Continuing spending after espionage hits 'advanced'?

i wonder about this as well.

I *think* that espionage level is a function of the ratio of your total spending to that empire's population, so that eventually you'll have to restart espionage once their population goes up too far. I've never seen my espionage level go up duirng war, though, so I can't confirm this.

They also say that you'll start to receive technology from them periodically, but I've never received a single tech from a species that I've got full espionage on. Do you need to leave your espionage funded with that species to get the techs, or what?

Tech receipts from espionage dont start coming in till later in the game ( and it is usually much later in the game). Having the 'Luck' trait is also bennificial to this as well i believe.

Well, I can't guarantee how espionage funding works but they say you can turn off the spending when you reach advanced and thats what I do. I continue to get stolen techs long after i have turned of the spending so if it runs down it runs down slow.

Now, the stolen techs are great but if you want to talk about the accuracy of the info provided by espionage, it is apparently about as reliable as the real life intelligence that we see in the news. In other words take it with a grain of salt.

Count the ships shown in the diplomacy screen and then compare it to your espionage report, you will see what I mean. I am also pretty sure that your spys are duped by any improvements like spin control etc that distorts military power.

I think that your level of espionage should go down after a while when your relative level of spending drops, especially if you drop spending down to zero. It seems a bit cheesy if this is not the case.

Actually once you hit an "Advanced" level of esp. for a race, the foreign page's Report screen actually says "no further espionage needed, we know everything we need to know about this race" or something like that. Basically what Esp. does for you in this game is 'unlock' their racial stats for your perusal and let you (later) snoop on their planets, as long as you can find them on the map. I always dial the spending off once I hit Advanced because you're done and it's just a waste of cash after that. Unrealistic, but there ya have it.

Count the ships shown in the diplomacy screen and then compare it to your espionage report, you will see what I mean

I've counted the number of visible ships/fleets of another race once, and found the diplomacy screen to be missing quite a few. I've also tried to give a ship to an ally, but it wasn't on my list to give.

I've also tried to give a ship to an ally, but it wasn't on my list to give.

Ive also noted the same thing, but Ive seen that i CAN NOT trade contructors, just warships. I tried helping my ally by giving him all my crontructors but i couldnt since they dont show up in the diplomacy sreen. Wish I could, since my ally sucks and i'd like to help him with some cash and constructors.


Monc34