Protection against diplomats?

Open borders is more important than diplomats, which gives you modest boost at most to their tourism influence over you.

If you're that troubled by it, dow to remove theirs. I just don't think we want a system where you can remove a diplomat. Because it will probably be convoluted and the AI won't handle it well enough such that they will always be at a disadvantage. I think it will stack the deck more towards human players.

Yeah, but I always felt that designers could have done so much more with Spies. They are bit limited in their use. They can influence CS, which doesn't do much unless you already have some influence over the city (they can, but it's harder for them to rig elections without it), and they can coup, which has the same problem. I never found intrigues all that useful, since I want to spy on AI that I am already on bad diplo and one intrigue shared won't help much. War will eventually start.. And I just hate when AI manages to coup your CS while having 10% to do it. :angry: and not to mention that AI can manage to steal your high tech while you have Cons\Police Stations, NI and 3rd ranking Spy in your Capital.

Spies could, maybe crippling town's food, production, mess up their unit production (less experience), maybe cripple bit of happiness. Right now, they are bit limited in use, you can steal few techs (if you're lucky) and then there's not much to do with them beside moving them to rig elections.