Generic Espionage in DA?

I know that in DA we have agents that we use to wreck havoc on other races, however - how do we do generic Espionage.

It's simply based on the number of spies you have active in the other empire. The more spies you have out there, the higher your espionage level with that empire will be.

but rather double or triple the effectiveness of counter spies that are working on that planet.

It doesn't work that way--when you use a spy to counter another, it destroys both. You don't plant spies on your own worlds to lie in wait for enemy spies. As such there's not really any way to modify their effectiveness since it's an either-or sort of thing.

PS - Does anyone know, is it possible to learn a Spies origin when you catch them?

No, they just get nullified antd that's it.

We need an option to spy on someone, without hurting them.

Perhaps placing a spy on an initial colony or empire capital would do that, with maybe a side effect of a chance of gaining techs when they are researched?

AI's should gang spy the strongest player though- or the one with the best econ.

I agree with the commenters: I don't always want to cause harm to the other players, I don't usually want to risk the incident (I assume getting caught spying is a negative). But I do always want to know what my opponents (and friends!) are up to...

I agree with the commenters: I don't always want to cause harm to the other players, I don't usually want to risk the incident (I assume getting caught spying is a negative). But I do always want to know what my opponents (and friends!) are up to...

You can do this. Plant multiple spies on their worlds and then immediately remove them all. You can do this all in one turn, so it doesn't hurt them at all. I think it takes 9 spies on their planets at one time to get the highest espionage level, then you can remove all the spies because the espionage level is permanent.

Also, there's no diplomacy modifiers with spies because you never know who the spies on your worlds belong to.

AI's should gang spy the strongest player though- or the one with the best econ.

They seem to like to send them after the guy with the highest military rating.

In my own game, there was a fair amount of spying being done on the Drath, since they were the economic and military power. By end game, though, all their economy meant squat. The other AIs weren't too aggressive about focusing agents onto their opponents, but I sure was... I basically shut down the Drath Legion, so when I (and everyone else) eventually went to war with them, they couldn't do a thing.

The only way I could have seen them getting out of it would be to rush to counter espionage and building it on their worlds, since there was no way their economy could make enough agents that late in the game to neutralize that many spies. It seems fair... it might only be one tile for each planet, but they really didn't stand a chance without it.

Also, anyone else think that there should be more espionage related techs, to increase espionage ability (at the very least)?

Plant multiple spies on their worlds and then immediately remove them all.

This seems to have changed in 2B. Unless I've done something weird, you seem to have to leave spies in place for at least one turn before you get an intel stream. I'm really glad to see more people showing interest in having a clear separation between data collection and sabotage.

Even though I've done a fair amount of grumbling on this point, I still really like the saboteur units. I *don't* think the "fair fix" here is an option to turn off the new spying. I'm starting to wonder why we can't just have both--two espionage sliders, one for intel and one for building your spy cadre.

I for one am absolutely interested in a clear separation between intelligence and sabotage functions, enough so that I am feeling a little angst about purchasing DA if one doesn't exist. James Bond is fiction, spies do not spend the bulk of their time killing people and blowing stuff up, that's what a military is for. Assasination and sabotage are specialist / special forces type work. Ideally there'd be two different agent types a la Total War, but I realize that's a major code overhaul.
What I'd suggest that might be doable is to allow spies to be placed on unusable tiles (not unused, unusable). Then, the existing spy code can allow them to carry out their primary mission of blowing up the swamps, oceans, mountains, polar ice caps, etc. and no harm is done, while they continue their trivial side task of spying. Obvioulsy the "mission" to blow up a swamp should have a pretty high chance of success.