How many find it wortwhile to pay for espionage-actions?

[Ralf]

Im just curious. Currently espionage-actions is VERY expensive, to say the least. I have never even tried to finance any kind of espionage-actions, so far. Not because its "too hard", but because its not particularly smart & intelligent to waste so much money on espionage-actions, considering all the alternative things you can do with that kind of Civ-money.

As I understand it one can tweak the espionage-costs in the upcoming patch. But shouldnt they lower the game-default costs also, to more reasonable levels?

[Bilo]

I use the investigate city missions when I have to race with the AI for a specific wonder; if I see that I'm going to lose the race, I don't bother to try building the wonder.
After investigating the cities I load the game, so the investigate city missions are free as they used to be in CIV II.

[Rust]

Iv'e planted spies, used propaganda, investigated cities, and stolen technology. The technology probably the most. I rarely sabotage production, it dosn't seem to destroy all of it. The others are somewhat useless. You need to have Adam Smiths and Wall Street, with at least 5000 saved up.