Espionage: Crippling Economies

[lankypeter]

If you have enough money to pay for it and you have enough spies to pull it off, does anyone think it would be beneficial to Spy Spam another Civ and destroy (3.13 - downgrade) all of (or a lot of) that Civ's towns to "crash" that Civ's economy?

I have really only tried this one time in my most recent game, and I picked Justinian mainly because he just really pissed me off when he settled a city on my continent (he has been pushed back across the pond in my game if you will). But he has dropped a good deal in the score rankings. I just don't have any idea how much of that drop is because of my dilligent destruction of his economic infrastructure.

Anyway, does anyone know for sure or are least have a good idea if this is worth it against an AI Civ?

 

[Bushface]

I have found it effective to (a) sabotage all his happiness resources, and foment unhappiness (this should start his cities starving) then (b) sabotage his food resources, including irrigated farms. These are fairly cheap missions. Only then, spies and EPs permitting, go for his buildings. Making an enemy very unhappy, and possibly unhealthy, seems to be much more weakening than going for his economy.
But to do this successfully does indeed require the use of lots and lots of spies. It's pointless to attack only one or two cities at a time - the spy assault has to be massive, widespread, and maintained.