Declaration of evil was never a requirement to arrest a priest. It takes a war declaration.
And the reason priests can't see troops is so they can't be used as insta-scouts. Their ability to move multiple regions asynchronously has in the past been used in a military capacity to do deep scouting of the enemy without risk of getting stabbed/skirmished/captured/etc. The same applies to adventurers.
The declaration of war was not part of the priest game at first. It came in much later, because priests were being arrested left and right and nobody cared about it.
Also, seeing troops in your own region doesn't give you any advantage over anyone else in the realm, as nobody needs to travel to get that info.
As for deep scouting, I see little difference with normal scouts. I've done a fair bit of scouting/looting behind enemy lines with my troops, and whatever could have stopped me could have stopped a priest just as easily. Even more so, as all they'd need is 1 noble with a police unit instead of rallying enough troops to defeat my own unit.
Knowing the realm a noble is from is no secret. If you know the first name, you can find the realm easily enough. But I can see no reason for the game to /not/ give it to you right from the start.
Seeing all the normal details (troop number/type/etc.) for all regions in your own realm is, IMO, fine. Everyone in a realm can look at any of their own regions and see who's there, any time. I don't see any reason to exclude priests from that. It's only when you go outside your realm that it becomes an issue.
I see no particular reason to make any special exemptions for government members. There is no compelling reason to make exceptions just because you're the banker.
I agree, government members shouldn't be the only ones. Should be all priests that get access to this info. Being a ruler and not seeing this stuff just makes it a whole lot more aggravating than usual.
you are wrong there. they can have a unit. if they choose not to have a unit, that's their prerogative. a priest can't have a unit
But priests can incite riots and claim regions, what's your point? The capacity to hire a ridiculously small unit (courtiers and diplomats) or a needlessly pricey one (traders) does not make them any more pertinent to war than priests are. Hell, as priests can get arrested by people with units, you'd figure it'd be nice for priests to know when they ARE facing nobles with units. When there's someone else in the same region as a priest, he has no idea whether he's safe or not, as all he gets is a name, not the presence or absence of troops.
By the way, this is an example of what my priest/ambassador ruler gets on BT:
Military
Nobles
Nhoc Zonka (Lord)
Guillaume Chénier, Hetman of Imperskoe Viys'ko iz Fheuv'na, Duke of Iato, Senator of Iato, Ambassador of Imperskoe Viys'ko iz Fheuv'na
Miroslav Chénier, Senator of Sandlakes, Marshal of the Iat'r Cossacks
Glenen Darksun (Knight of Sandlakes)
Sir Ramkin Kirt (Noble)
Sir Darnham Kirt, Yesaul of Imperskoe Viys'ko iz Fheuv'na, Senator of Tsamn
I get the same thing on Dwilight. A whole bunch of "(Lord)"s and "(Noble)"s. Even IF I manage to remember the hundreds of regions of the continent, I still always get a ton of these things. Or is other cases, I get stuff like "Knight of Agyr" or other such Melhed region when I KNOW for a fact that the noble is aligned to one of Fheuv'n's regions.