[raynor]

From reading other topics, here is my understanding of how intel works:

It takes a certain amount of points in a counter-intel project to defend against an enemy intel project. All enemy intel projects "battle" your counter-intel projects on a one-to-one basis. So, if your enemy is running two intel projects against your one counter-intel project, one of them is possibly going to succeed.

When a counter-intel project accumulates enough points to defeat an intel project, the counter-intel project is terminated.

The higher level counter-intel projects allow a single project to accumulate more intel points and thus be capable of stopping larger intel projects.

An empire with a small amount of intel points should run a small number of counter-intel projects in order to insure that each one will accumulate enough points fast enough to stop enemy projects. An empire with a large amount of intel should run the max number of counter-intel projects to stop as many intel projects as possible.

I agree with Triumvir Emphy about the higher level CI projects. Their purpose is to counter intel projects that cost more. The premise here is that if you don't have CI 2 or CI 3, then you can't counter those higher level projects--not because you don't have that level project running but because your CI 1 project will NEVER accumulate enough points to stop it.

The main problem with spending so much on intel and accumulating a million points in a CI project is that all those points are going to be wasted when your CI project counters a tiny little 10,000 point enemy intel project.

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 05 March 2001).]