Espionage(bug?)

[Medo]

Hi everyone!
I was just wondering when you reach certain levels of inteligence -due to your espionage spending on that race-
do you get more detailed info. on the race?
The thing is that I can see on the stats.screen all of their abilities,military,... from the moment i encounter them?
Now is this a bug?
Thanks

[bonscott]

Once you get to Low you'll be able to see stats on ships and basic starbase stats for example. You'll only be able to see some stuff on the stats screen. The higher your espionage level the more stuff you'll find out. I don't know the exact details of what you find out at each level but it might be in the GalCiv 2 Wiki.

[Hansolo88]

I'll ask these questions here to avoid opening a new thread...

Does anyone know if your espionage level can go down if you reduce or elminate spending? Or are you always assured a level once you reach it, even if you cut spending to zero the next turn. Ideally, seems like it should decay over time if you cut spending, but I haven't messed around with it enough to see if it actually does.

Second, what is the deal with espionage and Minor Races? There doesn't seem to be a way to set spending, so how does this work?

Ahh, one more thing, it seems you can't trade ships/bases from Minors. For example, you can't trade for a Mining Starbase that a minor has built, even if you are willing to pay very very well for it.

Any answers? (i.e. bonscott...)

[bonscott]

I'll see if I can try.

1) As far as I know espionage level will not go down. At least in GalCiv 1 it didn't. And for example in that game once I reached "High" I turned off espionage because I didn't care for getting it any higher. Saved me bucks.

2) You can't spy on minor races (no real need to anyway)

3) Yes, I've noticed this too. My guess is to close up an exploit from GalCiv 1 where you could buy your entire military from a minor, it would appear outside their planet, then use it immediately to attack them. Ouch.

[jikor]

Espionage won't go down but if you leave spending up for it after you reach high you can steal technologies from them if they have more then you or ones you don't have. Im not sure exactly what the rate is but I think it increases if you spend a lot more.

[Hansolo88]

Awesome, jikor, I like that feature. Have you successfully done it yet?

[Gufnork]

I have stolen quite a few technologies. I played my first game as Dratha on Painful difficulty and I went overly enthusiastic in the economy department. Instead of micromanaging my colonies again to improve I decided to dump my money into espionage. I can't say that it's worth it, though. I never really used the espionage information since anything useful can easily be found anyway. But, if your economy is better than your production you could use it to "buy techs", something not otherwise possible, but invading their planets is a lot cheaper.