My personal opinion is that you should include options 2 and 3 or some other form of "partial knowledge" choice. A really intriguing way to do it in my opinion would be to tie the knowledge given into the character you start as. I.e. if you start as a general you know all about the size of the territory and the army etc, but next to nothing about the economic side of things, or if you start as a diplomat or lawmaker of some sort you know all its policies but relatively little about the army.
That... is an interesting suggestion. I'll mull it over. Hmm. Yeah, that is an interesting idea! Maybe I'll have a 'Character Knowledge' option as well as total knowledge, which is dependent on the kind of class you start as...
So I started playing, and immediately ran into a cyclops. I figure I'm dead anyways, but meh I'm still gonna fight.
Is your character supposed to be retarded at combat? I attacked the left leg every time, but I did more damage to the torso and the right leg than to the left leg! I mean, a bit of skill-based randomization might be neat, but statistically speaking I'm hitting my intended target less often than if I were randomly swinging.
And I know it's in alpha/beta, but are there like key game elements missing? Claiming to be a strategy roguelike, but it seems that the skills and army management screens aren't in yet, and there appear to be no towns or cities at all. So it's neat and all, but it currently doesn't do anything it wants to, or am I just missing it?
Well, no - as I've said assorted times, 0.2.0 is going to address that and totally redo combat. And you aren't hitting the intended target less over a sufficient sample size; even with low skills you currently hit accurately more than you don't. Also, again, see above -
one man development team, part-time. Those components are not in yet, and will not be until 1.0.0 at the earliest; 0.2.0 is going to redo combat and skills, 0.3.0 implement remaining individual mechanics (hunger, thirst, tiredness, etc) and then 1.0.0 will start with history generation and civilizations. And by "currently doesn't do anything it wants to" - apart from the world generation, user interface, inventory systems and a huge amount of under-the-hood work on saving, loading, data structures which have about fifteen months work behind them...
it's a sort of 'tech demo'
it's nowhere near complete, it's just a sort of download that shows what some systems are like.
This is accurate. I have started what will probably be a project for maybe a decade, and not all features are going to be in from the start.