hey all. How do you land grab but still maintain the optimal level of tech you have already acquired through research. This you have to do while you are switching strategy. Buying tech is not an option though.

I had this similar problem last time i played a couple years back and don't want to fall short on the amount of tech i should have when I switch.

either you grab as techer or buy techs or have tech ally/allies from who you leech tech.

also you could tech those techs you need so much over max that land gains from grabs don't drop your tech% much/at all but that would be waste of time since no actual benefits.

All except techers buy tech. Unless you have really good buddies who don't mind you leaching tech. I guess the question depends on what you consider as optimal. If buying to keep optimal tech is stunting growth, then your optimal % is too high and needs to be lowered, or you are carrying too much military expenses.

k, decision made.

whats a tech leech. that sounds like a rather disgusting role to play. A leech!

a tech leech is when you have a research alliance with somebody who is teching, so you gain points off their research, but you are not spending your turns researching tech, so your tech ally gets nothing in return.

it happens quite often, some people find it deplorable, but i think they more dislike specific people and will essentially yell and scream over anything that they themselves don't do.

some allow leeching if they get paid for it (military or money/bushels) or get def-ally from leecher.

I allow leacing if I have trade agreement also and allies help me out.

I can see players getting up to 500 Acres when they landgrab from players withing -+ $300000 of their nw . How is it that they can gain so much land in one strike? Is there a way of determining that a target would give you lots of land in an attack. Anything less thaan 100 acres - unless the 100 acres is packing plenty assets in there - is useless

oh and my next question is about planned strike and standard strikes. When a player has an ally, how are you calculating your attack? Are you supposed to know the ally defense strength too? so in other words you got to spy out ally too. that's three spy checks 2 for target and 1 for ally,

and if you can't get a spy op how do you guess a target's defense strength. could someone explain that process to me?

you need to do 3-4 spyings if you are gonna grab, normal, ally and ally/allies op/ops, if you can't get op its best find other target or try calcing rough break but that's not easy.

Attacking is guestimation. As a general rule of thumb, it's not worth doing Spy on Alliance and spying on the respective def allies. I usually over send by 50-60%, assuming that the guy I am attacking has 2 def allies with the same defense as him.
The only time I would bother with doing all my research is if I only plan on doing one PS for the day for HUGE acres, then I'll do my due diligence.