Interesting observations as Germany

[21oliver]

I am playing a hands off game (everything under AI control) as Germany and found a few things interesting. I watched for over a month while Munich wasn't fired, until i did it manually. the entire game so far (up to 1939) i was at 0 spies. The allocation was 0.93 throughout until the Anschluss bumped it up slightly. The AI was trying espionage in many nations and had pretty much zero spies in all of them, and yet if you were playing a different nation and trying to steal techs from Germany they would be killing your spies off in large numbers, when clearly the AI cant support doing that it appears. The allocation they are using would have to be all used against a single nation to have any effect. So this is another situation where by you say "hmmm does the AI cheat somehow? is there a handicap?". I found it interesting that the Ai teched up CA's past BBs and yet built none so far meanwhile it has 3 BBs in production. The Garrison troops sort of drives you crazy but we know about it, the random support units i think is terrible, wish that was better. Also alot of motorized infantry units, never really noticed that. Just some things that made me go hmm...

As i continued on, the AI was really slow at inviting nations (Hungary & Italy) into the Axis, even though they had plenty of diplo pts, what is that all about? Still no CAs (im not counting the Graf Spree...).

 

[Opanashc]

AI spends 3% of its LS on spies.

 

[21oliver]

I knew there was a set %, what gets me is if you play hands off Germany, you notice there is pretty much zero spies... and yet if you play someone else you simply cannot tech steal from Germany. IMO they simply dont allocate enough resources to fend off someone intentionally trying to steal from them, and yet somehow it works out that way.

 

[Opanashc]

Nations usually get 10 spies at home which is enough to defend themselves...

 

[21oliver]

Yeah but Germany cant replenish its spies all that quickly with less then 1 LS invested. Do the new spies automatically replace the home spies first? Its easy to steal techs from the west and very difficult to steal from Germany so i guess it all comes down to the ministers and the faction buff?

 

[Opanashc]

There is a set priority for replenishing spies. Home spies are at Tier 3 (most important), enemies at Tier 3 or 2, everyone else of interest at Tier 1 - by the AI.

 

[21oliver]

Ok thx

 

[nimrod123]

their are also faction and government modifers on tech stealing. axis, facist has the biggest boast to stoping tech theft

 

[21oliver]

Yeah im aware of all the buffs, i was surprised at how little they actually allocated to spies and how except for Germany they had pretty much no spies anywhere else. Im just wondering if you devote your spies to killing theirs and you have a stockpile of spies how you cant steal more techs, they simply cannot keep up with you if their allocating 0.93 for the first 2 years.