[HoneyBadger]

lch--we don't actually *exclude* females from the intra-webs. That's a bad lch!

It's just that most of them get sacrificed to our demonic masters, in order that we may drink their blood, imbibing their vital essences. For example, Annette and Mindi are both female, as far as we know, and they both run faster and fight harder than our blood hunters do. Especially since the satanic gym had all those budget cuts from higher management (Who's great idea was it to put the demon of sloth in charge?).

Being vastly younger than JimMorrison (but not anyone else, except maybe Gandalf), I find it simplifies my life to assume that everyone I meet on the internet is A: a dude, B: a flabby, hairy, sweaty, uncomfortably affectionate dude (in real life), lacking a firm grip on basic hygenic theory, C: who was castrated in an unfortunate bizarre threshing accident, just to be on the safe side.
Ouch. I feel for you all!

Now, to add to the discussion in productive ways: Alneyan: One thing I do to improve my SP experience is to run each and every Nation myself, from the beginning, as a human player. It not only suffices to improve Pretender and Scales choices, it also allows me the educational opportunity to obtain a firmer handle on how each Nation works. I usually will run them-non-aggressively-for up to 3 years. Considering that I play on extremely large maps (a "quick" game for me is SP 'Glory of the Gods'), those three years, aside from allowing me to make smart decisions for each Nation, don't grossly affect the map, itself, or the balance of the game. Typically, I confine myself to just capturing the provinces surrounding each capital, building a decent army and stable of commanders, doing a little forging/summoning, and directing research into the most important areas. It also allows me to-if I so choose-select imprisoned Pretenders, and play the Nations out until the last Pretender awakens. I then switch them to Impossible AI.

On a 1500 province map, this method, while time-consuming, is invaluable towards making the SP game more challenging, and the map, frankly, is too vast to be very helpful in determining where a specific Nation happens to be.

I hope that helps!