Spying makes Defenses obsolete?

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.

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

Zephyr

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.