"Fog of War" item to hide your attacking forces from the enemy (Part 1/2)

[Mathijsvand]

What about an extra item to make the fog of war lift faster? If activated your active city can see fogged troops 50% faster for 24 hours. It should be only purchasable with gold. A possible name could be "binoculars" or "telescope". Just give it a thought as well.

[Vasasalo]

Yeah that wouldn't be bad to do; however not every buys gold and it shouldn't be a requirement to defend an attack option.
I think every attack should start with the fog of war by default.
Just notify of attack pending but don't mark which city is under attack. Mark which city is the closest to the attack so you can send scouts out of that one.
If you choose not to then, fog of war rules apply; however you could choose the telescope to purchase to instantly lift the fog and see which cities are under attack, when they will hit, and the waves of attackers or you can send scouts from the closest city to scout and if enough scouts are sent to kill the attackers scout it would lift the fog of war effect. This would require that the attacker send scouts with his first attack wave to counter and keep active the fog of war until the set percentage of travel.

[Kaleel]

@Vasasalo: That's an interesting notion: changing the default premise of warfare altogether! And if that happens, then why not introduce a patrol option for scouts that would allow them to unmask incoming attacks? The functionality would be based on how many scouts are deployed at a time, possibly:

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 860"]
[TR]
[TD]# of scouts sent on each patrol wave[/TD]
[TD]Patrol duration[/TD]
[TD]Deploy/recall march time[/TD]
[TD]Can unmask incoming attack waves that are arriving in[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]1 ~ 24[/TD]
[TD]1 hour[/TD]
[TD]1 minute[/TD]
[TD]1 hour or less[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]25 ~ 49[/TD]
[TD]2 hours[/TD]
[TD]3 minutes[/TD]
[TD]5 hours or less[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]50 ~ 99[/TD]
[TD]3 hours[/TD]
[TD]7 minutes[/TD]
[TD]10 hours or less[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]100+[/TD]
[TD]4 hours[/TD]
[TD]10 minutes[/TD]
[TD]20 hours or less[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]




EXAMPLE:

• I see the "Fog of War" icon on my dash indicating that I am under attack.
• From the Rally Point, under the Commands tab, I select 36x scouts and click on a new button, "PATROL"
• In the next window, I see the following confirmation window:

[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 567"]
[TR]
[TD="width: 75, colspan: 3"]Back
Button[/TD]
[TD="width: 25"][/TD]
[TD="width: 25"][/TD]
[TD="width: 125, colspan: 5"]CONFIRMATION
PAGE[/TD]
[TD="width: 25"][/TD]
[TD="width: 75, colspan: 3"]Date[/TD]
[TD="width: 75, colspan: 3"]?
Button[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="colspan: 3"]Time[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 4"]Arrival in:[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="colspan: 3"]0:03:00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 4"]Origin:[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="colspan: 7"]City Name (XXX,XXX) RXX >[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 6"]Patrol Duration:[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="colspan: 3"]2:00:00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 6"]Effective Patrol Range:[/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD="colspan: 3"]5:00:00[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[TD][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 17"]CONFIRM PATROL[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

• I click on "CONFIRM PATROL" and my scouts march out. After 3 minutes, they begin their 2 hour patrol.
• If the incoming attack wave is within a 5:00 HRS landing-time radius, then I receive a PM saying that "Your scouts have uncovered an attack!"
• The "Fog of War" icon on my dash is replaced the standard icon showing how many attacks are incoming.
• At that point, I can either choose to wait it out or purchase and apply the "reveal incoming troops" premium feature per usual.

Of course, this feature isn't guaranteed to yield a successful outcome on the first try:

• I see the "Fog of War" icon on my dash indicating that I am under attack. I only have 12x scouts available.
• From the Rally Point, under the Commands tab, I select all 12x scouts and send them on patrol.
• However, because their effective range is only 1 hour, they find nothing because the attacking wave is further away than 1 hour.
• After 1 hour of patrol, the scouts return empty-handed.
• In the meantime, I've recruited 20x more scouts, so I send out all 36x scouts.
• Even though their effective range is 5 hours (or less), they still find nothing in the first 1 hour of their patrol (attacking wave is further than 5 hours).

...but the player can always recall the scouts resend them with a additional scouts to increase their effective range:

• Continuing from the example above, I've recruited 14x more scouts.
• I recall the the 36x scouts that I sent out previously. After 3 minutes, they all return.
• I re-send them out with the new scouts, for a total of 50x scouts.
• Within 7 minutes, they start their patrol.
• Because their range is 10 hours or less, they immediately see some incoming attack waves and I get a PM notification.
• On my dashboard, the standard attack icon appears with the number 3x, but the fog of war icon also remains.
• This tells me that, at the moment, I have 3x incoming attacks that will arriving in 10x hours or less, but there are incoming attacks that are further away still.

... and so forth.

Or, one could purchase the premium "Telescope" function (25x gold, perhaps) to unmask all incoming attack waves within 24x hours:

• I see the "Fog of War" icon on my dash indicating that I am under attack. I purchase and apply the "Telescope" feature.
• On my dashboard, the "Fog of War" icon is replaced with the standard incoming attack icon, showing 4x. So I have 4x incoming attacks. If I want to find out more about them, I'd have to purchase and apply (4x) "Instant Reveal" functions.
• Within those 24x hours, any incoming attack appears per usual, unmasked.

Also, the "instant reveal" function cannot be used unless the attack is unmasked. So players are required to unmask the wave by either scout patrol or "telescope".

How's that?
-Kaleel

[Mathijsvand]

I think attacks with a scholar should not be "fogged". In this way people can be warned when a conquering force comes to attack you. This way you can still try to stop further conquering attacks before they happen. If in this case fog of war would be applied, I could've started again with an hour to conquering another city. You should however still be able to buy "cloak" an item to "fog" a scholar attack as well.
Eg. Player A sends player B seven attacks to kill all units and to be sure no units are left. All these attacks are "fogged" so player B only knew about these attacks after half the march time. As soon as player A sends a scholar along with his attacks, the fog of war will NOT be activated, so player B knows about this attack instantly, thus being able to try and stop the conquering diplomatically. Suppose player A fell for the diplomatic approach. Player C attacking player A after player B's attacks however, bought cloak. He used cloak and could fog his scholar attacks as well. He was sleeping the time player A saw he was going to be attacked, so he was unable to stop his attacks even if he would, thus player C could conquer player A's city, because he launched his five attacks using the "cloak" item.
I don't want to tell you what to do, it's just a suggestion. I like the thought of automatic fog of war, but it should have some restrictions though.