Spying makes Defenses obsolete?

Just a question - If I am going to attack a planet with planetary fleet defenses or ground defenses (I can't remember their names), why wouldn't I just drop a spy on them and then attack? Since the effect is immediate and the defender has no time to counteract the spying, doesn't this strategy render all defensive buildings useless?

Dano

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

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I haven't tried it, but it seems like a spy should disable a Planetary Defense tile. But off the top of my head I can think of two mitigating factors: 1) you need to have the spy on hand, and 2) the Counter Espionage Center would block this tactic.

I'm also not sure what happens now when you take a world that has one of your spies placed. I vaguely recall from an earlier build that this left a "stuck" spy. I'm pretty sure that's different by now, but I don't know for sure or what the diff might be.

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Spies can't operate on a Orbital Defence Tile, so it is not possible to knock out all defence...

Zephyr

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The exploit is you set the spy right before you invade, as in immediately

Solution: spies don't go into affect until 1 turn after they've been placed, giving the AI a chance to counterspy them out.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Spies can't operate on a Orbital Defence Tile

Zephyr, can you confirm this for Planetary Defence tiles also? Your post makes me wonder if Orbital Defences might be different b/c they affect units instead of just boosting the soldiering stats for a colony.

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yano, so far i have not been able to outspy the computer... they usually neutralize my spies in one turn, so have a one turn delay would really make me question the use of spies until i have obscene amounts of cash income

just my 2 creds on the matter

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They don't always negate the spies right away, especially if the AI is being ganged up on. I usually put spies on their farms on the turn before I invade. 12-18 billion worlds drop down to 6 by the next turn and wham, easy invasion. So easy I think it's a cheese tactic.

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That farm trick definitely needs looking at. I think it would work better if the population died off over time rather than all dropping dead instantly.

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To G.W. Swicord.

Spies can close down the planetary defence, but they can't be used on Omega defence system and Orbital Defence...

On other matters:

I saw your post recently on my post about planetary defence and by what you wrote it seems like we have a somewhat similar playing style I guess (You said something about you liked to somewhat put a “Role-playing” effort into the game).
By that I mean I feel like this: It is not important for me to win a game, the fun part for me is how to play the game.
Actually I find that some of my most interesting games ( medium map/ on Painful + no Tech trading) have been those where I from the start decided to only colonize one or two planet and then wait until I was attacked and first then acquired more planets by invasion.
As a result to this I have lost a good handful of games but it has been a really fun and interesting struggles to keep alive.

As to your interest in Planetary Defence I have just discovered that this Planetary improvement dose not add to your soldiering ability but add to your ship Defence in orbit aroud your planet!

Witch I find really sad as I always have been under the impression that it helped me in the planetary battles Troops against troops…

Zephyr.

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I had never thought of the farm trick... that cheese definitely needs to be fixed.

I don't think I've ever seen the AI build a planetary defense building. They do build the orbital defense one but not very often.

Spies are still something I still don't take full advantage of in the game other then having a few around to nullify the occassional spy on a planet without the counter espionage building. Even then I really only bother to remove them if on a key building of a key planet. I find that the AI tends to nullify any spy I put out within one or two turns of my placing it. So maybe I'm doing something wrong but it seems as if spies need more depth and maybe a branch in the tech tree to help improve them.

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