Drengin miss it too.

In other words, "win the game".  Brilliant.  Since theres no way to know who is targeting you, and as far as I can tell, *everyone* else is doing so, you are essentially saying "the poor gameplay experience will stop once you just play through the game anyways and it ends anyway".

Its no skin off my nose...there are other races to play in an otherwise great game, and Im certainly not trying to hassle Stardock too much...Im very appreciative of their continiued efforts.  I always play for military victory regardless of race, and while I dont enjoy the DA espionage , I could always live with it as long as you could tech up to turn it off. (being forced to tech up the same way every game and commit a tile on each world to a specific labor intensive building in order not to hate the game is by no means optimal, but at least it was an option). 

I also play medium or larger maps, so "exterminate the other races" is not a quick proposition...its what the entire game is about, sometimes over the course of days, and the situation I described above happened in the first third of the game.  But it would be nice to actually be able to play with the races designed specifically for conquest, which I wont do if those races are forced to suffer under the DA espionage system, or until DA espionage is hopefully overhauled in 2.0

Well, its the old DA espionage-hate argument, which I dont really want to dredge up again here...its been well documented on the boards for the last year and a half, is a common complaint, and Im sure the devs are aware of it by now. Sometimes its an issue, sometimes it isnt.

It just has to do with how large a map you're playing against,  how many opponents, and how early you manage to pull ahead in the game.  I think it probably works ok for smaller, faster games, but it doesnt scale well.  On medium and larger maps you simply can't keep up once you hit the top 2 in Civs, and everyone is carpet bombing you with spies, you have too many worlds protect, and spies only get more and more expensive with the larger economy, so if you bankrupt yourself, you *might* be able to manage a game of "whack a mole", barely keeping up, but nothing more.  Meanwhile your world's best tiles are perma gimped from constant spy attack, and the two or three turns behind where you are when you can remove them. The map is large enough and the opposing civs have enough worlds, they cant be quickly dispatched without a lengthy coordinated effort.

And to add insult to injury, this is all largely money that you're forced to waste, because spies have such little real value in the game other than as a fun tax/moeny sink.  Oh, not that using them doesnt have benefitrs that are generally positive...but theres nothing even remotely as beneficial as using that money for other purposes, like building another fleet, rush buying important buildings, or being able to run your tech slider higher, etc.  This is on top of the fact that the economy is generally trickier to manage in TA (which is a good thing).

Sometimes you arent targeted heavily because you dont pull ahead until later in the game, when you're basically sweeping the map, and half the civs are already dead, so its not a problem.  But it can happen early in the game if youre in a situation where you're forced to strike out early militarily or with influence and population numbers..or even playing a race thats *designed* to do so.  Even building a few gimpy defenders to deter from invasion can do it.

Without CE, the only way to protect against that kind of situation is to metagame, and basically puposefully try to to limit your civ's influence and rating, against the nature of the game, all in order to avoid being targeted.

For reference, I play medium or larger maps, on Crippling or Maso difficulty depending on the build.  This is my sweet spot, as I find the harder difficulties than that challenging, but they stop being fun, as its more about using exploits and metagaiming to survive the impossible AI tech bonus... so I dont really think Im playing on "too easy" a difficulty. I'm not a master player, but I am an experienced one, and know how to build my civ to max economy and population growth, so Im actually pulling ahead much earlier than I used to in games, and am being targeted earlier.  IN TA, regardless of race, by midgame Im usually making from 300 bc to 1000 bc per turn...every cent of which I could pump into spies and still not be able to pull ahead or keep up if its 8 against 1 espionage.

So its not so much that that the races are technically unplayable, as the DA espionage system doesnt scale well,  is too punitive for too little benefit,  can be horribly un-fun...and CE is the only way to shut it down and avoid that kind of situation.  As long as espionage is in this state, untiol 2.0 which will hopefully fix it, the ability to counter it really needs to be availiable for every race.

Another good thing to know is that you don't need to cancel every spy that comes at you.

If they block recruiting center or stock exhance, for example, just ignore them, since cost of spy grossly outweights any possible benefits of freeing the tile.

Eventually, spy cost will rise so much that other AI won't be able to muster many of them quickly to do futher damage.

Odd you mention a stock exchange as they are my second target when I use spies offensively.  A race's ability to create spies is based off of their economy.  The spy slider denotes a % of your income devoted to training spies.  Each spy has a cost associated to it.  By gimping another race's economy, you gimp their ability to fight back your spies.

Also to note on the comment of leaving the stock exchange alone, a military crawls on it's pocket book.  If you gimp a race's economy enough so that their income no longer can support the running costs and maintenance of their ships and they hit a perpetual -500bc, you just haulted all their military production...time for a monkey-stomping war.

I know it's not economical to do heavy spy wars as I do, but I enjoy the game more because of it.  I've clamped off the #1 race's pocket book to hault their military production, then watched as their empire crumbled once their current navy was destroyed w/ no ships replacing them.

This point of view also ignores the admittedly fuzzy "cost" of letting an enemy gain intel levels against you. I have no idea how serious the matter is in terms of hard game mechanics, but my role-playing side can't stand letting barbarians build spy webs that might eventually steal our techs.

I too play exclusively on large and medium maps, with the emphasis on large. I use around 5 or 6 AI opponents and play on Maso and some Obscene.

I think my play style is much like GW's. I build up techs and infrastructure and pull ahead once wars start. So I guess I don't get targeted. I also don't see any og the AI planets with many spies so for some reason, in my games, no one has spies. Maybe becauseI use them offensicvely early and the AI's are using up theirs to get rid of mine. Since I know I'll have the better economy, I will keep maing spies so my opponents will spend money they can't afford to. BTW what would happen if you bulldozed a structure that a spy was on? Will the AI lose that spy? A brand new stock exchange is only 1158 bc, probably less than a new spy.

I understand what your concern is. But as I said, its just those 2 races that have the problem. Just as with many many aspects of TA, with the race-specific stuff you have to play each race somewhat differently.

As a side note. I find it so intesting how differently this game plays for different people; sometimes you think you're playing an entierly different game. This gowes with Bingjack's experience as well as those that seem to always trigger the same mega events that others never get. I say the one race always stinks and someone else will say they fear that race. If I could bring myself to change my style maybe I'd see some different behavior. (I always say I'm going to be #1 in military at the start but i always fal back on building up my planets first).

Maybe its possible my economy just isnt very good.  Like I said, depending on race, by midgame, in TA,  Im usually making between 300 and 1000 Bc a turn.   By end game this is usually 1000-1500 a turn.  Without Mind Control Center econo cheese, I considered this a productive and successful economy.

But I have never seen anything like what Loupdinour  reports with triple digits in the spy pool, and a sustained one week creation time, nor have I seen anything that makes me think this would even be possible for me (Krynn notwithstanding) without having no money left over for meaningful spending, or even running at a defecit.  The cost for producing spies at that rate is always just prohibitively expensive, and it only goes up.  And from a pure cost /benefit ratio theres no good reason to waste that kind of money on spies.

As far as "turtling", I turtle just as anyone else with any race in the game...in that I dont attack until Im prepared for it and have  a distinct advantage, for however long that takes.  Though I do try to take out an easy mark minor race or a weak neighbor as early as possible to give me the breathing room to produce my war  machine.

Im an agressive colony rusher though, and try for the best "footprint" I can with any map, and coupled with my preference for econ, morale, pop growth bonuses, industrial political party, and the proliferation of easy to come by passive bonus techs in TA,  I can end up with a pretty influential map blob much earlier than I was in DA.  Crank out  a couple early game deterent ships to discourage invasion, and you can skyrocket to a prime espionage target pretty early on.  If youre playing as a race thats designed to attack early like the Korath, it only exacerbates the issue.

Blocking economy buildings makes sense in early game or on smaller maps, where there is actually possibility of reducing enemy economy good enough so their spy spending gets low.

But if AI blocks my economy builing in late game, I just leave him there. It's his wasted money.

That doesn't last forever, nearer to the end it turns into about 4-5 week training times.  Lots of ephasis on a strong economy makes for a great amount of spy training speed.

Sadly, the Iconians have a +100 Espionage vs the Krynn's +50.  I put my espionage project on hold until 2.0 comes out.  I had planned on mapping the spy cost formula as well as the exact effect +espionage gives.  The only thing I have accomplished in the way of clarity is the amount of spy-weeks that are required to reach each level of intelligence.  Knowing these numbers you can more effectively place spies to minimize response time the AI has.

I just finished a Drengin game, and the spies were pretty alarming. I'd say I probably averaged two per planet over the course of the game, which would include having half my tiles covered at one point. Fortunately that was close to the start, so they were quick and cheap to eliminate. Practically speaking, the Red Peril had two major impacts beyond the economic damage.

First, some jerk kept covering my recruiting centers. It was a small map, and the Jagged Knife has taken my second starting planet right after the Torians invited me to come kick their insect asses. So, I only had one planet with a population over 5b and a couple of smoldering ruins of Torian colonies. To make matters worse, the Torians and Terrans started in the same sector so my slave pits were now next door to the Terrans and Krynn. The short version is I really needed those recruiting centers to quickly populate my planets. My homeworld needed to provide a steady stream of conquistadors, and my new colonies needed some influence pronto.

Second, I wasn't the sharpest tool in the galactic shed, so tech stealing could have been a disaster. In fact, I was one of the worst races technology wise: logistics 7, tiny hulls, no planet improvements. The two things I had going for me were a high level beam weapons and a mammoth soldiering skill. Three ship fleets of Star Fury M7s along with the super dominator corvettes were enough to clear the skies, and I could win invasions outnumbered twenty to one or more. But if someone had stolen a decent beam weapon or soldering tech I'd have been in serious trouble. The larger hulls and deflectors other races had access too would've become a serious threat with state of the art weapons. And my small population was already limiting the amount of troops I could deploy, so theft of a soldiering tech would've been bad enough even if they didn't already have a technology lead.