City Council Seats - Do my spy prevent other players from buying in?

[Chippoka]

Trying the City Council Seat option today (and spies); do my spy prevent other players from buying in? It's expensive to get seat; so I'm wondering how to protect them, if it is possible, until I can buy them all?

[Helgart]

Buying 3 out of 5 is enough either to get protection from takeover or to be able to take other. Your spies are purely for sabotage if you like 'causing troubles' like rivals do. Also enabling spying and council seats on continious setup adds some point towards difficulty if you want to remain on hard

[Chippoka]

I did notice that I could also but an occupied seat in an AI city, but it was for a massive amount of money (rightly so); so I am guessing they can do that to me, but not very likely. I still have figure out which attainment I need to send out spies.... any Idea?

[Helgart]

If you click on any rival's lving house it gives a message like 'you have to set up a base of operations' in your settlement. After that you can infiltrate settlement with a spy and it makes sabotage missions possible. There's also 'Agent training' attainment which reduces cooldawn both for infiltrating and sabotage

[BOT]

AI will buy seats in your cities. and when you try buying seats in his cities its way more expensive then buying your own seats back.

sabotage sucks.. the enemy uses it constantly .. but if you use it you lose symphatic points... also sometimes the enemy spy is so fast you cant click at him he already gone. it bugs towards lategame.

It is literly nothing else then a headage..
you as the player have to buy/protect all your cities. obviosly. But.
if you want buy the seat from the AI it cost you 5 or 6 times more Gold while you playing against more then 1 AI they have to beat only you.. and you have to beat 2 others.
They constanly buy seats from your cities .. and eventualy they will have the upper hand and steal your city away. because even when you skill up with honour points the Cool down to buy faster seats.. it is not managable .. unless you playing only against 1 AI or only against mid dificulty AI. but against 2 hard one you cannot win.
one will buy seats in your citie A and the other one will buy seats in your citie B. BUT your cool dow to buy is not short enough to protect your cities agaisnt that.. and if you think i will just buy it back or buy their cities.. it costs too much.
you cannot sustain yourself with only 2 ireland you need more and make money and so on..
you you have to protect several ireland.. while they only need do one ireland.

it is literly riged.. and a hadeage. IF you play against 2 hard AI's