point in Tech stealing?

[thyrwyn]

It is hard to draw a beaker/gold comparison with regards to tech stealing because certain buildings provide espionage points outright:

Palace - 4 ep
Courthouse - 2 ep
Jail - 4 ep +50% to all ep
Intelligence Agency - 8 ep +50% to all ep
Security Bureau - 8 ep

Spy Specialist - 4 ep

With just those buildings each city in your empire will generate 44 ep/turn, 52 ep/turn w/ 1 spy specialist. Each Scotland Yard is then worth an additional 26 ep/turn. That is with the slider set at 0%.

10 cities can easily generate 500+ ep/turn which is more than enough to steal a tech every 10 turns or so, with no slider adjustment!

The point is: you can accumulate ep at a significant rate even with your slider set at 0. The bigger the empire, the faster they accumulate.

[Posting from work - no screenies available; numbers may be off slightly] In my current game (Prince, Large map , Epic speed) I am accumulating 900+ ep/turn with my slider set at 10%. Each 10% move on the slider means +/- 200 gp. With my Espionage set at 0%, I still generate close to 700 ep/turn

Late in the game, I could have researched Mass Media in 9 tuns with all of my economy going into Science (slider set at 60%). Hammurabi was set to finish it in 7 turns. I went into the espionage screen and weighted all of my ep towards him, parked two spies in his territory and waited. I set my research to Assembly Plant.

7 turns (and 5600+ ep) later, I stole Mass Media for much less than 5000 ep (50% discount for 5 turns stationary, significant discount for having 5600 more ep than his 1900). The cost was primarily tied to the spy specialists and the hammers I had invested in all of my ep buildings. The other cost is measured by the fact that those ep were not going towards my other 10 opponents. But I had significant advantage over them already - they barely even caught up.

[edited to include more accurate numbers]

[thyrwyn]

I edited the above post for accuracy.

[joncnunn]

I was going to make a long post, but Thyrwyn has it right on.
With neither science bonuses nor esp bonses it should be roughly the same cost to reserach as steal as Finsch noted.

(It's roughly the same gold cost to buy & sell ancient era & classical era techs as research as well.)

The difference though is if you want to quire techs with spies you build the Great Wall, build Court Houses etc. everywhere,

While for research you build libaries etc. in commerce cities.

For buying techs you build marketplaces etc. in holy shrines & (with science slider < 100%) the elite commerce cities.

These can even be combined; those hammer heavy city with low commerce can concentrate on the courthouses etc. when not building military units while the religious shrines focus on marketplaces etc. and commerce cities focus on libaries etc.

[Kataphraktoi]

Of course all the great spies obtained this way are not other GPs and also raise the GP cost. That is, there is a certain opportunity cost. Also you wont be able to use the techs benefits until you steal it, if its an important tech. Overall a meh feature for me. Extra options