So, what’s in for the statistics lover?

[death_head]

America: Alright, all we need is the capstone and we're done!

Messenger: Sir! We've received the caravan from Egypt! They finished their pyramid 400 years ago!

America: Damn. Well, time to switch to another Wonder.

This is why there are no blurbs for Wonders...

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Rasputin
you can get information without any contact, the game has its own trade system built in, so the idea of traders passing information doesnt set with caravans in game. i think till you make some form of contact no info should be given....

The caravans you build are national attempts to increase national wealth. Your explorers are state-financed attempts to physically map routes to other places in the world. Unless you are living in a totally planned economy there will always be private individuals conducting trade on a scale too small for Civ to bother with. The one glaring example would be the arms trade, where rifles have appeared in the hands of all manner of low-tech civs or organisations who haven't got the means of building any themselves and without the permission of the government. Another is the old Silk Road used to bring all manner of fabulous Silks, Spices and other luxuries to Europe long before any European managed to find a land or sea route to "Cathay". No one trader knew more than a fraction of the route but news still travelled its entire length.

I can see game reasons for wanting an information blackout, but the way wonders are currently designed a certain amount of instant communication is necessary. I'd be interested in a system where no Wonders produced unique effects but merely boosted your local religion, trade, culture, military training etc. Civ3 purports to have these sorts of mini wonders in addition to a few majors. Perhaps in the future the unique ones will be replaced with culture-specific ones. So if you build a religious wonder you could be offered a choice from many different historical buildings (not tieing each civ to a particular one, so if you want to be English and go Moslem you can).

[DarkCloud]

Ever seen CIA’s world factbook?

I have the KBG's World Factbook and the CIA's. The KBG's is much more informative

In the game I feel that the statistics should be in a special category that will help the best players win civ even better: thus: for one army unit the regular player will see

Marines
Veteran
75% health
25% morale

But, if you wish to go in depth

Marines
Veteran (10 battles)
(1 versus Barbarians
1 versus Celts
1 versus CeticBarbarians, etc)
75% health
25% morale (-50% due to health. -25% due to location in enemy's lands)

---
Then you can have a list of all your units in the statistics tables detailing all of their inner workings.