If Galactic Civ III is to have spies in this game like it did in the previous one I have some thoughts on this subject.
There should be two kinds of spying. One is by gathering intel by decoding transmissions. This way, we could occasionally discover alien tech developed by races who don't bother upgrading their communications protocols.
On example, is that the British let the Soviets to believe that Enigma was secure and the Soviets used it for their communications after the war. The British were able to listen in on phone transmissions from East Germany by tapping on the phone lines.
The second way is to place an operative. I was thinking of the necessary conditions for this to happen:
1 - Our civ is at peace with the civ we are spying on and we either have a trade route or the other race has tourism revenue.
2- We have colonies of the same race as the civilization we want to spy on or of the same race as a civilization which is trading with the civ we want to spy on and we are at peace with the race which is trading with the race we want to spy on. We can then pay that civ to plant the operative with their trade route.
3- We are at war with the race we want to spy on but that race has tourism active and we have colonists of a race other than our own.
How we get citizens from other races: We either purchase their colony ships. We can also purchase their transport vessels and upgrade them to colony ships. Or our survey ship finds a colony ship. We then found a colony using those ships.
