Extra Foggy Games

[sirgermaine]

It sure is a shame that no admins read this forum. Nobody has commented saying this would be a bad thing, with it being up for weeks, and yet the odds of it ever happening are really low.

[nudge]

This would be a brilliant games setting..

I'd play them and set them all the time as I am a fan of Fog.

Can't wait to see it.

It sure is a shame that no admins read this forum. Nobody has commented saying this would be a bad thing, with it being up for weeks, and yet the odds of it ever happening are really low.

Interesting point above.. agentcom is the suggestion mod and he seems to read and post on suggestions all the time. Perhaps he should be contacted.

[Robert E Nick]

Hey nice suggestion Sirger.... I love it, that would make for an intense game of Risk

[sdhillson]

Totally agree, hide the log entirely during the game but make it available for review in the archives. This means that you wouldn't know what the next set is worth in escalating spoils.

As for the map, don't change it from the current fog. You have to know who is in adjacent territories and their troop count.

[sirgermaine]

Okay, I suppose I was a little harsh there, since agentcom has in fact read this. I suppose I'll come back in a day or two and write up thoroughly a couple/few options and start asking people which they like best.

[agentcom]

Okay, I suppose I was a little harsh there, since agentcom has in fact read this. I suppose I'll come back in a day or two and write up thoroughly a couple/few options and start asking people which they like best.

Like I said before (before I was a mod), the question is just where to draw the line. I think there's a lot of people who would play some variation of this. The question is how dark we want the Dark of Night to be.

This poll is going to be complicated cuz there's so many things you can hide:

EVERYTHING or some combination of:

Deploy
Autodeploy
Forts
Spoils "cards" in Spoil cashes
Spoils deploy amounts in spoil cashes (esc or flat)
Spoils bonuses (+2) in spoil cashes (esc or flat)
Killer neutral reversions
Decaying territ "autodeploy"
Territ counts
Territ/Continent bonus deploys
spoils counts
Player start/end turns (important for freestyle)

and don't forget about an option to hide (although this would be far more complicated of a suggestion):

Game chat
player names
player ranks

And I still might be missing some.

Personally (mod hat off), the option I would vote for in this variation of the Fog of War would be all the stuff in the top half of this post.

[greenoaks]

we don't play in Fog, we play in Fog Of War.

that means there is always some information you know such as who controls the terits you can see and most likely the size of the force there. you would also know if a nuke was dropped, anywhere.

your network of spies and informants would give you an idea of troop movements and recruitment efforts.

you will always know what regions you have lost, probably who you lost it to and the size of their advancing force as well.

[Sludge_King]

While I agree with the original post I think the statistics block with how many countries a power owns should also be blank. I have lost more than one "FOG" game because everyone looks at the statistics block and says oh my he has 45 countries everyone jump on him. Not very fun. Fog means no information. I would like to see it reflected in the game as well. Just my two cents, respectfully, *SK*

[greenoaks]

While I agree with the original post I think the statistics block with how many countries a power owns should also be blank. I have lost more than one "FOG" game because everyone looks at the statistics block and says oh my he has 45 countries everyone jump on him. Not very fun. Fog means no information. I would like to see it reflected in the game as well. Just my two cents, respectfully, *SK*

FOG FoW doesn't mean no information.

it means some information, imperfect information.

[x-raider]

From Wikipedia:
The fog of war is the uncertainty in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. The term seeks to capture the uncertainty regarding own capability, adversary capability, and adversary intent during an engagement, operation, or campaign. The concept arose from Prussian military analyst Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote:

"Der Krieg ist das Gebiet der Ungewißheit; drei Vierteile derjenigen Dinge, worauf das Handeln im Kriege gebaut wird, liegen im Nebel einer mehr oder weniger großen Ungewißheit. Hier ist es also zuerst, wo ein feiner, durchdringender Verstand in Anspruch genommen wird, um mit dem Takte seines Urteils die Wahrheit herauszufühlen."

(War is an area of uncertainty; three quarters of the things on which all action in War is based are lying in a fog of uncertainty to a greater or lesser extent. The first thing (needed) here is a fine, piercing mind, to feel out the truth with the measure of its judgment).

And later on:

"Endlich ist die große Ungewißheit aller Datis im Kriege eine eigentümliche Schwierigkeit, weil alles Handeln gewissermaßen in einem bloßen Dämmerlicht verrichtet wird, was noch dazu nicht selten wie eine Nebel- oder Mondscheinbeleuchtung den Dingen einen übertriebenen Umfang, ein groteskes Ansehen gibt."

(The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently — like the effect of a fog or moonlight — gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural [grotesque] appearance.)

End quote

Anyhow, It's not really supposed to be simulating a real-life situation. You can read more on that here: viewtopic.php?f=127&t=176547
It's just supposed to be another gameplay setting for people who like that kind of gameplay.

Hope my 5 cents are worth it. On that note I appreciate SK's two cents-worth

[jigger1986]

I like it!

[sirgermaine]

Okay, so per agentcom's list, I have broken down a few things that I feel are absolutely out of place in a fog game, and should be out for Dark of Night, and then a few more steps in a logical progression that I think we should be able to make a poll from.

First, what fog of war does currently is only the following, unless I am mistaken. Any time there is a terit in the log, outside of your own turn, it is changed to a "?". Also, it changes terits that you cannot see on the map to a "?" as well. Apart from that, I don't think it does anything. This to me has always seemed a bit strange, since that doesn't really match the nature of what fog of war is in my mind. Since I imagine I'm not going to get CC to change the default fog setting to something more drastic, I'm simply listing the things that don't make sense as things that absolutely should go (in no particular order)

1. Troop deployments, including autodeploy and autodecay-- These should be out, since the concept of fog of war would imply that you cannot see troop movements beyond your border. If I don't know where you put troops, how should I know you put 15 of them?
2. Troop reinforcements-- This is the same deal. It doesn't make sense that I should know how many troops you moved, if I have no idea where they moved to or from.
3. Killer Neutral Reversions-- If I never saw that you had a terit, it makes no sense that I would know you lost it again.
4. Spoil Bonuses from cashes, and/or troop placements from spoil cashes-- again, if I can't see that you hold a terit, it makes no sense that I should hear that you got two extra troops added to a terit somewhere. Also, the reinforcements you placed as a result of cashing the spoil would follow the same logic as normal deployment.
5. Attacks not involving you or a teammate-- This again seems odd to me; why should you know when I attack 3 of lackattack's terits in a row, if you couldn't see his terits, or the terits from which I attacked?
6. Spoil cashes, generally-- Not to be confused with the bonus for terits you control, hearing that someone cashed spoils seems like it wouldn't be worldwide information.
7. Spoil counts-- If I didn't know you attacked a terit, I wouldn't know that you got a spoil, and so I wouldn't have a way to find out how many spoils you have at any given time.
8. Terit counts-- As with all the other points, if I don't know about your attacks that I can't see, it doesn't follow that I would know how many territories you have at any given time.

All of these things seem like they really ought not be in a Fog of War game, but are currently. Again, I'm not trying to change settings, but add a new (better) one. Here is what I think you should be able to see in a game, if only these things were left out.

1. The map would look the same as the current setting, where you see all of your terits, plus terits you can attack/bombard, with troop counts and player color for each of those terits
2. In an escalating spoils game, when you have a set, you would know how many it would be worth to cash (you would then know how many times sets have been cashed, but not by whom).
3. The log would display only the following information-- Turn beginnings, turn endings, attacks ON YOU, and all of the activity in your own turn. It would not, for example, simply put question marks in place of names, terits, and numbers, as is the current way to alter the log. Player eliminations would be visible only in the elimination log (they do not need to also be in the chat).
4. The Information box would contain question marks for everyone but yourself and team members, in every position, hiding terits, troops, spoils, troops due, etc. It would still cross out dead players.
5. Game chat would be unchanged. People are free to provide whatever information they feel necessary, true or not.

I'll post again on the options that go further than this, but this is what I initially imagined with this suggestion.

[sirgermaine]

As for the other things that have been mentioned by other people, the full list, unless I missed something would be:
Entirely eliminating the game log
Eliminating game chat
Hiding player names/ranks (you can't do ranks without also hiding names, and hiding only names would be strange).
Not knowing how much a spoil cash would be worth
Not knowing adjacent troop counts
Not having a key that says whose turn it is, other than knowing when it is your turn.
Eliminating the map altogether (oh wait, nobody has suggested that).

Each of these has various up and downsides, and with that I'm going to try and order them by severity, in terms of how much it would affect gameplay, as well as combinations with various other proposed changes.
1. Eliminating the game log entirely-- All this changes is that you would not know how long turns took, or who attacked your terits. The elimination log could be eliminated as well. If you can't remember what you did during your own turn, that's kind of your own fault. That said, I'm not sure it needs to be eliminated, if all it has is turn beginnings, and a record of what happened to your terits.
2. Not knowing whose turn it is/who has taken turns-- I find this intriguing, but could be more frustrating than it is worth. Particularly in freestyle games, this could lead to a load of people waiting until the very last minute to take turns. I get how that could be really awesome for some and really annoying for others.
3. Not knowing what the worth of an escalating spoil cash will be-- I generally avoid escalating games, but on the whole, it seems like this would make it really almost impossible to make a reasoned decision. If you don't know whether your cash is worth 8 or 40 troops, it seems unreasonable to plan based on that. As I said before, it's not important to know who cashed, but you should know what your cards are worth.
4. Not knowing adjacent troop counts-- This might be implementable in some way that you could know something about the troop count (e.g. up to 10 but not beyond), but this seems like it would really distort gameplay. It would certainly provide more uncertainty, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
5. Eliminating the game chat and randomizing players, and hiding player names-- Bear with me here. I know I just lumped things that seem different together.

If you eliminate game chat, it's really going to cause a big uptick in what can be classified as secret diplomacy, whether people just write on walls or whether they go so far as to send a PM. If there is simply no way to send a message of any kind in game chat, you are going to see a big uptick in other methods of communication.
You can't entirely solve this problem, since players could talk specifically about terits and troops in private messages, but it could be made a lot harder, by randomizing players after the game fills, and assigning them each random colors which they will see, like you see in a battle royale game, where the color assignments vary. That way, you couldn't tell someone you were, for example, blue, because when they play they might see you as yellow. Anyway, I personally think that this gets into a big honking can of worms, and diplomacy should be an option, as a part of the game, to avoid workarounds.

I would like to make a poll for this thread, and have the options be a progression of options. The first choice would be to go with my suggestion from my last post, exactly as it is. Next you could have that plus option 1 of this, or you could select that plus options 1 and 2, etc until you get to the option that is my previous post plus all 5 of the things in this post. However, I want to make sure that for the most part, people aren't going to disagree with my ordering, and want to implement what was in the last post plus only numbers 3 and 4 on this list. Does that make sense, and does anyone think they'd want a higher number one of these options, without the lower numbered ones?

[W F Crappeshotte]

This idea does raise the bugbear of secret diplomacy.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to play a game where nobody could even talk to anyone else, except as an academic exercise in self-mortification. And I'm not suggesting that CQ is or should be an attempt to recreate real political and military conditions. But people need to talk. As in a game of poker, there is information and disinformation: diplomacy and intrigue. Some would say these are more important than the game itself: the rules and mechanics of the game simply provide an environment where two or more adversaries can lock horns and do psychological battle with each other.

My opinion, for what little it may be worth, is that there should be a two-tier system. In the case of super-foggy games, the options would be "public diplomacy" and "private diplomacy." Public is where people can broadcast to the world whatever information, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and bulls**t they want. Private is where they can negotiate treaties and borders, and quietly exchange information, misinformation, disinformation... etc. with other individual players in the game. Yes, this would be open to the "danger" of one player publicly broadcasting the whereabouts, troop levels, whatever of another player. But would they be believed? Such reports could be entirely false.

I'm not a great forum-browser, and I'm sure this idea has been mooted before, but I have never been a fan of the rule "no secret diplomacy" and in this particular context it seems to me that decriminalising it from "secret" to "private" and incorporating it as a game mechanic is a valid idea.

[agentcom]

Awesome couple of posts, sirge.

I'm 99% sure this has been suggested before and it would be nice to get the suggestions all in one place. But I don't want to lose those last couple posts by you, so if I start merging things, I'll be sure to link to them or otherwise give credit where it is due. Anyone who wants to post some links to similar suggestions would save me time and energy.