Looks interesting. How does rotating vision affect game play? Strats? Thoughts?

Ok, as the author, I'm not ashamed to admit it. The moving light is a bit of a gimmick. It's a neat gimmick, and it's one I'm glad I explored how to make work (thanks Ozy, for helping with the implementation). I learned a lot of new things about map making, and that alone was worth it.

If you're the kind of player who goes back and watches the game history to see what crossed your light-strip, then it can be a useful tool. It's also decent for helping you choose your target. If you see that someone's got the other side of the board tied up but you don't have a presence there to break their hold, then you can defensively clear them out of your area instead of wasting armies on someone who is less powerful. Given the level of fog, that's some useful information. That said, I don't think there are too many people who actually go back and watch history (forum goers probably excluded). While people not taking full advantage of the mechanic shouldn't count against it, I'm a realist and admit that most people won't be much affected by it except in that someone who does use it will use it against them.

As for strategy in general, in the games I've watched, test games I've played, and games I've played, I'm very happy with the way the map turned out because I've seen a variety of strategies work. Due to fog and abandon, its hard to predict what will win in any given outing. Someone may eventually solve for a go-to formula on here, but I don't yet know what it is.

Since the continents are mostly in vertical strips, one defensive strategy is to make horizontal slashes hoping to cut through someone's continents. It can be an effective form of bonus denial, but can also be costly in terms of armies and time. If you're abandoning in your slashes, you're giving up the per/territory bonus, which is actually one of the more effective ways to get armies early. Also, fog makes people reckless, so the games move pretty fast. If you give up a turn to slash across the map, you're giving up a valuable turn that could be spent consolidating power. If you let someone have a continent unchecked, though, their bonuses can become quickly overwhelming.

As the game moves on, there tends to be a lot of abandoned wasteland. One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. Even though the dice favor the attacker more than usual with abandon on (more 3-dice rolls), if you can resist losing a lot of armies in early skirmishes, it's possible to cheaply consolidate those armies into a cohesive force later by walking through the open. Be careful with this strategy, though. Like I said above, the game can move fast, and if you spend too much time waiting for others to clear out the way for you, you may end up being cleared yourself.

You can also use the open territories as scouting opportunities. Walk an army as far as he can go unchecked, and then march him back from where he came. It kind of lessens the effect of the moving lights, but "abandon immediately" was a necessary map setting to make the rotating lights work at all, so I can't have the lights without the cheap scouting. (I am considering a turn limited version of the map for scenarios. That would reduce scouting, but lack of time and other interests are currently in the way.)

On this map, you can ignore the advice of Sicilians. A land-war in Asia is a fine method of winning the map. At least, I've seen as many wins come out of that region as anywhere else. It may simply because most people avoid trying to dig in there, instead opting to squabble over choke points and other map features that are more important on other maps but not so much on this one. The odd layout of continents, incongruous continents, and fog give you a lot more options for places to start a successful bid for winning than many standard maps.

There is no card capture or elimination bonus. There can't be. The methods for making the light move around the map, which I'll cover in a separate post, make this impossible. Bear it in mind as you make what you think are finishing moves. It's easy to over-reach with abandon on, and finishing someone off won't help you recover. (That said, I don't every forsee stalemates being a problem on this map.)

Now that I've written that and you've read it, I'll admit, the only time I've come close to winning on this map is against myself in development. Take my evaluation of strategy with a heaping grain of salt.

Hah! Good caveat. Sounds like pretty solid advice though. Thank you.

Could you explain the bonus structure?

I don't understand all the "kill factory"s.  It says I'm getting a bonus of 23, but I only receive 4 troops. 

Thank you

I think that the bonus structure is well described in http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/3211/Darkness_Falls_Dev_Journal.

The factories are all part of some behind the scenes stuff as described in the link btilly gave. The actual bonuses come from non-factory continents.

the only time I've come close to winning on this map is against myself in development.

:)  This makes it sound like you somehow still lost both sides in the game.

I would assume that some but was noticed and the game terminated.  Thus, he didn't win.  Even against himself.

Ozyman wrote:

the only time I've come close to winning on this map is against myself in development.

:)  This makes it sound like you somehow still lost both sides in the game.

Yep, I'm that bad.

btilly wrote:

I would assume that some but was noticed and the game terminated.  Thus, he didn't win.  Even against himself.

yeah, I kind of came to that conclusion too, but I like the other interpretation better. ;)

Here's my advice so far:

Avoid fighting as much as possible. 

Explore everywhere you can without having to fight more than 1 unit.

Don't attack anyone else for any reason unless it is the endgame and it appears that someone is out of control, or your enemies have wiped each other out and it is time to clean up.

Grab a small bonus like Greenland or Central Asia.  Consolidate most of your units on these few territories.

Hope that you are lucky.

BlackDog wrote:

Here's my advice so far:

Avoid fighting as much as possible. 

Explore everywhere you can without having to fight more than 1 unit.

Don't attack anyone else for any reason unless it is the endgame and it appears that someone is out of control, or your enemies have wiped each other out and it is time to clean up.

Grab a small bonus like Greenland or Central Asia.  Consolidate most of your units on these few territories.

Hope that you are lucky.

Shhhhhh!

The map has been re-released with 3 scenarios: Apophenia, Asynchrony, and Synchronicity.

Asynchrony is just a new name for the original, turn-based release with one small update. Thanks to Blackdog and others deciding that hiding in the shadows is a consistently winning strategy, I have added one side to the attacker's dice. It's not a lot, but it should help the map play out more as I envisioned, with a slightly more aggressive tone.

Synchronicity is the SimulGear version of the map. The kill odds are set to favor a slightly more aggressive player. This should also make the SimulGear version of the map more mainstream friendly, as attacking resolves more straightforward. The moving lights mechanic should have more value in this version of the game, and is what I really wanted the map to be to begin with, but I released the more accessible turn-based instead.

Apophenia is another SimulGear version of the map. This uses the defense favoring odds that strategists know and love - with the orders executing in a random order. Honestly, I haven't tested this one at all and have a minor fear of stalemates, but I'm putting it out there anyway because I can, and because I love the name. If it turns out not to work, I'll take it back down.

This map might work a lot better as SimulGear now that you mention it.

Apophenia/æpɵˈfiːniÉ™/ is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

The term is a misnomer incorrectly attributed to Klaus Conrad^[1] by Peter Brugger,^[2] who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness", but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random information in general (such as with gambling), paranormal phenomena, and religion.^[3]