AI Spaceship parts where are they??

How do I tell where the AI is building their spaceship parts? Is investigate city the only option? If so then that is an extremly expensive way to find out where it is being built. I am curious because I just lost a game because of the AI Building the spaceship and I could not find out where they were building the piece in time.

 

Plant a spy.

At that point you can view space race.
I don't know if it will show the exact city, but helps a lot in watching the space race.

 

Yeah I did that and that was when I realized how much trouble I was in. They had 9 pieces completed with only one more to go. I just could not find that one piece

 

creep---- there is the age old cure to the ai spaceship build. If they are ahead of you or you dont know where the piece is icbm their capital,spaceship problem solved.If the nukes havent flown yet a majority of the world will declare war, but your gonna lose to the space race anyway, so the possibility of surviving the onslaught outweighs "you have suffered a crushing defeat:"

 

I like the idea, and I had not thought of that. The whole world was at war anyway so it would not have really mattered as far as them declaring war on me.

The only problem in the game that I lost was I still had not discovered the technology to make nukes yet. I stopped researching and shifted to 100% tax rate (after I got tanks) instead and tried to find out where the city was by espionage. Next time I willl keep researching until I make it to Nukes and give that a try.

Thanks for the advice!!!

 

Is it sufficient to just nuke their capital, or do you have to capture the capital as well?