[Taqwus]

Against a "fat cat" empire without much military (which might be guesstimated based on, say, the number of shipyards observed, the number of ships/stations, total systems... note that if the AI manages to get a human player to agree to a Partnership, a LOT of information flows both ways), aggressive use of intelligence ops might be extremely nasty.

I'm thinking, in particular, of economic disruption, crew insurrection (of the few ships that *are* there), and puppet political parties; even a smaller (population-wise) empire can have an advantage on intelligence points, and that advantage can be used as a weapon anywhere in the target's empire. For instance, it's possible to target homeworlds first with puppet political parties as long as you have line-of-sight to them, which you will if there's a partnership (think backstabbing). The fewer but higher-tech warships you have, the greater the impact of a captured ship, because you have fewer *other* ships with which to stop its rampage. And it's hard to put down a riot without a fleet, and hard to build a fleet when your colonies are are rioting.)

Likewise, if you send a high-tech ship to put 'em down, and they capture and analyze it, they've just gotten free tech upgrades... Ouch.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night