>I actually think it's working incorrectly, but maybe that's just me.  I can not imagine a board where you want to have medium or heavy fog and artillery, but then one's artillery cuts right through the fog making the fog defunct in the process.  Basically you have to play that board in Total fog, so the artillery works properly, but so many people feel uncomfortable with Total that it reduces the usability of the board...  Ideally an artillery "default" should be blind, but again, maybe that's just me?

My Invention board deals with this issue, and I like the way it currently works.  It's heavy fog, so you can see who owns neighboring territories, but not unit counts.  When someone earns the 'ICBM' tech they can now see who owns all the territories on the map (because their ICBM can attack anywhere on the map), but not unit counts (that requires the satellite  'tech').

See. Now you have to break it to fix it.

@O, how does the tech grant vision when there's total fog?

Edit - K - just answered my own question by consulting help..  View Only Border.

berickf wrote:

I actually think it's working incorrectly, but maybe that's just me.  I can not imagine a board where you want to have medium or heavy fog and artillery, but then one's artillery cuts right through the fog making the fog defunct in the process.  Basically you have to play that board in Total fog, so the artillery works properly, but so many people feel uncomfortable with Total that it reduces the usability of the board...  Ideally an artillery "default" should be blind, but again, maybe that's just me?

i think too, a bit of perspective can help here. the whole idea behind 'artillery' wasn't such that you could attack half a board away, but more that there was something that wouldn't take ownership of intended territory like a normal attack would. things have evolved from there.

View borders.  It's only heavy fog, but I think view borders work the same with total fog too.

so in theory, you could set the whole board to ...wait, can't do that either as you can't add view border on top of the normal border...

So @berickf - here is a a solution - I think it will work pretty well - in fact depending on your point of view it will actually enhance the backstory. ..but you're not going to like how much work it entails.

For every territory on the map that needs vision (this will include close artillery shots i suppose) - you create an off-map hidden territory (under the ice in the artic) - they can be very tiny if you want.  

Fog = TOTAL  so your artillery works the way you want, right?

Now let's say Territory A needs to see B, C, and D.

Create Territory A¹ (hidden)  Make Territory A the only member of Continent "A" and point it to A¹ as an AutoCapture factory.   This will make it such that whoever owns 'A' at the beginning of their turn will own A¹ at the beginning of their turn.

Simply Give A¹ view only borders to B, C, and D.

The beauty/uglyness of this is that when A attacks D (which borders E) he will not be able to see E (unless he waits until his next turn for recon.

If it's not quite right, consider Heavy or Medium Fog as a compromise.  Basically you'll have double the territories, and double the borders - (one for attack and one for view) and one Factory for each territory.

Hey @Ozyman, Is this a job for the Advanced Editor?

I just now finished placing and naming all my territories and now the idea is that I have to do all 200+ territories as micro territory factories under the polar caps that have view only borders.  Wow.  That better be a job that the Advanced editor can do because I'm fatigued just thinking about it (and the thousands of resulting borders!)

If I could do the borders and then the Advanced editor could "mimic" them for the view only borders...

berickf wrote:

I just now finished placing and naming all my territories and now the idea is that I have to do all 200+ territories as micro territory factories under the polar caps that have view only borders.  Wow. 

You can hate me now ..and thank me later. 

    ..or simply hate me forever, but I think I'm obstinate enough that I would do it if it was my board and I felt like it was the best solution.

Ozyman, I have not yet played invention, but I must commend you for you effort seeing as it sounds like you had to nearly double your borders for ICBM's and then triple them for satellites!  But for your invention board, once you reach the tech I'm assuming that that the first tech (ICBM's) has an attack border which complies to the board's fog rules to every territory, in this case heavy fog, and then the second tech (satellites)  has view only borders that allow the additional information (troop counts).  So one territory to all for both techs.  4 capitals to develop tech from means 8 territories that have borders that connect to all the territories.  Interesting.  I can't even imagine how it must look when you view the borders for that map!

Now, instead of eight I would have to have 200+ territory factories crammed under my icecaps to replicate visibility.  Since I want the artillery blinded the visibility borders would only be to the adjacent spaces, they would mimic the attack and occupy (normal) borders and would ignore the artillery boundaries.  So, each micro factory territory would probably have 5,6,7...15, 16 view only borders depending on the density of the area, but, since viewability would be generated at the beginning of the turn attacking an adjacent (and viewable) space would not reveal the spaces behind until one attacked it because once going beyond the range of the view only borders you'd be back into the realm of total fog until the view only borders kicked in again at the beginning of the next turn... That's the concept I'd be working with, yes?  Is there any way to have the capture of a territory trigger a factory to show the view only borders for that same territory so that it can continue on as if it were medium fog?  Or that would require those real time factories I have read about?

Also, I know I'm in the realm of the experts here, so I apologize if I'm missing things that might seem obvious to all of you.  I have not even put a factory onto a board yet, so I'm just working with theory here and have no practical knowledge what-so-ever.

Thanks a lot for your patience with me to understand how all these concepts work and how they might be applied to tackle the problems I have for my board creation.  I appreciate it.

Whoops, double posted! You'd think I was going for post # 6000 in the designers forum, but got #5999 instead, Doh!

berickf wrote:

Is there any way to have the capture of a territory trigger a factory to show the view only borders for that same territory so that it can continue on as if it were medium fog?

No.

Or that would require those real time factories I have read about?

Yes.  This is a perfect example of why, and how to use an RTF.  The good news is that if RTFs ever become available, you will probably be able to convert all of your factories to RTFs pretty easily in the xml.

M57 wrote:

So @berickf - here is a a solution - I think it will work pretty well - in fact depending on your point of view it will actually enhance the backstory. ..but you're not going to like how much work it entails.

For every territory on the map that needs vision (this will include close artillery shots i suppose) - you create an off-map hidden territory (under the ice in the artic) - they can be very tiny if you want.  

Fog = TOTAL  so your artillery works the way you want, right?

Now let's say Territory A needs to see B, C, and D.

Create Territory A¹ (hidden)  Make Territory A the only member of Continent "A" and point it to A¹ as an AutoCapture factory.   This will make it such that whoever owns 'A' at the beginning of their turn will own A¹ at the beginning of their turn.

Simply Give A¹ view only borders to B, C, and D.

The beauty/uglyness of this is that when A attacks D (which borders E) he will not be able to see E (unless he waits until his next turn for recon.

If it's not quite right, consider Heavy or Medium Fog as a compromise.  Basically you'll have double the territories, and double the borders - (one for attack and one for view) and one Factory for each territory.

Hey @Ozyman, Is this a job for the Advanced Editor?

I don't think this can currently be done with the Advanced Editor, but I'm always up for adding new features (although they come slowly).  If berickf is not in a hurry and wants to work with me on it, we can talk (PM me) about how I might possibly add functionality like this to the WGAME.

berickf wrote:

Ozyman, I have not yet played invention, but I must commend you for you effort seeing as it sounds like you had to nearly double your borders for ICBM's and then triple them for satellites! 

Yeah, but I have a python library & scripts that do pretty much all of this for me.  It's kind of like the WGAME, but much more powerful & without a GUI frontend.  Anyone who wants to use it is welcome to contact me and I'll help them set it up, but you need to either already know python, or have a strong desire to learn.

But for your invention board, [...] 4 capitals to develop tech from means 8 territories that have borders that connect to all the territories.

  Interesting.  I can't even imagine how it must look when you view the borders for that map!

I've often thought about posting screen shots of just the borders page for some maps.  I thought it might be fun to try and guess the maps from just the borders.

Also, I know I'm in the realm of the experts here, so I apologize if I'm missing things that might seem obvious to all of you.  I have not even put a factory onto a board yet, so I'm just working with theory here and have no practical knowledge what-so-ever.

Thanks a lot for your patience with me to understand how all these concepts work and how they might be applied to tackle the problems I have for my board creation.  I appreciate it.

This stuff is really complicated, and I think all of us are still learning how everything works and what we can do with it.  It's pretty amazing every time someone is able to come up with some new twist on things.

Ozyman wrote:

M57 wrote:

So @berickf - here is a a solution - I think it will work pretty well - in fact depending on your point of view it will actually enhance the backstory. ..but you're not going to like how much work it entails.

For every territory on the map that needs vision (this will include close artillery shots i suppose) - you create an off-map hidden territory (under the ice in the artic) - they can be very tiny if you want.  

Fog = TOTAL  so your artillery works the way you want, right?

Now let's say Territory A needs to see B, C, and D.

Create Territory A¹ (hidden)  Make Territory A the only member of Continent "A" and point it to A¹ as an AutoCapture factory.   This will make it such that whoever owns 'A' at the beginning of their turn will own A¹ at the beginning of their turn.

Simply Give A¹ view only borders to B, C, and D.

The beauty/uglyness of this is that when A attacks D (which borders E) he will not be able to see E (unless he waits until his next turn for recon.

If it's not quite right, consider Heavy or Medium Fog as a compromise.  Basically you'll have double the territories, and double the borders - (one for attack and one for view) and one Factory for each territory.

Hey @Ozyman, Is this a job for the Advanced Editor?

I don't think this can currently be done with the Advanced Editor, but I'm always up for adding new features (although they come slowly).  If berickf is not in a hurry and wants to work with me on it, we can talk (PM me) about how I might possibly add functionality like this to the WGAME.

There is no hurry.  I still have to add my borders, define my continents and bonuses, set my neutral starting values for my cities... I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to bury a bunch of factory territories under the polar ice caps!

The more I think about it M57, the more the idea of starting the turn with a "medium" view that degrades to Total fog as one explores has a certain appeal to me... But of course, I enjoy fog games, so I might be the odd one out here.  But, like you say, an interesting back story could be created to explain the effect and it'd be a really unique game play style.

berickf wrote:

The more I think about it M57, the more the idea of starting the turn with a "medium" view that degrades to Total fog as one explores has a certain appeal to me... But of course, I enjoy fog games, so I might be the odd one out here.  But, like you say, an interesting back story could be created to explain the effect and it'd be a really unique game play style.

Yeah - it's funny sometimes how a "workaround" can force ..uhmm.. I mean inspire game-play that you never would have thought of otherwise.  Then, in the process of fitting it to your back story (or your back story to it), you end up tweaking other things like dice mods and borders, etc., and end up with a game that is not only unique, but more sophisticated than the one you originally envisioned.

You know what that fog would be really good for, I mean of course it works for War with intelligence gathering and recon, etc... But what it would be really good for would be for a board which deals with the concept of exploring and opening up the new world.

berickf wrote:

You know what that fog would be really good for, I mean of course it works for War with intelligence gathering and recon, etc... But what it would be really good for would be for a board which deals with the concept of exploring and opening up the new world.

Problem is, you play the board once, the world is explored. Although who's doing what with it can be a suprise still....  I am trying to make one of these are the moment.

berickf wrote:

There is no hurry.  I still have to add my borders, define my continents and bonuses, set my neutral starting values for my cities... I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to bury a bunch of factory territories under the polar ice caps!

Nevertheless, it's probably not a bad idea to set up a dummy territory or two under the ice-caps with factories and view borders just to see if works the way you think it's going to work. (Besides, I'm curious).  If there's a hitch, we can start scheming up plan C, or if something is truly broken, you can give Tom some early warning, etc..