Just to make it explicit, you do not have to be spending points in a CI project in a turn for the points stored in any CI projects to be used for defense during that turn. I do not know when this was changed, but one of the more recent patches (I think a Gold one) changed this from how it was before, where not having any points going into a CI project in a turn made all the CI projects unavailable for defense.
[ March 06, 2003, 17:55: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]