[Fyron]

I think one of the best improvements to SE5 (and I mention it often) would be to have intel tech at the start of the game.

I concur. This is why I added (small) intel generation to research labs in Adamant, so that you at least have some inherent defense against intel without researching the tech.

Intel is the opposite. It starts unshared, but the first thing you should do is share the point load across all projects.

I would disagree. Does this not also waste points when projects finish as with tech research? You can coordinate offensive projects finishing at the same time by moving them to the end of the queue one turn from completion until you have enough of them ready to go.

You do not have to be spending points in a CI project for stored points to work for defense. If you have equal spending turned on, you can not keep these projects 1 turn from completion for maximum defense potential.