Re: Information hiding.
The entire thought of a battle simulator being of advantage in multiplayer is somewhat moot.
As already pointed out, your unlikely to get the same random numbers generated (unless you can force the same seed, but even that could be screwed up with multiplayer).
Secondly, you don't know your enemy's script, powers or similar. No matter how many times you win in the simulator, if you don't realise that the enemy has six mages scripted to spam blade wind, it's going to be a somewhat devestating shock, or the fact that the enemy commander has Tempest and your strategy relies on archers...
Finally, you run several thousand simulations, get the optimal army to defeat your opponent and finally attack, only to find a completely different army. If your opponent is also using the simulator, then surely he's just as likely to alter their forces to the 'optimal' build as you are, at least if he realises an attack is imminent.
I doubt a battle simulator would actually be of any benefit to multiplayer in the sense most seem to think it would (in fact, I'd go so far as to say it might actually be detrimental, for the reasons listed above). What it would be useful for is running experimental combats - how many Androphag archers do you need to defeat 300 barbarians. Is it possible for a ***** Queen to kill a VQ if tooled up with the right equipment. That kind of thing...
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