Are intelligence abilities too powerful?

I agree. There needs to be a better balance of Intelligence abilities or success rates in the area of plague attacks and maybe some other areas being toned down and increasin the AI ability to build more intelligence centers to defend from such attacks.

In addition, there are numerous problems with the way Intel is handled that I'd like to see changed. Maybe someday I'll dive into the Intel scripts but don't count on me.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Does going pure intelligence win vs a person going pure research in a 1v1 game?

It depends on a lot of factors...

It's probably not itel that's the problem it's that the AI needs to respond to the plauge properly with medical facilities.

In my opinion Intel should be an irritating weapon, until your Intel level is really high (not intel points, but intel research level). Then you'd have high level weapons that would do a lot of damage (like wipe out a planet quickly).

SEV, more than a feeling.

I agree with Majorhavoc’s point regarding Intelligence being too powerful in the stock game. I can take control of all the enemy ships, steal their technology, and cripple them by taking all their resources.

When playing stock I simply devote Intelligence to defense and espionage. Of course, I tend to play more Balance Mod then stock, it seems a whole lot better when it comes to Intelligence.

Rilo57 is right about the AI not responding properly to plagues. In my mod one of the few things I personally fixed was for the AI to build medical labs in every system, and population transports are scripted to act as medical ships. Now plagues rarely affect the AI. (hopefully the mod will be out this weekend, waiting on steam to update so I can test it versus 1.35)

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It's 95% due to the AI not handling Intel properly. In Balance Mod I find the intelligence projects to be too weak. It only takes a few turns with a few centers to counter most projects against you and as long as you keep around 10k points no one will hurt you unless they are specificly focusing on INtel, which means they're not focusing on something else.

The whole intel system should be changed as it does virtually nothing save for force every player to thin their resources slightly.

I think Intel should be a powerful tool, *not* a weapon. It should be about actually gathering information, enemy fleet locations and orders, colony and sector defenses, stealing technology, etc., not this whole 'let's take over the universe just using spies' thing.

For such major events as a planetary plague you should be forced to actually send a ship.

Note that I'm updating the Intel system for the next version of the Balance Mod. You can read more about it here:
http://www.spaceempires.net/home/ftopic-2524-0.html

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Could you please up the maximum intel attacks per turn from 5 too at least 100? Because right now when the defendig player reaches more than 25k defensive intel points (with the defensive bonuses and maluses), there is no more point in trying to get him with Sabotage - Ships & Fleets or Espionage - Planets & Colonies, and most of the intel projects become useless when he reaches 50k. (Or maybe I misunderstood how intel works?)