how it worked, makes it seem much more plausible and convincing

Chadwik wrote:

It would be interesting if spies in other countries capitals(in intel missions) could steal technologies from the other country. Also, it would give a bigger importance to spies in the game. What do you think?

Chadwik wrote:

Dude, i've never talked about percentages, it's something the experts should decide, as they know better how the game works. Also, there's no need to repeat something you already said, and 2 researching spaces aren't much, as it being there are lots of technologies. Also, every unit is usefull, if not, they wouldn't be researched, you just don't know how to use them or don't realize there are different requirements and costs for each one. For example, AT are usefull to defend a frontier were you don't want to invade, but know there's a possible threat the neighbour sends tanks without advice. As to milicia, they are usefull to produce units in provinces without industrial complex. As I said before, if you don't like the proposition it doesn't means it wouldn't make the game more interesting, and, I think it's more usefull to have a spy to steal technologies than having it to discover how rich the enemy is.

If we look at the stats of the anti-tank researches, we see small increases in damage. Light tanks have bigger damage increase and they have speed increase. They will fall off very hard as the game progresses, menaing you might get stuck with them. If we look at the lvl 1 stats of the anti-tank and light tank, the light tank is way faster and therefor can outmaneuver them. They can simply drive another 12 hours to avoid the antitanks and take some other province. The anti-tank can't keep up because of the lack of speed.It is also impossible to station lots of anti-tank in nearly all your border provinces. It would cost to much manpower and so on, leaving less for an offensive army. A tank on the other hand has the same stats for defense and offense. The bomber can be used in offense and defense. These units (others as well) are capable of doing 2 jobs very well. I find them better defenders as antitanks. Much faster so you can outmaneuver, more allround vs other units and capable off attacking as well.

Militia are very weak if we look at their stats. They can defend in forests vs everything but bombers and tanks (the 2 major offensive weapons in this game). Fight over the controll off cities is still dominated by planes (and possibly anti-air and infantery). Without industrial complex their training time is very long. By the time you got them, you probably don't need them anymore or you lose 5 vs a tank or bomber. You will also have a bigger upkeep for your barracks, which is quite important if we look at how the food is balanced at this moment.

Battle ships (I know you havn't mentioned it) are fairly popular by most players, but I think this is also one of the most useless units. Building this thing means constructing lvl 3 harbour (more oil maintainance), long buildtime, expensive boat in general, high upkeep costs. I have 5+ harbours making ships most of the time. lvl 3 harbour needs 200 oil a day= 4 level 1 harbours. The battleship can only effectively be used to destroy ships. It can attack on land as well, but only bad players leave their units in range of battle ships. A submarine is a lot cheaper, requires lvl 1 harbour, 18 food and 50 oil upkeep/day --> you can easily have 50!!! Slower than the battleship, but that's ok in this case , they can defeat them 1v1. Having lvl 3 harbours and battleships will restrict you capabilities to produce enough destroyers and therefor you may be overwhelmed by mass submarines.

Players building or even researching anti-tank or militia show they have never looked into detail to their unit and ask to be conquered.

Stealing technologies can only become a thing if the useless units will receive a buff in order to make them a viable choice, so that players will actually be really forced too choose what research they need most. I think we can safely say some units are not viable atm.

Spying an enemy and being able to see all his troops is quite interesting. Or a long campaign of military sabotage on all his ship producing provinces. If you spy his economy and you see he is low on food and $ you can mkae nice use of that. Nothing as attracktive as economical sabotage (buying counter espionage will cost him lots of money, just as buying the food he will be missing on the market) and at the same time try to influence the market to push the food prices up (in 1 day I pushed food and oil prices too 30$/each by buying the few cheaper ones and selling mine for 30$/each. I made a lot of money because big players with huge armies on the worldmap will have food deficits and possible shortages of oil as well. They were forced too buy mine since they couldn't get cheaper once in time.) At the same time I made an anonymous message in the newpaper about the rise in oil and food prices and since then it hasn't dropped. I also discovered 1 player selling a lot of his resources to a guy with a huge army for 1$, also nice for in the newspaper. All together they form an 9 man alliance, but they don't all get along very well. nr. 10 was eaten a few days ago. By using spies this way you can influence the diplomacy of others in your advantage. Especially the alliances build on poor thrust will fall apart. There is no technology that can replace any of the above information. I know sometimes your spies don't discover much, but most of the time it's a lot of knowledge that will be usefull sooner or later.

And I can confirm that 1 player with 700VP just declared war on everyone. 9% of the worlds army (according to my calculations this would be about double the amount of military she can actually maintain with her food), 9k food 2 days ago and 200k$. I think she was about to run out of resources and I thank my spies for making it possible for me to take this oppertunity to influence the market and allow me too make some anonymous posts in which I target the biggest 5 players (including me and my ally) by exposing weaknesses whithout exactly explaining what causes them. My ally and I have enough economy to sustain our troops off course. Otherwise I would make us vulnerable by doing so.