[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army)

(Italics are mine)

Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.

Especially since, as Norfleet has pointed out, the human gamers often get too discouraged when they see how far behind everyone they are, at which point, some of them quit, or worse, simply drop out without even turning things over to the AI.

Anyways - I digress. My point was that in a good portion of the MP games out there, you wouldn't know that someone was simply sitting in hiding hoarding gems, because the graphs aren't on.

Heh. But maybe we could get _new_ graphs showing exactly how many of each gem type every nation has? Then you could tell if someone was hoarding gems. If the graphs were turned on. (And it would make at _least_ as much sense as being able to determine how far along other people's magic research was, given that the gems might give off some emanation.)