On the topic of spying by the AI:
Most of the advantages that the AI could be doing are more likely the result of the AI getting its special "advantages" of knowing resource and unit locations as programmed by the developers. In previous Civ3 builds, quick technology advances could easily be explained by one civ rampantly trading with other civs after they found the next great thing. This allows for the civs to spreadout their efforts. I heard the rampant trading behavior of techs was toned down but I doubt this is completely changed.
On the topic of civ3, civ2 and espionage costs:
I'm sorry, espionage costs too much. How often during the game do you have that much money to get troop movements or subvert a city? It might make it "realistic" but it also makes the feature uncommon to access and impractical in terms of making it fun to play. Subverting a city should cost less, so that we can know whether or not it truly works. It's never works for me right now because I can't use it enough and spending thousands of dollars is never worth just rolling out 50 units and taking some border cities and signing a treaty.
In Civ2, you're all right, you could turn out a lot of spies and a lot of gold to subvert cities, but you are also missing a lot of the things that went into that strategy. First you had Commerce which gave you gold out the wazoo (fixed by using "wealth" now which gives you far less in gold). Then you had spies as units which had to travel across the borders to get to the city and could be easily ejected by a defensive unit before they got to a city (zones of control and the AI from SMAC fix that, it was not that easy to rage a war of conquest in SMAC because you could never get units close enough). And finally, you have in Civ3 where democracies are immune to propoganda.
Should the cost be higher than in Civ2? Absolutely. Should it be lower in Civ3? Absolutely. Its simply not an option used very much at all in Civ3. The army doesn't buy unusable weapons. Programmers should not program unusable features in their games.
On the topic of Panda's Signature:
I sincerely apologize for the childish nature of my country and hope to vote the fool leading it out in 2 years.
