Well if any are interested I have stolen Solders and Peasants but it cost me a load of manna I think I threw 1500 manna and received 3 peasants. 1000 wine I received 2 solders. I am not sure how well off the other player was but they seemed to have left now. Hope it helps.
I think stealing has a lot to do with the morale of your enemy. I have not looked at the code to confirm, but I am pretty sure that is how it works. If you are throwing manna at peasants who have high morale and plenty already to spear then you will find it is a losing battle.
Wow...exploring isnt worth it at all. It seems there is a higher probability of having something negative happen versus a positive outcome. One question. How come gold doesnt add to the net value of the kingdom?
Am I just unlucky or has the exploring been tweaked up THAT much?
Exploring is the main way of increasing worth through acquiring peasants and soldiers, it is not the main way to get gold. You need to check "Peasant Morale". The reason Exploring was tweaked was to enable fair play. You see there was a cheat in there that allowed players (who knew what to do) to excel rapidly, hence you would get players excelling extremely fast and others way behind.
Note: In Exploring there are negatives and positives - it is all randomly chosen by the computer so is based on luck.
In playing I have noticed that there is a bug or should I say... a hole in the game where you can win off of Peasants. Since the soldiers cannot harm the Peasants directly you can basically let your Army crumble and still win. I will be correcting this hopefully in the next game.