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Originally posted by Magus38:
I am hoping you guys can answer these questions as I am getting nailed constantly by intel attacks.
First, this has been a much-discussed topic; sometimes fairly emotional discussions. But you're right, the manual is very thin on this point; MM has a couple Q&A's on the website about it, but they only help a little.
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1) The explanation of Counter Intelligence implies that as long as the project is running it will act as a shield against attack. Does it matter how many intel points are applied to it? If not then why make it more expensive when it goes up levels?
Yes, it matters. Points spent on a project will be applied as defense against an incoming project. (see answer to number 4)
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2) Whenever Counter Intelligence completes the turn logs mentions that it prevented attacks from ONE enemy empire. Does it protect against only one empire then? Should I have more than one Counter Intelligence project running then? Say, one per enemy?
Counter-Intelligence protects against ONE PROJECT. If an empire uses multiple intel projects (and they ALL do), you need multiple counter-intel projects for each empire. Fortunately, you don't have to specify a "target" for counter-intel, so as long as you have 2 or 3 for each enemy you'll block many attacks. Especially if you have more intel points to spend than they do...
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3) This question relates to question 1 as the answer will help to determine if I should be devoting more intel points to Counter Intelligence or if that is irrelevant just as long as the project is running. If, as is implied by the log, that one instance of Counter Intelligence only protects against one empire's attacks, does it protect against all attacks from that empire for the duration of the project, or from only one attack?
See answer above (i.e., each Counter-Intel blocks one attack).
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4) Finally, does anyone know how the "protection" is calculated (a level two attack having only a 20% chance of success vs. Counter Intelligence III, to give a hypothetical example)?
Protection is calculated purely on points. If the enemy is working on a 10,000 point project, you can counter it by spending 10,000 points on a counter-intelligence project. (The Settings.txt file implies that there's actually a bonus for counter-intel points, so you may only have to spend about 8,000 points to block a 10,000 point project, but I can't confirm that). And, BTW, the Counter-Intelligence project will "complete" at that time. So you didn't have to spend 100,000 points to complete it, you only spent 8,000 or 10,000 or something like that.
Having said that, why bother with higher-level counter-intelligence projects? Only because they take longer to complete. Which means the protection is "active" a little longer. In case you haven't noticed, if a Counter-Intelligence project completes normally (i.e., you spend all 100,000 points on level 1 CI, etc.) the operation FAILS. As in, no project was blocked because there was nothing to block. At which point (if you were smart and chose "Repeat Projects" or you just keep careful track of it), a new Counter-Intel project starts. But it takes time to build up points in that project, and until you have enough points built up to block an attack, you're vulnerable.
Hope this helps; the most important points are, 1) run multiple Counter-Intel projects (at least 2 per enemy); and 2) turn on "Repeat Projects" for Intel.
Oh, and build lots of Intel Facilities, so you can generate more Intel than the enemy. You can also try running the "Intelligence Sabotage" project to directly defeat an empire's intelligence projects without having to use a Counter-Intelligence project. But beware; the AI's use Counter-Intelligence too...