I recently watched DevilDogFF's excellent Let's Explore videos. They give a quick but informative run-through of the changes to GalCiv III made by Crusade. I would like to second his opinion that some of the information on the Report and Stats tabs in the Govern screen should be hidden by default but unlocked with espionage. Below is a link to the part of the video where he shows the screens and discusses it:
I am ok with most of the Reports information being displayed as long as you've encountered the race and seen their ships, but the Stats screen goes too far. You would need boots on the ground to gather that level of detailed information on an adversary. Exact happiness ratings of the other empires? Numbers of ships and starbases built? That's intel that base level spies (information analysts) gather and put into reports for their bosses. That sounds like something you should get from the first level of a Citizen Spy.
That's my opinion.
P.S. The expansion looks GREAT. Can't wait to play it.
I agree with you.
Not so sure about that. Civilian interaction is a thing - influence wouldn't be possible otherwise, everyone but the Drengin (who habitually eat other species) has tourism going, trade occurs, etc - and a lot of that information could be gauged by or learned through those interactions. It's high-level details like the exact configuration of ships and such would take more deliberate work.
Meh. Whatever. I've never liked espionage in any 4X. The idea of managing individual agents with the scope of the rest of the game is silly to me. In any game like this that lets you disable it, I disable it. Rather focus on other stuff than have to counter weak AIs managing to pillage vastly superior empires (mine) via espioncheese.
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