I SPY

[The Great Santini]

Is it possible with a little luck and some sneakiness to frustrate your opponents research advances? Some hypotheticals in the form of questions:(1)Say Germany and Italy score four advances each in intelligence. Would each Allied country have an 8% less chance of getting a reseach hit or 4% less chance? (2) Do intelligence advances apply against the U.S.S.R. and U.S. when they are still neutrals or only when they have entered the war? (3) Say the Axis gets good research hits in intelligence, doesn't invest in IW at all and the Allies put the typical 3 chits in researching this popular category? Could the Allies end up scratching their heads thinking they were unlucky when in fact their chances of getting a hit were significantly diminished?

[Blashy]

That is not how intelligence tech functions.

Terif is the best and explained very thoroughly the intricacies, lets see if he takes the time.

[Terif]

Intel has already been explained so many times...copy and paste will do it :

- intel never decreases the base chance each chit has (5% from lv 0 to 1, 4% from 1 to 2, etc..=5,4,3,2,1 system). Only if there is a tech difference betweeen 2 nations (no matter if neutral or active), then intel either increases the additional research bonus by 1 for each intel level difference, or it reduces this additional bonus by 1 for each intel level difference, but it can´t fall below 0, i.e. your base chance is still there !

- normal research chance =

% chance per turn = (5% -> 4% -> 3% -> 2% -> 1%) * applicable points in category

- bonus chance =

(% + highest enemy level - current level +/- intelligence modifiers) * applicable points in category

The normal research chance can only be increased by the bonus chance if a level of difference exists; it can never be reduced.

i.e. Intelligence can never block enemy research, it can only eliminate additional bonuses via tech differences and you will still have the normal research chance for each chit invested .

So Intelligence is pretty unimportant - doesn´t matter much if you have intel 0 or 5...makes perhaps a difference for getting level 4/5 in a tech since there you have only a normal research chance of 2/1% per chit which can potentially be boosted by intel considerably - but only if the enemy got lucky before you and is ahead in this tech area...otherwise it again doesn´t matter...

Most of the important techs are capped at level 3 anyway and there are much more important things to research than Intel, especially since both sides can only invest a limited amount of mpps into research - Intel chits would only block other research and I personally simply sell the intel chits so these chits can be redirected to something more useful .