Pardon if this is a real real stupid question but...

It was said that the game had to be all ways online because of the countless calculations that are done for your cities. In counter to this I have seen some people call bullshit and say its just a anti-piracy thing.

My question is.. Is there a way to see if these calculations are really taking place? And if they are why cant they keep going when you move to another one of your cities? Why does time freeze? If its on their side why not just let it run?

Again sorry if this is just a stupid question.

I imagine that some of the calculations need data from all the cities (and therefore all the players). It would be faster for the server to collect the data and calculate it than to collect the data and send it to players for their machines to calculate. I'm just speculating though.

The only evidence I've really seen are the global stats that occasionally pop up in loading screens. I'm not sure about stats in individual cities or users, though.