It's kinda underhanded if you're gonna go outside the game to discuss things, guys. Now, by saying this, it obviously means I have spies somewhere (which I'm sure everyone else does too), but intercepting communications is part of the game. It's basically cheating if you use an outside source to discuss strategy and stuff.
We already agreed not to use GoldMarks and not to discuss secrets and stuff here in this thread (whether or not this counts as a "secret," I don't care because it needs to be said). Maybe we should also agree not to go outside the game system to discuss strategy? I kinda figured that this "rule" didn't need to be made, but obviously it does.
For the record, this has come up on the Supremacy forums as an issue (people are/were using the Supremacy forums' PM system instead of the ingame communication system to discuss strategy), and pretty much everyone there agrees its a dick move.