AFAIK the odds for a succes are just 32% for the immediate steal option.
The price was ~450g about 25 turns ago when I shut down research. Could not research republic at acceptable speed then, so I used my spare gpt to fill the treasury. The steal-price went up by time (depends on # techs the other civ has and if their capital is town/city/metro), so I was fearing not to be able to pay for the steal soon enough (Bab's seem to advance fast, they're in rep anyways). OTOH the Babs wouldn't trade rep around in the meantime, thus it stayed too damn expensive to buy. In turn 108, I wasn't even expecting to have enough money for the steal and I went happy-go-lucky assigning worker jobs
and moving some horsies around... (>preparing/blocking tiles for a possible sneak sea-invasion by Bab's).
At the end of that turn, I checked espionage to get an actual cost overview and found the immediate-steal button eventually enabled
; despite of lots of my units having moved already and since the Bab's could not threaten towns or units in a first strike (they have no roads at the border, nor units sitting there), I risked the stealing (>must push things due to shocking F11 data). Some war on my continent would have to take place sooner or later. I should have been able to bribe Korea/Germany and to hold (at least) my grounds.
Since Aggie (and recently Oystein) published the espionage probabilities, I got quite used to tech stealing in SP. I favour a shot at republic and at nationalism, when the civ in question has a monopoly and may be 'worth' a war anyways (in case of a fail).
The odds seem not so good, though, but 'on avarage' diplo steal is still MUCH cheaper than buying, especially if the rival's capital is a (nearby!) 'city' at the most (plays a condiderable role with respect to cost for an early steal). Plus, chances are trading the stuff around while the inventor of the tech doesn't get a portion of any gold.
(btw: if anyone is quite familiar with the expose mission: I wonder if succes chances are
always 80% in case there's someting to expose)
Now in this game, 600g sounds much, but it *is* cheap.
Bab's would no way accept 600g and ~35gpt for a republic trade (and even if they would, Hammurabi could gold-plate his nose
). Researching would take money
and time.
Assuming worst case scenario, i.e. war broke out:
600g lost, but 35gpt should have been enough to bribe Korea/Germany. Granted, I wouldn't have had the republic (would leave it to lone scientist during war, originally assigned in turn 84), yet the score leading Babs would have been in trouble which is good for me (capturing Babylon w/ TGL, Pyr, MoM would have been totally out of question atm, though).
In consequence, I just couldn't resist to steal at 32% succes chance.
Just played 109, Germans smell anarchy and get a 20g tribute.
