Since per border fog is probably a long way off, would it be possible to add Default+Vision and Artillery-Vision as new border types?

Default+Vision would really open up some possibilities for total fog maps since currently with total fog you can't have a territory that both attacks and sees the same territory.

And of course Artillery-Vision makes sense for a lot of boards with less than total fog.

This is how I ended up with my scouts and spies visibility.  I was originally just trying to blind my artillery but make regular borders have a near medium visibility.  So there are workarounds that can be had with separate autocapture view territories, but, it is a lot of work and there are delays to when the view borders kick in and also delays to when they are lost again.

Is there something specific you are trying to achieve, or, this is a general request?

having multiple border types has been on the request list for a long time. not sure it's possible, otherwise it prolly would have been done by now. 

Something like this I think would be really handy, but if Tom decides it is something he will work on, we should sit down and make sure we are getting a complete set of borders, and not just expanding the subset we currently have.

Ozyman wrote:

Something like this I think would be really handy, but if Tom decides it is something he will work on, we should sit down and make sure we are getting a complete set of borders, and not just expanding the subset we currently have.

I agree that a fully functioning per border fog level would be ideal, but if it were easier to implement the Defauly+Vision border would add a lot of functionality all by itself.

berickf wrote:

This is how I ended up with my scouts and spies visibility.  I was originally just trying to blind my artillery but make regular borders have a near medium visibility.  So there are workarounds that can be had with separate autocapture view territories, but, it is a lot of work and there are delays to when the view borders kick in and also delays to when they are lost again.

Is there something specific you are trying to achieve, or, this is a general request?

Okay, here is the specific:

I have a map that is set at Medium Fog as default. There is a Fortress territory type that has increased dice, bonuses and vision. So it can attack adjacent territories and see the territories that are adjacent to those. This works just fine with Light or Medium Fog (and of course works fine with no fog).

Problem:

With Heavy or Total Fog, the Fortress territories can attack adjacent territories and see the territories surrounding them, but they can't see the territories immediately adjacent to them! That's just weird.

Obviously, the work around is either to fix it at medium fog or to make separate territories that are vision only (like the Ancient Isles of Kjeldor). Being able to have a territory that can both attack and see will open up a lot more possibilities for Heavy and Total Fog maps.

To clarify, I was just wondering whether it would be easier to implement a single new border that works the same as a Default border but can also see what it is attacking even with Heavy or Total Fog in effect rather than putting in a whole new border modification system to control fog.

I also mentioned the Artillery-Vision border because that particular idea has come up before in discussion.

This is slightly different than full control over fog. If you wanted a fully functioning system, then you would need three settings for each border.

Default: defaults to whatever the standard fog setting is.

-Vision: you see the territory just as if that border did not exist (so you would still see it completely in no fog and see the ownership in light fog, but see nothing in medium/heavy/total)

+Vision: see the ownership and unit count just like if the border were a standard vision border

Basically, in an ideal system, every border have the following settings for each direction:

1. Can attack?
2. Can capture?
3. Can fortify?
4. Can view ownership?
5. Can view units?

And then, of course, any att/def modifiers, but those are already dealt with separately. Anything missing?

That would be everything there.

The only tricky part is the view part of it. The "Can view ownership?" and "Can view units?" should each have yes, no, and default fog level as options.

In the XML, seems like you could do:

<border fromid="" toid="" attack="True" capture="True" fortify="True" ... .

something like that.

Just need to make sure it is backwards compatible with the current formatting.

Korrun wrote:

berickf wrote:

This is how I ended up with my scouts and spies visibility.  I was originally just trying to blind my artillery but make regular borders have a near medium visibility.  So there are workarounds that can be had with separate autocapture view territories, but, it is a lot of work and there are delays to when the view borders kick in and also delays to when they are lost again.

Is there something specific you are trying to achieve, or, this is a general request?

Okay, here is the specific:

I have a map that is set at Medium Fog as default. There is a Fortress territory type that has increased dice, bonuses and vision. So it can attack adjacent territories and see the territories that are adjacent to those. This works just fine with Light or Medium Fog (and of course works fine with no fog).

Problem:

With Heavy or Total Fog, the Fortress territories can attack adjacent territories and see the territories surrounding them, but they can't see the territories immediately adjacent to them! That's just weird.

Obviously, the work around is either to fix it at medium fog or to make separate territories that are vision only (like the Ancient Isles of Kjeldor). Being able to have a territory that can both attack and see will open up a lot more possibilities for Heavy and Total Fog maps.

That's sort of similar to the problem I encountered.  Like the "Ancient Isles of Kjeldor" apparently, I did the same and made auto captured view territories.  Since your fortresses are capitals the auto captured territories would not effect eliminations as by the time they had autocaptured the view territory they'd be holding a capital and would be susceptible to elimination.  If you went that way, then for consistency you should probably remove the view borders from the actual fortress and put all the view borders whether adjacent, or the next space, on the view territory so they all light up at the same time.  It would have a one turn delay before the view took effect, but, that could be explained, perhaps, by saying that the captors of the fortress had to establish their hold before setting up the proper lookouts in the towers of the fortress to see the territories around them and therefore would not offer view till the start of the following turn?  The other effect would be that if someone had more then one fortress and, therefore, taking one did not eliminate them, then, even after losing one they'd still be able to see around the fortress they lost so as to plan their counter siege.  Don't know if that effect would work with your theme?

If you want to make it backwards compatible you'll have to do instead add new possible values to border-type attribute (not sure what the actual name is)

right now it's something like:

<border fromid="" toid=""  type="Artillery">

Where type can be something like:

• fortify-only
• artillery
• view-only
• default 

The problem is with Kjeld's 5 attributes you get I think 31 different combos, which could get cumbersome.  I guess you could name them something like "Attack+Capture+View-Ownership" or something and then

Artillery is equivalent to "Attack+View-Ownership"

Hrm, this gets tricky though.  Because what is the 'default' border.  Normal view borders always cut through the fog, but a default border changes it's view property based on the type of fog...

One way to do it is to split the view borders up a bit more so they incorporate fog levels in them.

view-ownership-light (view ownership in light/no fog)

view-ownership-medium (view ownership in light/medium/no fog)

view-ownership-heavy (view ownership in light/medium/heavy no fog)

something like that.  Then a default border is a view-ownership-medium and view-units-light border.

Would be kind of cool too, because then you could have view borders that scale with the fog (or not).

Or maybe I'm just overthinking this.

Ozyman wrote:

Hrm, this gets tricky though.  Because what is the 'default' border.  Normal view borders always cut through the fog, but a default border changes it's view property based on the type of fog...

I'm only loosely following the thread. Would it help if there was an additional fog type or two?

Different fog levels is an old discussion where I believe Kjeld put together I think 20 or so different possibilities for fog.  The chatter at the time was that was way more than necessary but I liked the idea. 

Different border types has also been discussed before.

Both of these things make a lot of sense and I am sure Tom would have built them in originally if he had thought of it.  Going back now and redoing them is a much bigger pain.

Ozyman wrote:

If you want to make it backwards compatible you'll have to do instead add new possible values to border-type attribute (not sure what the actual name is)

The problem is with Kjeld's 5 attributes you get I think 31 different combos, which could get cumbersome.  I guess you could name them something like "Attack+Capture+View-Ownership" or something and then Artillery is equivalent to "Attack+View-Ownership"

Sounds like way too many properties. Probably better just to deprecate the current attribute and have it superseded by the new attributes if present.

Hrm, this gets tricky though.  Because what is the 'default' border.  Normal view borders always cut through the fog, but a default border changes it's view property based on the type of fog...

One way to do it is to split the view borders up a bit more so they incorporate fog levels in them.

view-ownership-light (view ownership in light/no fog)

view-ownership-medium (view ownership in light/medium/no fog)

view-ownership-heavy (view ownership in light/medium/heavy no fog)

something like that.  Then a default border is a view-ownership-medium and view-units-light border.

Would be kind of cool too, because then you could have view borders that scale with the fog (or not).

 

Or maybe I'm just overthinking this.

Sounds to complicated to me to scale with the fog. I think that would be confusing. I'd say just 2 attributes with 3 possible values each to keep it as close as possible to current fog that everyone is used to, but still give flexibility:

1. See Ownership
2. Don't See Ownership
3. Default Fog View for Ownership

1. See Unit Count
2. Don't See Unit Count
3. Default Fog View for Unit Count

And after all that, my original point is that it would be helpful (and possibly easier) TO JUST ADD ON A DEFAULT+VISION BORDER! Okay sorry. I guess I probably would rather see the solution I proposed above, but I would rather have a Default+Vision border (and maybe an Artillery-Vision border) added than nothing.

berickf wrote:

Korrun wrote:

berickf wrote:

This is how I ended up with my scouts and spies visibility.  I was originally just trying to blind my artillery but make regular borders have a near medium visibility.  So there are workarounds that can be had with separate autocapture view territories, but, it is a lot of work and there are delays to when the view borders kick in and also delays to when they are lost again.

Is there something specific you are trying to achieve, or, this is a general request?

Okay, here is the specific:

I have a map that is set at Medium Fog as default. There is a Fortress territory type that has increased dice, bonuses and vision. So it can attack adjacent territories and see the territories that are adjacent to those. This works just fine with Light or Medium Fog (and of course works fine with no fog).

Problem:

With Heavy or Total Fog, the Fortress territories can attack adjacent territories and see the territories surrounding them, but they can't see the territories immediately adjacent to them! That's just weird.

Obviously, the work around is either to fix it at medium fog or to make separate territories that are vision only (like the Ancient Isles of Kjeldor). Being able to have a territory that can both attack and see will open up a lot more possibilities for Heavy and Total Fog maps.

That's sort of similar to the problem I encountered.  Like the "Ancient Isles of Kjeldor" apparently, I did the same and made auto captured view territories.  Since your fortresses are capitals the auto captured territories would not effect eliminations as by the time they had autocaptured the view territory they'd be holding a capital and would be susceptible to elimination.  If you went that way, then for consistency you should probably remove the view borders from the actual fortress and put all the view borders whether adjacent, or the next space, on the view territory so they all light up at the same time.  It would have a one turn delay before the view took effect, but, that could be explained, perhaps, by saying that the captors of the fortress had to establish their hold before setting up the proper lookouts in the towers of the fortress to see the territories around them and therefore would not offer view till the start of the following turn?  The other effect would be that if someone had more then one fortress and, therefore, taking one did not eliminate them, then, even after losing one they'd still be able to see around the fortress they lost so as to plan their counter siege.  Don't know if that effect would work with your theme?

That is a nice workaround (and one that I might continue to use even if we get more fog control since it has the fun delay factor in there). However, I don't think I would always want that. Also, it increases the number of troops you get from the per territory bonus, which might not always be desirable.

And it's just complicated (the 'lighthouse-factory'  workaround) - for the designer and for the player.  Players generally prefer simpler boards - these machinations just make things harder to understand and make boards more intimidating to new players.