So I frequent some other forums where people are talking about the game, and one thing I’ve always prided myself on is listening to other ideas if they make sense within the vision of what I want in Imperia. On the Bay12 forums, a forumite named Novel Scoops brought up an interesting point about your POV:

Sure, the spreadsheets can be there too. Before i go any further, i realize this may already be covered by the character interaction/events system.

However, this is supposed to put you in the boots of one child emperor with limited reach and neither omniscience nor omnipotence, to be played by humans such as i, who incidentally is suddenly considering eye strain. I think it’s already planned for liege-lords to give advice, king of dragon pass style, so why not have them describe (reliably or less so) the state of affairs in their holdings? While your spies provide their own version? It just takes me out of the game when i see something like Unrest represented by a number.

This is very true. Why would I just always know there is 14 unrest on a planet, for example? Hell, maybe I’m taking my viceroy’s word about the profit/loss the planet is bringing in!

So going forward, when you open up a planet screen (note: this shot also shows the new panel system where you can hide panels that you don’t use/need), this is the info you’ll get, depending on your viceroy’s loyalty and the situation on the planet:

Ah, you think, I’ll just check out the demographic screen and look at the info there! Well, you can try…

In order to get the dirt on a planet, you have to allocate informers (spies) towards Domestic Intelligence. This is also a new thing – you will have 2 pools that you can weight: Domestic Intel and Political Intel. All you will be able to do is set a slider between the two; your Intel Prime will actually handle the assignments of new informer blocs. You need at least 2 points towards DomInt in order to get a fairly accurate idea of the number, and the more you allocate, the more accurate the information is. This is basically how the character stat system is already handled, and you will add points to PolInt to continue that process.

I’m still playing with this idea. It could be frustrating if not handled correctly, even if it is more ‘realistic’ so I’m going to put it in .410 and see what people think.

-Steve