[DirectorTsaarx]

All right - I'll admit I'm wrong about the levels... this is from the Q&A on the MM website:

"Intelligence Defense projects merely provide points which are used to defend against enemy projects. The higher the level, the more points you can put into the project (cost), and the better they will protect you. The specific type of the offensive intelligence activity does not matter. Defense projects defend against them all."

The best (well, only) example here is the Technological Espionage op, which costs 150,000 points. A Level I counter-op (100,000 pts.) will never have enough points to counter Tech Espionage, but a Level II counter-op (250,000 pts.) will.

Which means the only reasons you'd want the higher-level counter-intel ops are:

1) You're worried about Technological Espionage.
2) You don't have "Repeat Projects" on, in which case you want the counter-ops to run as long as possible, just in case there's nothing to trigger the operation before you spend the full amount and have the counter-op "fail", at which point you have to remember to start a new operation.
3) You realize that the longer you have a single project going, the more likely it is that you'll have enough points built up in that project to counter an intel operation. Even with Repeat Projects on, if your counter-intel op completes before your enemies' intel op does, you lose all the points you built up. And, more importantly, have to build up again - and if the enemy finishes an expensive project one turn after you've finished/re-started a counter-intel project, the intel op may succeed against you, despite the counter-intel...

Although none of this explains why my one Counter-Intel II project completed as a failure; unless it didn't have enough points built up yet, and the Counter-Intel III projects _did_... Also doesn't explain why only the "cheap" projects succeeded against me... hmmmmm....