i think we've raied this before, but i still feel that there should be at least some discussion/testing somewhere on how we can better utilise offensive spy ops.

i agree and i know at least five others who do.
in individual servers, the ops should be more acquisitive and less destructive.

i do not quite undertand why land is sacrosanct but other commodities can be destroyed willy nilly.

oil and food raids should gain twice as much as currently but not destroy anything.
bomb banks should become steal ATMs where you acquire cash but do not destroy excess.

building a large spy base requires a tremendous amount of patience, planning and actual effort to find suitable targets not to mention the risk of being LGed by quick spurt strats.
Detmer had an interesting suggestion re: a formula demonstrating that the current reward for investment in spies is insufficient.

The objection people always raise against spies is that they are used by small countries against large countries. The concept we can not get across is that the time and effort required to build the spy base necessarily means that the country will be smaller than the countries that just lazily hit the research button 500 times or who cash all set long. our argument that the slower developing countries are not inherently inferior to the quick spurt strats just does not get through, i hope if we can ever get that point across, there will be movement on increasing spy effectiveness.