Variable FOW games

[Halmir]

Concise description:

• FOW stays in a permanently unhelpful blanket. This can be fine but it could also be helpful and add another tactical aspect if this varied. My suggestion is to add a new option where the distance obscured by FOW varies according to "the time of day" within the game

Specifics/Details:

• The distance viewable varies according to the following table, and changes each full round. There would need to be a "local game clock" added to the map, or just below it, for a game employing this option.
• Midnight - adjacent regions only
• 3am - adjacent regions only
• Dawn (6am) - up to 2 regions away
• 9am - up to 3 regions away
• Noon- the entire map (or 5 regions if you think that's too good)
• 3pm - up to 3 regions away
• Dusk (6pm) - up to 2 regions away
• Twilight (9pm) - adjacent regions only
• Midnight - back to start of the cycle. Thus it takes 9 rounds to complete a cycle

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

• This avoids the "not respecting the fog" bickering, which is often quite tiresome
• Helps novice players appreciate the changing fortunes of the battle and attack the game leader not just the guy nearest to them
• Hinders huge buildups of forces near the front line
• Adds a tactical dimension - do you leave your main forces visible or pull most of them back as the sun rises?
• The canny player will attempt to time their main attacks to commence in the 6pm round, so that they can use the rounds of night-time to achieve tactical surprise

Problems:

• scope for confusion for newer players (a hyperlink next to the "the time of day" Clock to a help page would solve that)
• won't work very well on Doodle Earth

[Darwins_Bane]

i can see the most glaring fallacy in this sugg right away. not everyone has the same time. if noon is the best time to see but also at 3am local time, how is that fair?

[Metsfanmax]

Well, ideally it would be based on a player's local time, not UTC or server time. The problem with that is that players could switch their local timezone to cheat it.

[jrh_cardinal]

he's saying each round in the game is a different time (based on the fact that he said 9 rounds to complete the cycle, even though it's really only 8 )

[Halmir]

lol glad someone's paying attention! And yes it's a cycle of every 8 turns. The idea of using the 24 hour day is so that everyone can easily judge what comes next over the next few turns.