VR Designs

Fog of war, almost better known under its acronym FOW, is a well known game feature to wargamers. One of the reasons I am designing the procedural Shadow Empire (SE) and not another historical game is that I really love FOW. Uncertainty makes me curious and adds exploration and recon gameplay. As well as providing added excitement as risks mount with the increasing count of unknowns.

My Decisive Campaigns games always had the well known recon range type of FOW, while Advanced Tactics even had a shroud of darkness. Both however limited themselves to hiding from view what the players forces could not see.

In real wars the FOW is much more extreme. For example the German army in 1939 had no sure idea how well their Panzers would do in combat… Or how good a commander their generals would actually be… Or even if the Blitzkrieg theory would actually be effective…

I am quite motivated to increase the level of FOW in SE significantly. However there is a catch… If for example you as a player are not sure if you have a good or a bad general in your service, or if your tank design is better or worse than the enemy tanks… would that not be frustrating? You’d find out eventually, but it would take combat and time to come to conclusions about what is working and what is not. Would you actually like such a level of realism / uncertainty?

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Big thanks for taking the time to reflect and advise VR. The feedback is valuable to me, however keep in mind that I am not designing on a majority vote basis :)

Best wishes,
Vic

Snippet #10: Early frontline units

Almost forgot to show a snippet this month. Luckily I am just in time to avoid that from happening. I am still working on implementing the zone economies, research, organisations, stories and more. They all tie in together and its a bit of a development bottleneck. Hence here a snippet of some militia units advancing on neighboring raiders. In the early game your armed potential depends on your militia forces, which are semi-autonomous. Later on you’ll develop the infrastructure to raise, equip and design your own units.
Disclaimer: Artwork shown can be placeholder artwork and does not necc. represent the art in the final game

Time for the second snap question. There has been a bit of wild growth of different counter modes with the DC games and for Shadow Empire i’d like to focus on a more limited set of styles or maybe even just one. So I’d like to know which counter style you currently prefer from the 5 styles shown below.

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Big thanks for taking the time to reflect and advise VR. The feedback is valuable to me, however keep in mind that I am not designing on a majority vote basis :)

Best wishes,
Vic