Lack of Fog of War

[The Disaster]

I just zoomed out to show all of Japan and I could see every army in the land, complete with absolutely accurate troop numbers for every one of them and the exact date they would each arrive wherever they were going.

How can we have a strategy title like this with precisely no fog of war? I can understand being able to 'see' into neighbouring provinces, but realtime updating on EVERYTHING? That is RIDICULOUS!

It means that you cannot secretly mass troops for an attack, for instance, or do so much of what makes up basic strategy gaming...

 

[lalalance]

I agree. I would love to see fog of war in this game. It just adds so much more thrill.

 

[unmerged(113565)]

I hate the way the AI instantly knows where your troops are and what they are doing. Wars are a case of plugging gaps because it instantly reacts and redeploys it's armies as soon as you move yours. It's annoying to see them leave a province 1day before your army arrives. It turns wars into a game of chess, there is still strategy involved but no mystery.

 

[Nefaro]

I hate the way the AI instantly knows where your troops are and what they are doing. Wars are a case of plugging gaps because it instantly reacts and redeploys it's armies as soon as you move yours. It's annoying to see them leave a province 1day before your army arrives. It turns wars into a game of chess, there is still strategy involved but no mystery.

It's always been that way in the EU series. Adding Fog Of War doesn't change the AI (or the player) from checking the enemy army's movement order and precise day of arrival and adjusting on it.

 

[The Disaster]

Regarding Fog of War, though, I do not recall being able to observe troop movements across the planet in EU, CK or HoI, for instance. I really do not understand why this important concept has been left out of Sengoku.

 

[Sandam]

well... maybe its a bit "non-strategy" to remove fog of war... but on the other hand, at least ai isnt cheating by only player having fog of war, like in other paradox games

 

[Stirling]

Those Japanese have armies of psychics apparently!

Yeah, this is a bit of a problem, but I'd also hate to see the fix be no info for the player but the computer still has perfect information. That would be ridiculous.

 

[GShock]

Might help to hide 2 things: 1 the exact numbers composing the army. 2 the location it's moving to and its ETA.
It's ok to see the army icon and whether it's defending or on the move but not knowing where and when and how big it really is should be a must.

 

[Nefaro]

Might help to hide 2 things: 1 the exact numbers composing the army. 2 the location it's moving to and its ETA.
It's ok to see the army icon and whether it's defending or on the move but not knowing where and when and how big it really is should be a must.

The counterpoint also made here is that the AI will always know these things, however. So maybe that's why such FOW was left out, so that it isn't a "cheat" that only the AI receives. I wouldn't mind seeing FOW as an extra option for raising the player's difficulty but adding it to the AI side would likely be a lot of work and probably make it a tactical pushover, and exploitable.

 

[The Disaster]

The counterpoint also made here is that the AI will always know these things, however. So maybe that's why such FOW was left out, so that it isn't a "cheat" that only the AI receives. I wouldn't mind seeing FOW as an extra option for raising the player's difficulty but adding it to the AI side would likely be a lot of work and probably make it a tactical pushover, and exploitable.

I agree completely.

 

[GShock]

A good FOW with very little work to be done is to add a % of error in the reports (numbers, dates of arrival). I am more concerned about another kind of exploit that happens when you merge armies.

Move one army from a province, it will arrive on ... say, june 27th. On June 25th you select both armies and merge them. 2 days later both armies have arrived and not just the first one.
You basically move one army but 2 armies arrive. IIRC moving consumes morale. This means one army is also refilling.

Total exploit.

 

[Einigkeit]

A good FOW with very little work to be done is to add a % of error in the reports (numbers, dates of arrival). I am more concerned about another kind of exploit that happens when you merge armies.

Move one army from a province, it will arrive on ... say, june 27th. On June 25th you select both armies and merge them. 2 days later both armies have arrived and not just the first one.
You basically move one army but 2 armies arrive. IIRC moving consumes morale. This means one army is also refilling.

Total exploit.

You shouldn't be able to join armies if one (or both) of them is on the move, or at least that is how it has been in past games. Sounds like more like a bug than an exploit.

 

[Nefaro]

Having a random range of numbers, near the actual quantity of an enemy army, is always a nice idea and would be less of an AI cheat going that route since you'd still see where their armies are. It'd still be a bit of a chit, though, but I wouldn't mind having that option over the FOW one.

As for being able to perfectly time everything, it's obviously a drawback of the system. But as I said, the AI will always know these things and use it to it's advantage anyway. So it's not a player cheat, as the AI also does it, and often changes it's army orders depending on where you order yours to be in the future. I'd rather it this way than having a blind and dumb AI. At least now the AI's movement of armies gives you a challenge. If it didn't know much of what you were doing, it'd be a cakewalk. So there's a big tradeoff there.

AIs get lots of flak for being poor and one reason is when they're Fog Of War is the same as the player's. They're never very good at 'guesstimation' and the human intuition needed to deal with FOW because that is terribly difficult to emulate with a program, and account for all circumstances. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see some FOW, but definitely not at the expense of crippling the AI.

 

[Damendar]

From a historical point of view, essentially everyone in a regional area would indeed be aware of troops on the 'strategic' level. You may not know if the army will arrive at this hill or that river within a few miles (the tactical level), but you would know the general area.

This is due to a few factors. Firstly, the feudal system of the time was considerably more complex than the scope of the game implies; when a daimyo would issue an order to raise troops, he would have numerous vassals, who have their own vassals, who had their own to about 5 levels. That's a lot of people to be in on something and think it will be kept secret.

Secondly, they typically only waged war during specific parts of the year due to weather considerations. Marching in winter was a complete pita, and basically impossible in the northern part of the island. You couldn't depend on your muskets if the battle happened during the rainy season. If you levied up all your peasants during planting season, good luck eating that winter. If you were going to be invaded, it was going to occur within a fairly specific set of times.

Even on knowing the exact numbers of the troops, I bet they were fairly accurate on that during the period as well. All of the provinces around had already been rated in terms of income and manpower for many years. This process was called kokudaka. This is how the Shogunate functioned when it was strong; it gave large, prosperous demenses to more influential members of the court, etc. As a result, the relative value of different provinces, prefectures etc were often listed in terms of their value of koku and this knowledge was readily available. According to Wikipedia, the koku of Satsuma in Kyushu had a yearly income of 770,000 koku. A koku being enough rice to feed one person for one year.

Keep in mind also that during this period they attempted to consolidate the warrior class. Ikko-Ikki aside, things like sword hunts to confiscate weapons from the peasantry and making the samurai a hereditarily based caste system were more the norm. This makes the number of 'warriors' available even lower and more easily catalogued.

So you have a case where people often knew exactly how much manpower was available to their enemies, when their enemies would be able to attack them, and would have had knowledge of their mobilization quite early due to the distributed web based feudal system. Not to mention the fact that there were a lot of ronin, sohei, ninja, and other adventuring rumor monger types constantly roving around to help spread information even more.

Fog of war, at least the way it works in most strategy games, isn't justified. Nor do I think it's needed; what would it add? Isn't the uncertainty of the roll system in battle and the matchups between commanders enough randomness? I've lost fights where I thought I brought more than enough troops, and won ones I didn't expect to. Not sure how fog of war would really be an enhancement here.

 

[Dadarian]

^I like what he said

 

[GShock]

I've lost fights where I thought I brought more than enough troops, and won ones I didn't expect to. Not sure how fog of war would really be an enhancement here.

I am quite confident without seeing the exact number of enemy troops committed in a region you would have lost triple battles without EVER expecting to.
Perhaps we should only see what happens by our borders... it does seem very gamey if you can see in the whole map even though you are not really interested and/or can't do anything about it anyway (there's no way to do naval invasions...)

 

[womble]

The counterpoint also made here is that the AI will always know these things, however...adding it to the AI side would likely be a lot of work and probably make it a tactical pushover, and exploitable.

I don't see why. There are umpteen games out there where the AI "knows" (I.E. takes into consideration when deciding what to do - of course the engine has to) only what's in detection range, same as the player. I'd say it's more likely to make the AI a tactical pushover when the player has 'too much' information, since players are better at contingencies and forward planning than most game AIs.

 

[feelotraveller]

I like not having a FOW!

By the way I think I read the devs saying somewhere that it was a decision taken early in the game design not to have a FOW. If so it may be really hard to change.

 

[Nefaro]

I don't see why. There are umpteen games out there where the AI "knows" (I.E. takes into consideration when deciding what to do - of course the engine has to) only what's in detection range, same as the player. I'd say it's more likely to make the AI a tactical pushover when the player has 'too much' information, since players are better at contingencies and forward planning than most game AIs.

That's why I would support an option to show a random range to display for enemy army quantities. It could be considered less of an AI cheat. Likely more of a pain to add, however.

 

[arkcheung]

That's why I would support an option to show a random range to display for enemy army quantities. It could be considered less of an AI cheat. Likely more of a pain to add, however.

I just noticed that every province of Japan at the start of the game has the same size army, is it supposed to be like this or can we have some discrepancy between each province at the start like in the CK?