(OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?

[Taqwus]

From a thematic/role-playing perspective, there's certainly information which *should* be available as it would be well-known in the game world and would normally be a factor in the decison-making process. Most of this is pretty general, however; for instance, that crossbows do well in penetrating heavy armor, but fire slowly compared to normal bows, or that some troops are prone to fleeing while others might well fight on even when under heavy casualties. One should have a sense of why and how one would use particular items, or spells, or troop types...

To switch genres for a moment, for instance, it would be crippling to play a WWII tactical game without having any idea about how well a tank's main gun can penetrate somebody else's armor at any given range. The physics formulas don't need to be stated, but as long as one's placed in the commander's seat and expected to make the decisions something -- documentation, in-game assistant, whatever -- should suggest such relevant data such as the fact that the Nashorn has a main gun and optics that prove quite capable of destroying your T-34s at long range, but has weak armor, whereas a hull-down Jagdtiger can be quite difficult to kill from the front... or, say, how futile it is for Pz IIIs to bounce rounds off a KV-1. Knowing what would probably be obvious should help avoid what mind-bogglingly unlikely moves such as, well, sending a dozen Pz IIIs to charge a KV-1 from 1km away and expecting to rapidly knock it out by reducing its "hit points" under sustained fire.