Army size graph

[Ming]

It is my experience too. When I first started I didn't read the manual (or visited this forum!) and did not know about PD. So I had PD of zero everywhere and got wipe out by the AI's pretty quickly.

[Seve82]

Games with no graphs on are much more interesting. Makes getting those scouts out to everywhere and using scrying spells much more important... also makes diplomacy more useful.

And in my experience getting pd of 21 on border provinces with AI makes them much less hostile.

[thejeff]

Scouts don't replace graphs. Or vice versa. With graphs on, you still need scouts to find nations and see army movements. With graphs off, scouts can't tell you income, research, gem income, etc.
Spies and scrying can give you detail on individual provinces, but not on the empire as a whole.

Having graphs on tends to work against those who take the lead, which is, I think, a good thing. Though you could say they advantage those who develop in ways they don't track: Blood, clams, luck income, smaller elite armies, etc.