I found that I cannot go above 4 spies, I was spending tons of money to get them and found I was actually wasting that money (which I hate, I'm a penny pincher), and I now have up to 90K+ saved. I am playing on gigantic, abundant, normal and am pretty much owning the game.......

What I'd do is ratchet up my spending of spies, and seems that if I tried to go over 4 spies I'd get them, but just lose any beyond 4 on the planet they had been put....so seems you cannot go above 4, at least not while having any on a planet actually spying while stockpiling.......

So even if I tried to go above 4 with max spending on espionage, It would effectively be just flushing that money down the toilet.........

I can understand the value of putting spies on farms before invasion to effectively cripple an enemy, but not sure what morale buildings before invasion would actually do? I haven't tried it, but just thinking about it, doesn't seem like it would help at all, while farms would of any above 6 billion you could easily place a spy or two for one turn to drop their pop, making invasion easier......

No, I think you had a particular and unique experience. I've saved up 15 spies and plopped them down all at once. Needless to say, the AI didn't just nullify 11 of them right away. In fact, I'm not sure where you got the idea that 4 was a magic number. Perhaps I'm wrong, and I'll be interested to hear if others agree with you.

This makes a percentage of the population unhappy with their present situation. This can be a big boost to 'Information Warfare'. This tactic is a little pricey, but you can entice up to 40% of the planet's pop to come over to your side and fight with you. The biggest advantage to this strategy (other than the ready supply of soldiers) is the lack of damage to planetary improvements. Good strat for taking a well-built planet.

Intelligence gathering in GalCiv 2 DA is definitely much different than before. I am not too thrilled with it yet overall however. I agree that in the example given about utilizing spies to take down a civ econimically is brilliant and impressive - but - not necessarily realistic. I also agree that the ability to navigate and view all planets resources and structures by using a spy to browse them all seems to offer an unfair advantage to the player and again not realistic. I've always loved the spying/intel gathering side of these games. So some of this may not be possible, but here's some ideas I'd enjoy seeing:
1) An allocation of resources (BC's) toward all spying and intel activities. These would be divided up into new sliders (similar to how you allocate resources to military, social and research) to the following areas:
a) General Intel gathering - to determine alliances, peace treaties, economic treaties, economic status, ships, tech levels, etc. but without harming planetary structures.
Hiring of spies - for missions as is done now - including starports - why not take a chance to disable a key planets starport - high risk - sure - but high reward if it works.
c) Political interference - attempting to create ill will among current allies or neighboring civs to your benefit.

I'd also enjoy having available a handful of spy structures (similar to research structures) so you could increase your spy network abilities through traning and infrastructure, etc.

Also, spies shouldn't be so easily caught. They are spies after all. As spies complete successful missions, like ships survive battles, their level of skill should increase - thus making them more effective later on - and - encouraging players to balance the need of a spy to do a mission with the desire of having the spy come back alive with increased abilities. Perhaps nullifying a spy has a 50/50 chance of being killed - or - having a chance to escape. At which point, he'd then be out for a series of turns until he manages to work his way back to home turf.

I realize programming any or all of this would be a huge undertaking - but I am suggesting it could add a whole new layer to what already is a fantastic game.

Curious what ideas others have for spying usage in the current game and what others would like to see in a possible future game.

Thanks for reading!

I actually did this in a game. I didn't want to take my small fleet against the heavy militarized drengin but I noticed that they had built a lot of approval and influence buildings on their capital planet right next to one I had just taken. Being at war with two other ai's I decided to just drop all my spies on their entertainment and secret police buildings on their capital and 5 turns later their approval was down in the teens. I got the news message about their senate turning against them. Their citizens stopped doing anything on that planet and it was mine a few turns later without a fight.

Very nice. I have used this tactic myself, against the Korath. I'm a big fan of espionage; it's nice to know that others are finding interesting ways of utilizing it.

Ditto. Espionage is very cool. One big thing people may not realize is, once you reach Advanced espionage level, you see all their ships' autopilot routes. You couple that with Eyes of the Universe, and you know EVERYTHING about that race. They're not going to blind-side you on anything. So it's a very good idea to espionage every race you can that's not at Advanced already, even during peacetime, because when war does start, seeing their autopilots is a huge advantage. Once you reach Advanced, switch all your agents to spy on another race. They'll nullify your agents more quickly, but it's worth it.

actually you get the ability to see where they are going with low level of espionage. I know this because in the game I'm still playing ( should make an AAR of it), I've only reached medium levels on all but two of the races still alive. Which means I don't have high or advanced on any of them....yet I do have Eyes of the Universe and knowing where their target is (shows a dotted line where they want to go) and it does help alot in making sure I am able to cut them off and destroy them....

the 5 parsec / week really hurts, and I wish there was a way to get rid of that stupid rule....

The tourism thing I don't think I make as much as I use to compared to my overall income, I started ramping up my income and my tourism is probably about 25% of the total now, maybe half....switching to higher levels of government and researching the higher banking levels has made my economy stronger overall....