Spies came in handy for me at the end of a game. I was in a race for the technology victory with the Altarians. We were pretty much neck and neck, but then I put a couple of spies on some of their larger research facilities, and was able to pull ahead and get the win. I've found that they are more useful at slowing down your opponents rather than actually stealing info from them.
very much agree. Something that works really well in the early/mid game is dropping a few spies on morale/econ tiles of a large threatening aggressor while bankrolling the smaller guys with cash, ships, and weapons techs. The aggressor is suddenly losing tons of cash and often winds up losing ground while they try to put their economy back together. It works great if your krynn since your +morale bonus's let you jack the tax rate up so high that you make tons and tons of credits without neading to cover your planets with too many virtual reality centers.
