The Fog of War

This is mechanically included in attack rolls in most games. If something is behind a wall, you take penalties to hit it. That's all you need, make it so that "sight" is a part of the normal attack.

How about grey tiles to simulate fog? Players place a grey tile for fog rolling through the battlefield? Fog hex tiles can be measured by feet of one tile and so forth?

Basically what you are talking about is a *form* of *hidden information*.

In my current endeavor, I am using cards with 3 colors per card. These colors are on the *backside* of cards. What happens is that a player can speculate as to which unit is behind the card:

-The opposing player knows there is a unit.
-He also knows it is one of three colors.

What he does not know is what color the unit is. In my game this is important because there are bonuses or penalties using a RPS-5. So a color beats 2 other colors and is beaten by 2 colors. Correctly predicting which color you will face has a bonus.

There are obviously other cards that can alter the odds, change the outcome of a battle and so forth...

Fog of war (FOW) is a very interesting problem in (war)games, and I have seen several solutions.

0: No FOW. What the OP describes seems like Line of Sight (LOS), used in every tactical game I have ever played (maybe some simplistic miniatures games do without it?). It does not solve the problems of FOW, because the player can still see all enemy units and make plans knowing where they are. There are never any real ambushes or surprises, you can't feint much. Because all solutions to FOW adds some complexity and playing time this is unfortunately what most games do anyway.

1: Blinds. This is what was suggested by others above. I think the common term for using small pieces of paper or empty bases on a miniatures table for FOW is "blinds". You print some type of unit or unit name (or "dummy") on the unseen side of each blind, and then move them like normal units until they are detected (rules for that vary, but a quick googling for miniatures game rules with blinds should provide some examples).

2: Umpire. This is the only other solution I know of that works with a free-movement game. You have two identical copies of the game set up ("double blind") and an umpire keeps the two synchronized and tells each player when new enemy units are visible. This solution has been known at least since the first Kriegsspiel in the 1820's. Alternatively you have only one game set up, and the umpire is responsible for removing units before each player turn so each player only see what he should see (makes the game even more time-consuming).

3: Flipped units and armies. Saw this in a few board games (Great War at Sea, the S&T Franco-Prussian War). Units (cardboard counters) on the map are moved with backside up, hiding what they are. Some "units" are "armies" (or "fleets" in that naval game) and you have an off-map hidden display where you put all units in that army. So when a unit enters combat with the enemy and is flipped over, it could turn out to be a weak cavalry screen unit or it could be a huge stack of artillery-supported corps. In GWAS you don't know if an enemy fleet marker is a single destroyer or half of the enemy fleet until you detect it.

4: Blocks. I guess block games deserves a mention (Hammer of the Scots, EastFront, Wizard Kings, etc). The enemy only see the back of the blocks, not what type of unit it is or how many (1-4) steps it has remaining. I guess you could have dummies as well, but I have not played a block game that included dummies.

5: Identical maps, no umpire. There are a few board games that comes with two identical game boards (sorry, forgot the names). You see only your own map with your own units, but you have special markers to place to keep track of where there might be enemy units, and players have to call out when entering some hexes (those that might contain enemy units) to know if there is contact (but of course no need to say WHAT you are moving into that hex. I have seen two variations of this:

5a: You keep track of the front between you and the enemy, so on your map you have a line (or lines) of markers representing the enemy front line, and the other player has a corresponding front for your front. As long as you move on your side of the front you do not need to tell the other player, but when you move into an enemy front area you have to tell your opponent and he will let you know if he had some units there or not. In some games you can probe with recon units into enemy areas to see what is there without getting drawn into a bigger battle.

5b:In a American Civil War game (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4276/across-the-potomac) there is a line drawn on the map showing what parts are the "home country" of each player. Every time you move into a hex on the enemy side of the line you need to tell the other player what hex it is, so on your own copy of the map you can move markers that represent where enemy units are on your side of the line. This way players will know when two armies come into contact (but you do not know what is in an enemy unit until you attack it). Saw this game for the first game this last weekend and thought it was a really clever trick, but perhaps only makes sense for operational level games, not tactical games. The rationale is that the local population will keep you informed of enemy armies moving on your side of the border.

6: I saw on some forum a while ago a description of some kind of mechanical device that was used to track in what areas of a map each player had units. You pushed some sticks or something into holes in the device and players would notice if they ended up with units in the same area. I think it was used for some kind of naval miniatures game? I'm sure you could make a similar device either in hardware or as an app for a smart phone.

Of course the solutions that only works for area/hex games could be used for free-movement as well if you can divide the table into some kind of areas that are used only for FOW.

Actually I think some games do a quite good job at it, or is there anything in particular you think is bad about how for instance Combat Mission or the Command Ops games handle FOW? I think even simpler games like Panzer General often does a good enough job at hiding enemy units that are too far away, and I have no big problems with the way completely ahistoric (eg RTS) games implement it even.

Depends on the terrain of course. In theoretical flat clear terrain it would be weird, but if there are depressions or hills or trees or buildings somewhere to hide a tank it makes sense. What is unrealistic in many games is that terrain is too open. Of course scale and RTS games is not worth discussing. All RTS games deliberately mix different scales in ways that make no sense (but I enjoy them anyway) just like many miniatures games do (eg the "logarithmic scale" they made up for games like Flames of War so they could mix artillery and aircraft and infantry in the same game, even if the scales do not make any sense at all). RTS games have tactical units and tactical weapons ranges, but probably want to keep the FOW on a strategic scale.

Not seeing where the enemy is, or knowing the enemy is there but not what he has, is the norm in the real world and very important for what happened in historical conflicts.

This depends on the scale of the game and what time period we are speaking about. ACW-era armies (19th century) (or earlier; and I guess post-apocalyptic settings would be similar, with not much air recon) could easily move around in Texas for a long time without finding each other, or only have a vague idea about the location and size of enemy forces. Read up a bit about any big war pre-1900 and you will see a lot of that. Cavalry screens around each army might do a bit of skirmishing, but often with one or both sides not being sure about the enemy main force. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) has many excellent examples of where, in particular French, generals are completely in the dark and suddenly their army run into an enemy army and some of the (until then) biggest battles in history happened as a big surprise to them ("ooops, there was 100000 Prussians here"). The Prussian-Austrain war in 1866 is famous for how Moltke sneaked up an entire army hidden right up to the waiting Austrians and defeated them. In 1914 when the British expeditionary force first ran into the German army both were surprised and did not expect the encounter (known as the Battle of Mons). The two French and two German armies meeting in the Ardennes in 1914 was also a bit confused and did not instantly figure out where or what the enemy was, and that is a much smaller area than Texas. Even if you have air recon, modern armies are quite good at hiding and there are many exampels of undetected large enemy units in modern wars as well.

Your scale is way off. Maybe in a RTS with distorted scales this makes some sense, but in reality you could look on a real map how much space an army use and compare that to the size of land. Think needles in heystacks. But needles that are actively trying to hide and that try to feint and send out decoys to make you think they are somewhere else. :)

Fog of War is an experience all its own. It is pined for and debated about often. Some whom have played games on the BGG list liked the experience enough to be full time consumers of this type of idea, and thusly are willing to tackle a bit more "complexity' in the product. Most others like the idea of FOW, but would not want to regularly make that investment.

That's why you see Double-Blind done more in convention settings. They have equipment and staff on hand to facilitate it. In fact, at the time of the OP of this thread there was a Dutch (or Belgian I.C.R.W) company that ran large scale games with FOW for a business.

This is what I did in my game. It's ok, but if you have movement costs it can expose your power when you pay them, and once you have fielded your army in battle a good player can remember what units survive, so you need a way to bolster your numbers on later turns that other players cannot detect.

In my game? You have to fight to win. If you let an enemy group waltz into your territory unmatched, you will lose.

5 year old post. But still.

The siege tank in siege mode is an artillery unit. It can shoot from very far away, and needs vision support to see enough for its own range.

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As how I see a fair variant for FOW in war games.
Anything that can be hidden, should be hidden. Although, the hidden objects should only have a function when shown.

Cards are good solutions.

But a Stratego variant of a game is also an option. Given that all pieces are roughly worth the same in general.

(I have been a SC addict and saw something incorrect, ocd, ocd)

Under the *** is more on a general note for the most recent contributors ;)

About 90% left. People move on (I mean this in the most positive way) etc.

I agree with your true FOW. Actually, it would even be better if you don't even know that there is an army present.

I imagine some sort of economy game with 2 or more countries. Some might keep an army of some sort. But those games are so complex, that you need someone to watch for fairness.

My article (originally from ATO Magazine) about fog of war:
https://pulsiphergames.com/gamedesign/WaysToReflectFogofWar.htm

Cursive was invented because it was faster and less messy to write with using a quill; it is significantly harder to read however than a basic font. There is rarely a good reason to use a different font than Times New Roman in a published article. You are pushing away readers in a failed effort to appear "fancy", but why should an article on fog of war mechanics need to look fancy in the first place?

Ironic posting that in a forum all about optimal design.