Spies steal tech way too often in 4.17.11

[Diraven8]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Game Version

4.17.11

Describe the bug

Since the latest patch the frequency of spies stealing technologies seems to have gone way up. Like playing against 20 AI civs I get a technology stolen from me by a spy about once every 2 turns on average. This seems excessive. In the previous version I'd get technologies stolen maybe 5 times over the course of the entire game.

Steps to Reproduce

Play a game with 20 AI opponents. As soon as spies become available technologies get stolen very frequently.

Screenshots

No response

Link to save file

No response

Operating System

Android

Additional Information

No response

[EmperorPinguin]

With 20 spies each stealing a tech on average every 40 turns, you'd expect a steal every 2 turns. It's suprising it isn't a steal every turn. Putting a counterspy in you highest-pop city can help.

[EmperorPinguin]

Are you perhaps trading embassies with everyone?

[yairm210]

This seems fine to me as well

[Diraven8]

1. Does trading embassies make you more susceptible to spies? What good are embassies then?
2. Unless the counter-spy gets lucky and stops the enemy agent on the very first attempt and goes up a level then, they never stop a single spy the rest of the game. Presumably because then the enemy spies go up a level but my spy is stuck on level 1 and so the enemy spies become basically invincible from them on. In my current game I have a counter spy in my capital along with spy buildings and by 1850 enemies have easily stolen 50 techs from me and I have not stopped them even 1 single time.
3. Was the probability of spies stealing tech increased dramatically in a recent update? Because it didn't happen before. This throws off the entire balance of the game and ruins rushing research as a strategy. In my current game I am second in tech, 500 population, generating 2500 research every turn. The nation in first place in tech has 125 population and I'm sure generates far less research (but I don't know how to check). I'm sure they are staying ahead with ridiculous amounts of tech stealing, that's the only explanation since it coincides with the recent huge jump in nations stealing tech from me when I play.

[Diraven8]

Oh one more thing to add - since tech stealing succeeds about 98% of the time now near as I can tell, as soon as you get at least 3 spies the obvious optimal strategy every game would be scrap every single research building you have in all your cities to save money, and then put your spies in the capital city of the civs ranked on the top three in tech. That way you're almost guaranteed to get a new tech every 8 to 10 turns (because the AI civs are constantly stealing them from each other too so every new tech researched quickly gets passed around) until you eventually jump to close to first in tech, which is about as fast as you'd likely get them from research anyway. So the way tech stealing works now, completely abandoning tech research becomes the best way to win. And IMHO that's ridiculous.

[EmperorPinguin]

1. Does trading embassies make you more susceptible to spies? What good are embassies then?

Yes, you need vision of someone's capital to place a spy there. Depends on what you agree to with the other players what would be enjoyable for everyone, same thing with killing scouts on sight etc.

2. Unless the counter-spy gets lucky and stops the enemy agent on the very first attempt and goes up a level then, they never stop a single spy the rest of the game.  Presumably because then the enemy spies go up a level but my spy is stuck on level 1 and so the enemy spies become basically invincible from them on.  In my current game I have a counter spy in my capital along with spy buildings and by 1850 enemies have easily stolen 50 techs from me and I have not stopped them even 1 single time.

Not impossible, but statistically very unlikely, maybe you should send a savefile.

3. Was the probability of spies stealing tech increased dramatically in a recent update?  Because it didn't happen before.  This throws off the entire balance of the game and ruins rushing research as a strategy.  In my current game I am second in tech, 500 population, generating 2500 research every turn.  The nation in first place in tech has 125 population and I'm sure generates far less research (but I don't know how to check).  I'm sure they are staying ahead with ridiculous amounts of tech stealing, that's the only explanation since it coincides with the recent huge jump in nations stealing tech from me when I play.

No, unless there's a bug. Spy tech steal rate and the effect of promotion were reduced about half a year ago. Keep in mind steal rate is proportional with the city's science output, do you happen to generate a lot of science from your capital (academies etc.)?

[EmperorPinguin]

Oh one more thing to add - since tech stealing succeeds about 98% of the time now near as I can tell, as soon as you get at least 3 spies the obvious optimal strategy every game would be scrap every single research building you have in all your cities to save money, and then put your spies in the capital city of the civs ranked on the top three in tech. That way you're almost guaranteed to get a new tech every 8 to 10 turns (because the AI civs are constantly stealing them from each other too so every new tech researched quickly gets passed around) until you eventually jump to close to first in tech, which is about as fast as you'd likely get them from research anyway. So the way tech stealing works now, completely abandoning tech research becomes the best way to win. And IMHO that's ridiculous.

Absolutely not, the max succeed rate is 97% with lvl 3 spy against no counterspy. I haven't looked into the spy automation, don't they ever put counterspies in capital? It's either bugged or AI is just dumb.

[EmperorPinguin]

Looks like AI is just dumb.

[yairm210]

• Spy 'automate counterintelligence' was broken - would immediately move out again -_-
• Cities were chosen randomly which is just ??? - now chooses based on max science, maybe we want something smarter but that's much better than previous
• First spy always set to counterintelligence in capital

Should be much better now
Spy assigning to basically 'round robin' other civs is questionable, but I'm leaving as-is for now