tldr: please provide a more efficient way of inspecting enemies when going for a "tome counter picking" playstyle
Ao4 games can be divided into two phases: the "exploration phase" and the "total war phase." The exploration phase is, indeed, exploratory. Opponents are unknown, as are the builds they are using, and where they are expanding is a secret to be revealed.
The total war phase occurs when most, if not all, of the map has been revealed. It becomes clear what general build each player is pursuing. It is possible to know how many tomes each player has in each domain; if you get to see an enemy stack, you can check what transformations and enchantments are active, and you can examine which province improvements have been constructed. Inspecting the opponent’s tomes and enchantments is central to "counterpicking" tomes and spells, those that are specialized in countering a particular playstyle. For example, various corpse destruction spells are far less relevant to pick if I see that my opponent has many Shadow tomes but not many synergies with undead.
The issue is that inspecting enemies to make these decisions is a chore. When there were only a couple of tomes for each affinity at each level, looking at the affinity of each player provided a solid understanding of their capabilities. As the game grows and more counterpicking tomes and spells are released, it becomes very annoying to mentally keep track of all enchantments previously seen on enemy units.
For these reasons, it feels intuitive to me that there should be a way to see all the research unlocks obtained by a player. Of course, this should not be visible too early in the game. if a player is going for a tempo Chaos build, it should not be countered automatically by the mere existence of the UI. If that player can leverage the element of surprise, they should be rewarded. I can't see a strong reason to keep this hidden in the late game, though.
In practice, something that seems reasonable to me, both in terms of gameplay and implementation, is that when you build the Arcane Observatory or the Tower of True Sight, you unlock a UI button in the opponent interaction screen that lets you see their spellbook, just like you can see your own when casting a spell. It would only require a single extra UI button and adapting the spellbook to display another player's spells.
Ao4 games can be divided into two phases: the "exploration phase" and the "total war phase." The exploration phase is, indeed, exploratory. Opponents are unknown, as are the builds they are using, and where they are expanding is a secret to be revealed.
The total war phase occurs when most, if not all, of the map has been revealed. It becomes clear what general build each player is pursuing. It is possible to know how many tomes each player has in each domain; if you get to see an enemy stack, you can check what transformations and enchantments are active, and you can examine which province improvements have been constructed. Inspecting the opponent’s tomes and enchantments is central to "counterpicking" tomes and spells, those that are specialized in countering a particular playstyle. For example, various corpse destruction spells are far less relevant to pick if I see that my opponent has many Shadow tomes but not many synergies with undead.
The issue is that inspecting enemies to make these decisions is a chore. When there were only a couple of tomes for each affinity at each level, looking at the affinity of each player provided a solid understanding of their capabilities. As the game grows and more counterpicking tomes and spells are released, it becomes very annoying to mentally keep track of all enchantments previously seen on enemy units.
For these reasons, it feels intuitive to me that there should be a way to see all the research unlocks obtained by a player. Of course, this should not be visible too early in the game. if a player is going for a tempo Chaos build, it should not be countered automatically by the mere existence of the UI. If that player can leverage the element of surprise, they should be rewarded. I can't see a strong reason to keep this hidden in the late game, though.
In practice, something that seems reasonable to me, both in terms of gameplay and implementation, is that when you build the Arcane Observatory or the Tower of True Sight, you unlock a UI button in the opponent interaction screen that lets you see their spellbook, just like you can see your own when casting a spell. It would only require a single extra UI button and adapting the spellbook to display another player's spells.
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