I'm an old player who is recently trying to get back into the game. Forgive me, I do not mean to offend anyone nor am I trying to get myself (or my family IG) in trouble...thus I come to the OOC forum.

There are several new features added to the game that make it more user friendly (exporting locals, for example). I like how the wiki has grown and I really like the daily hustle. What I'm most interested in, is when the population started moving towards this one family thing. Yes, it's more realistic if we're considering the council that Luciano put together in 1930/1931. But how has this impacted the game?

I am not familiar with the recent in game history of wars and alliances. Are wars less frequent now? Several years ago, you had an idea of who was aligned with who (CH and PH during the Roman reign, for example), but there certainly weren't mass mails forwarded from city to city to city to collect and share information as if we were 1 big family. Does this stifle game play, or do we still see people stabbed in the back? If smaller crews/cities are being forced into sharing all of their "private" information, we've eliminated the mystery portion of the game. Of course people can still fabricate information to seem stronger or weaker.

Can anyone summarize the past 4-5 years for me?  :p