MORE CUSTOMIZATION OF YOUR WORLD
The degree of complexity of the text messages in question is a level that you can change during the game to suit any need or want changes. In staying with units as a means of demonstration, low-level details consist of cost (e.g. legions cost 100 gold and 60 metal). For resources, one can pull out numbers that show, say, how many woodcutter slots are open in the forests and can even buy/sell these commodities off the game's interface which itself can be turned on or off in varying degrees.
"I mostly like my interface closed up. In fact, I kind of like to play... where I see a minimal amount of stuff... some people like to play with a more traditional interface".
A series of histographs are included where demographics are closely interrelated with it. You can now spend less time creating your own data through obsessive compulsive behaviours and instead spend your extra energy analyzing it. Types of data pertaining to your nation provided for: military (e.g. number of buildings built and destroyed, number of cities founded and captured), scientific (e.g. how much of each research category was collected, economic (e.g. what the economy rate was, how many special resources you found), and cultural too (e.g. how many Wonders did you build and capture).
The following tacked on oddities may delight or bore players on the basis of their functionality of frivolity – and these attitudes are not necessarily mutually exclusive: how many times you click the mouse, how many times you hit a particular key and even a 'speed rating'. This ratio is calculated by combining all other data types and contrasting it with game time amount producing results such as “You could have reached the Enlightenment Age by playing for 20 minutes” and compare these findings with your honourable opponents.
Lastly, three chart categories to observe: score, resources and technologies. The first provides the overall histograph of power or the prestige of a given nation including military and technological advances. The second examines each players' economies and the last but not least in the aforementioned list lays out in black and white how one's research compared with the progress of the others throughout the life of the game.
SAY NOW, I THINK I KNOW THIS GUY…
Let us end on a light hearted note: the origin of how Brian Reynolds just recently became known by the moniker “Hot Sauce Boy”. He had mentioned it in passing earlier on in the interview, and now the point is stressed again. Below is the complete, unedited story in Brian's own words.
"A couple of years ago at the beginning of Big Huge Games, we flew [the whole company] out to Microsoft's [headquarters]... to kind of get things started with the project. The MS guys knew that I really liked hot salsa and [other kinds of] hot food, and I've always been on kind of a quest to find food so hot that I can't eat it. I grew up in Texas and Alabama, and we lived abroad for a while [and ate a lot of spicy food]. [The MS folks] took me out to this restaurant [that had barbeque stuff] that was supposed to be so hot that you can't possible eat it and they try their intimidation [tactics] saying "oh, I'll bet you can't eat more of this". Of course, I was eating it and I hate too much of it and things went poorly in the ol' stomach so henceforth they assigned me the handle 'Hot Sauce Boy'. So yeah, you might find me online someday and that's usually what I play as".
Rise Up: Reynolds On RoN 