There are differences between the cpus beside the multiplier!
I think just cpu and cpu-ultra are still the same. these were kept for backward compatibility reasons and because they are more speaking to beginners.
In fact we have: cpu-easy , cpu and cpu-mega which have different behaviour.
some of the things the mega cpu does:- production balancing: Maybe you saw that an ultra has ordered more than 20 units in one building. This will not happen with mega. It will balance the production for all available buildings which can produce the unit. If all of them have 2 production orders already, the mega tries to build a new building of this kind.
- bigger armies: The army size of the mega which is used to attack is more variable and can be bigger too
- don't abort production to attack: if for example a summoner is producing a ghost armore the production is not aborted to attack the enemy. This happens to normal cpu very often
... and more
for the cpu-easy: I don't remember exactly how I crippled its behaviour, but its definitly playing bad
About the initial thought on the multiplier not shownig in normal state:
I personally also wasn't that happy with hiding it, but this custom game setup is already quite complicated for people who start Megaglest the first time. But if many other people think too its ok to show the multiplier by default I will change this
