Fog - Feedback Thread

[mad-bax]

It looks like I am in a minority in this discussion. Although I appreciate the advantages of this unit I have had a couple of experiences with it that I didn't like.

In one game (b4 I had worked out how fog functioned) I put a settler and spearman in a boat and set off through the fog. It redlined, I sent it back yada yada yada. When I hit land I couldn't unload the settler because the fog was over the land.

Secondly, fog appears and disappears under the fog of war depending on unit placement. In the same game I bought a map, and on that basis planned a war. I sent four or five boats with troops to where I had decided to attack from. Of course, when the boats got a couple of tiles from the landing site the fog covered the landing area and I couldn't offload the troops.

That doesn't strike me as fair.

And lastly (and perhaps a little petulantly), I don't like the graphic.

The use of Fog would in no way prevent me from playing GOTM it just makes me sigh quietly to myself.

 

[Ronald]

I don't mind the fog, but watching last gotm the AI sinking one ship after the other just to clear all the fog, I believe it gives the AI more disadvantage than human players, so I would use it only for very little.

 

[CdB]

Originally posted by ControlFreak

I say keep them, put them in strategic places (and a few dummy places) but reduce their total number.

Totally agree. I also tried to used the fog to get some triremes become elite without much success. So I would rate it as a slowing factor for travel move.

On a separate topic, I lost count of the triremes I lost against squids. Even with some careful move along the coast I was under heavy pressure. I had only one trireme that survived the squid and was promoted elite just to be attacked in the same turn by another squid

Then I just avoid using the triremes

 

[LKendter]

I have no problem with the fog.
It is announce ahead of the game, and we know what to expect. It can help control travel between two land areas without creating hugh blocks of water.

====================

My line is drawn on issues that change the working of the game (ie - settler suddenly have an attack factor). This is simply a new unit and I do that myself in my LK world map mod so keep the seas foggy.

 

[Yndy]

I think the FOG is cool as a unit and graphic. I find it has little impact on the game and strategy as long as it is spread. But I strongly believe that the large amount of FOG s l o w s the game and that I hate. I say use it like the squid, to cover in and around islands, to cover sides of continents and so on.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I don't like the Fog as a way of shrinking the map. The shrunken oceans introduce a lot of distortions into the game (suicide galleys are more effective, Navigation/Magnetism are much less important since it's easy to cross the oceans without ending on an Ocean tile, Great Lighthouse is more important because it can get galleys across the ocean; the AI players don't understand how to cross narrow oceans effectively).

Is it possible to put a "trigger" into a scenario, so that the Ocean spaces are uncrossable (e.g., put 100/100 super-FOG units in them) until the first discovery of Navigation or Magnetism, at which point those blockers disappear? That would make the shrunken-map games more "realistic" in that the oceans couldn't be crossed without the requisite techs.

BTW, the speed 2 galleass seems to confuse/break the AI: I've seen the AI leave the galleass in an ocean space even though it didn't have Navigation or Magnetism. I think it expects to be able to move three spaces and then runs out of movement before making it to safety. I don't know if the computer is programmed to check for this and sink those ships sometimes, or if it assumes that the AI always leaves its ships in safe positions, but it's a quirk either way.

 

[forged]

I don't particularly mind the fog, although seeing the squids moving around encouraged me to just leave them to the AI to clear out the squares.

I think they work best if placed strategically so that they can be used to limit the effectiveness of suicide galleys and slow down getting a first contact with remote civs. Doing this would make oceans feel more significant in a limited space -- at least until the fog was cleared out.

 

[inudog]

I have a question, is there adifference between FOG anf F0G?

 

[Zwingli]

Re: inudog

I would guess that one of them is the sea based FOG unit which hinders oceanic exploration, and the other is the land based F0G as found in GOTM 17.

 

[jeffelammar]

I personally don't think the fog helps the game much. It doesn't seem to have any effect on my ability to go where I want. I still have to spend 1 movement to get into it, so it doesn't even restrict my movement across small bits of ocean. (Unless at war, where your HP actually matter)

It doesn't bother me, but I sure could live without it.