Are counter-espinage spies global?

They work in the province that they are deployed to. Not globally. As you don't own provinces globally. If you do, you have to send someone there.

Ryan, just an hour ago I had a Help-Chat moderator tell me that counter-intel spies work globally, throughout all friendly territories, not just in the province where they are recruited...

This issue needs to be clarified, officially and explictly, in the Guide. And here of course. Please. So that newbies like me can better understand the game.

If you put a counter intel in a province, how can it counter other cities?

I agree with your reasoning, makes sense to me; it's what I figured when I started studying spies...

But of course, that forces counter-intel to be reactive and not prophylactic, because to be prophylactic you'd have to guess ahead of time where to invest your counter-intel money, and THAT would be exceedingly costly. It's cheaper to let the enemy conduct sabotage first, to identify where to invest in counter-intel ops.

Thanks for your comments.

UPDATE (a few hours later...)

Just had another Help-Chat moderator tell me counter-intel applies globally... Then later admitted he himself doesn't use counter-intel spies... I'm not really complaining about that, but it does show that the user guide needs to be updated and clarified.

Continuing my questions about it all... Once I've recruited a spy to work counter-intel in a given province, how much money should I spend?... and what does the money do? Is the amount subtracted from what the enemy spy is spending? ...or does it just need to be more than he is spending, in order to catch him? ...or what? I need an explanation and example, please.

UPDATE, and admission of thick-headishness...

I was tempted to delete this entire thread when I finally came to understand how counter-intel works... But I'm leaving it up for all the other (slow-like-me) newbies.

Here's how it works: You can recruit any number of spies per province. Each costs 15k, plus 1k per day. The more counter-intel spies in a province, the more effective your counter-intel ops (duh). And to be clear, the counter-intel applies only to the province(s) in which you recruit and employ spies.

To explain at least some of my dimwittedness, I was coming from another RTS game (which will remain unnamed) in which spying was simply a matter of out-bidding and out-guessing the opposing player; so, I was stuck in that mentallity, blinded by that assumption.

HOWEVER, my suggestion that the spy guide be revised and clarified should be considered, for the benefit of future (slow-but-paying) CoW aficionados.

Cheers, everyone.