Fog of War

[abou]

How many of you play with Fog of War turned on/off and what are your reasons?

I'm leaning more towards the decision of turning it off as that if news of alliances and war would spread, so would the capture of settlements and locations of other factions' units. Am I wrong to assume this? This is also specifically in reference to EB.

[Xanthippus]

Sometimes I'll turn it off to get a global perspective of faction expansion. But I don't really have much of a need to for gameplay reasons as I make use of diplomats and spies for exploration purposes.

[orwell]

I use spies and diplomats for exploration, I tried turning off fog of war once and it just felt more like cheating than anything else, it ruined any sort of surprise in my conquests.

[Wardo]

On - for the surprise.

I also prefer it this way so the Spy is more useful. I like raising a spy network with a spy-loving character, for example.

I still wish you received random information about provinces every now and then though, sure the Romans may not know instantly what happened in Baktria even after 1 season/year or whatever time period if they are on the other side of the map, but it would be interesting if you received outdated information after a while, and less outdated information the closer the province was to your borders/trade routes + amount of trade shipping on a random basis.

[khelvan]

Eventually all factions will begin the game with FoW opened for those areas they would reasonably have knowledge of in 272 BC.

[soibean]

just a quick question involving this
How do you turn it off
and
Does EB plan on having it turned off initially on the final release or will it still need to be done manually through code?
just wondering

[khelvan]

Well, I don't know the specifics, but basically we start the faction off with a number of spies, who are exterminated with a script before play begins. Thus their initial map reveal remains, but they're not available to the player.

It basically has the effect of revealing a select portion of the map to the player, representing factional knowledge gained through trade, invasions, and so on. Theoretically we will have one set of this for each faction in the final release, though that requires people to define what areas need to be viewable for each faction at the beginning. And, of course, more scripting help so that we can pick up where we left off.

[Proper Gander]

just a quick question involving this
How do you turn it off

open up the console be pressing § (the button under ESC) and type toggle_fow if you want to change it in-game.

otherwise it's another thing you can change in the preferences before you start the game too.

[Patriarch of Constantinople]

I toggle fog alot. ill turn it off for tactical advantages when i see what my enemy is doing. but sometimes i turn it off so its fun to get surprises.

[Avicenna]

I play default, with FoW on. It's more realistic, and the screen doesn't move around so much when the turn is ending.