I will start by saying I don't have GalCiv 3 yet.  In Gal Civ 2 I believe there were a lot of stats and graphs that would give good info on your and other civs, but I am kind of partial toward this.  I think it's allowing you to have good data about a civ without actually having to scout him out and use what you have available to you carefully. Yes I do realize that in order to get the info about a specific civ you still have to encounter that civ once, but I don't exactly think this is enough.  I feel that it gives you too much info for free and allows civs to watch each other constantly and somewhat figure out what strategy they're going for.  While it doesn't give specific info about what planets, ships, etc. they have and where they're at or what they're researching the info you do get it could be enough to try and deduce what and where things are.  Even then it already allows people to see how someone is doing at an overall and categorical(population, military, etc.) level for free.  This could get even worse if people figure out how many points you get in your overall score and a specific category score for doing, building, having, etc. something.  Having good intelligence and counter-intelligence game mechanics in strategy games has always been important to me.  What do you all think?  Is something flying over my head about why the stats, graphs, and power number information is displayed in this series the way it is?