Need Recommendations on Allied Spying and intelligence

[Patrat]

Which Allied countries need to invest in S&I?

I figure that the USA should, since they can afford it and they need to make wide variety of research.

Russia as well, since they have lots of time to benefit from it

But what about China? They really only need a handful of techs researched, I figure that its faster to double chit their research.

If I push S&I research with the USA, is it cost productive to also research S&I with the the British Empire and Australia? Or will researching S&I with just the USA be good enough?

I'm more concerned with falling behind in research, not so much with the spotting enemy units.

[Nginear]

There is a cumulative bonus from all Allied nations S&I to lower Japan's bonus, so in that sense yes researching India and Australia helps. But is it worth it to those individual nations? Meh. As long as their units are "good enough" that's about all you need. Leave the heavy lifting to USA.
By good enough I mean +/-1 level of the Japanese unit. A level 0 Infantry weapons vs Lv2 infantry weapons (or fighter, or tank, etc) doesn't stand a chance from my observation.

[Patrat]

Thanks for the reply.

So based on your information, it seems to me that China can probably stay "good enough" by double chitting the few critical techs it needs. My thinking is that it would be faster putting 2 chits in those techs, since you have a fairly long wait to get any benefit from your S&I research.

India needs more techs than China, so i suppose S&I would be a worthwhile investment for them.

As for Australia, my thinking is to limit the tech they need by making a decision what type of units you are going to concentrate them on. Either building up a strong airforce, or concentrate on a ground force. That way you can limit the techs they need and just double chitting those techs rather than researching S&I. I'm thinking a strong ground force might be the best move for Australia. That way they can help either the USA or India with their ground forces, and leave developing a strong air arm to the USA. The benefit of doing that means less USA ground troops have to cross the Pacific which is slow and possibly risky, Australia is a lot closer to the fighting. USA air units can just operate to where they are needed.

Any thoughts or criticism of my ideas are welcome.

I guess I should mention that I'm trying to come up with a good research strategy for playing multi player. I'm a good enough player to beat the AI at any setting., no matter what research strategy i use.