I guess the suggestion would be to define intel gathering spy ops (specifically "spy" but maybe spy on military, market, alliances) as not harmful and thus to keep these operations available in more situations.

Situation 1: In Tournament, GDI protects people less than half your size from attacks unless you declare war (then it changes to 8x). So if I see a low net country I know that I *might* want to attack it, but I can't do a spy op first. I have to declare war on it blind, and then see what I declared war on.

I don't like this. This is the main thing that gives rise to this suggestion.

Situation 2: It's the last 6 hours of an Express reset, and someone has recently attacked me. I want to retal, but I can't spy on his allies because of the last 6 hour attack freeze on countries that haven't harmed you. I have to estimate based on their networth.

Situation 3: I'm trying to make a landgrab in Primary. I want to spy on a country's allies but they're out of humanitarian range (4x). I have to estimate based on their networth.

These two situations I'm more ambivalent about.

I support this idea.