Diplomacy - Spying - Stealing Advances

[Alinestra Covelia]

My metaphorical knickers are in a proverbial twist; I'm trying to enable diplomacy and diplomat-type units...however, I'd like to prohibit stealing of tech advances.

This works to limited effect, when I surgically remove the "steal technology" option from the @SPYOPTIONS list in Game.txt. This means that the player can sneak a spy character into a city and do all the normal things, EXCEPT steal techs... Seems like a waterproof plan, but it isn't.

This lack of menu option does not prevent the computer players from doing this! So in effect, although the human player cannot break the rules, the computer controlled civs (who should be definition be the epitome of rule abidance...ahem) are flagrant rulebreakers and do so as usual!

Does anybody know how I might get this to work?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

[Hendrik the Great]

I sorry to disapoint you, however, there is no way to make it work. I faced the same problem once when making a scenario. I played around with the game.txt for weeks but to no avail.

Actually it is the same for all other spyoptions and unit options like for the settler/engineer. It's possible to disallow it for the human player but the AI will always be able to do so.

The only thing I believe you could do is to just give diplos/spies to the human player in the scenario. Of course this does only work if there is only one civ suppossed to be played

Good luck!

[Eyn]

most of scenarios don't have diplomat
units. If u want diplomats but you don't want AI steal all your techs, give some diplomates with the "event" file...
(every 20-50 turns)

[Alinestra Covelia]

How do diplomat units do against tech-stealing operations? I read in some FAQ or manual somewhere that stationing a spy in a friendly city means that enemy ops become more difficult. Is this true?

In that case, is it possible to place "n" Spies with movement of 0 in each city, to thwart enemy spy operations? Does this ever become 100% proof against spy ops?

...And while we're at it, who shot JFK?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

[Hendrik the Great]

I've never seen it work. But on the other hand I don't try it very often. I see no reason why it shouldn't work. However, imagine you have to place half a dozen spies or so into every city...
And I believe there is always a chance that something might get stolen anyway.

But the idea ain't bad.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Does this "counter espionage" work only with Spy units? Or can Diplomat units also prevent technological theft by an enemy?

[Hendrik the Great]

I don't know. It should work with both I think. I mean why not? But spies would be more effective I prosume.

[KaR]

Here is a thought, you could set all the advances to low AI value (really low) and have nonsense techs eg. STEALTHISDUMBAI with high AI value it would stop the AI from stealin the important techs as long as you have extra techs with high AI value (this is only a hypothesis neverbeen tested)

[Alinestra Covelia]

Sounds good from a tech stealing point of view, but wouldn't that also make the AI civs more keen to research dumb techs? The scenario I have in mind needs separate tech trees, but it also requires a lot of research to go into the techs, so that is a must.

If push comes to shove I would rather get rid of the entire spying/sabotaging aspect to retain the scenario's tech advances...

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.

[Michael Daumen]

If you didn't mind the tedium you could use diplomats from every civ to steal a tech from each city, then remove said techs from all nation's record books with the cheat menu. And I bet there is a way to do this with a hex editor that is easier, too.

[Zulu Elephant]

You could make the nonesense techs unresearchable, then the computer wouldn't waste time researching them - cos they cant

[Harlan]

Here's how I'm gonna do it for the scenario I'm working on. Go to webpage: http://members.xoom.com/HistCiv2/hexvalue.htm and download the Hexedit program Andrew recommends. Within the program, set column width to 28. Scroll down near the end of the file, and on the right side you should see city names. Put your cursor on the first letter of the first city name, to the right. Now move the cursor up one row. It now should be on the right hex for preventing tech stealing. Change the second number of those two numbers in that hex to 8. Go to the first letter of the next city, and repeat for every city. Since they're all in a line, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

I don't know about capital city rules, that may prove a problem. Another problem of course is if new cities are built. And don't allow units with Spy abilities, only Diplomats!

[Hendrik the Great]

But is it not true that when a city is conquered or reconquered techs can be stolen from it again?
At least that's what I always used to think.

Just a thought.

[Michael Daumen]

I thought the reverse, that a capital is harder to steal from. I guess that just applies to subversion. But I don't think it is easier. Has anyone tested it (or a reconquered city)?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Sounds like a damn good idea, Michael! But how about the capital city? Isn't it possible to steal from that as many times as needed?

And yes, it would be very tedious, but I'm willing to do that if it means the scen will work properly!

Does the AI recognize a city that has already been stolen from? Does it know that that cannot be stolen from again?

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"In all creation, there can be no task more onerous or tedious than that of playing God." - Stephen Fry, 'The Liar'.