

Battle Lab: The Fog of War - grouchysmurf
http://grogheads.com/?p=8596

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smacktoward
Good article. Modeling FoW is one of the classic hard problems in wargame
design, especially for boardgames, where the options for hiding information
from one player without hiding it from all are limited.

The problems with "Good Guy" FoW go a little deeper than the article
indicates, though. It correctly identifies human error (a platoon leader
misreading a map, for example) as one reason why a commander's intelligence
about the status of his own units may be incorrect, but there's other factors
that can cause such problems as well, such as:

\- _Communications latency:_ the time between an order being issued and its
being received can be significant, and lead to units following orders that
were based on a situation which no longer exists, or disregarding orders
because by the time the orders arrive the situation looks different to them
than it did to HQ

\- _Subordinate initiative:_ lower-ranking units have their own leaders too,
and those leaders have free will just like the Big Brass at HQ does, which
means that sometimes they take action on their own authority, either in the
absence of or in contradiction to existing orders

A textbook example of the latter problem is Union general Dan Sickles' advance
on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg (see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg,_Second_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg,_Second_Day#Sickles_repositions)).
Sickles' corps was part of the long "fish-hook" defensive line that the
overall Union commander, Gen. George Meade, had formed his army into after the
Confederate assaults the day before. But, seeing slightly higher ground in
front of his position, Sickles on his own authority marched his corps forward
to occupy that ground. The result was disastrous; Sickles' troops were too far
forward for the rest of the Union line to support them, so they were smashed
when the Confederates hit later that day.

This type of thing is extremely hard to model in a wargame, because ultimately
players want to feel that their winning or losing is down to the decisions
they made, not due to random factors or the game itself pushing against them.
So, while balky subordinates like Sickles are not uncommon in real life, how
do you model that in a way that doesn't make the player feel that the game is
essentially playing itself? It's a sufficiently hard question to answer that
most designers don't even bother to try.

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ctdonath
Maybe a key lesson _is_ that the game _is_ essentially playing itself, that in
battle so many factors work independent of your intent that one must accept
that there is little one can do to change the outcome, and how important it is
to insightfully work that little one can do.

~~~
smacktoward
Yeah, it's possible to imagine a game whose objective is essentially
pedagogical -- to teach the player that generals in war aren't really in
control of much at all, that they're just trying the best they can to hang on
to a bucking bronco.

Would anybody _play_ that game, though? Is there a way to make a game _fun_
(or at least tolerable), when its core mechanics are all designed to frustrate
your intentions? I'm not sure.

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msandford
That game is called Fluxx. A part of the game is that you can play cards that
change the rules. So people draw cards and work on strategies that inevitably
change before they can be finished. Eventually someone looks at the board and
realizes that they've won. Usually completely by accident.

Personally I hate it, but there are plenty of people who like it too.

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andrewchoi
Not a single mention for Battleship, the game that (I would warrant)
introduced most current American 20-somethings to the concept?

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scrumper
Is that the old paper game where you place shots on grid references to sink
your opponent's ships? Or something else?

~~~
smacktoward
Milton Bradley made a very popular mass-market version of the paper game using
a plastic gameboard and ships that has been a longtime bestseller:
[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2425/battleship](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2425/battleship)

~~~
scrumper
OK it is the game I'm thinking of. I remember the set too. Never thought of it
as modeling fog of war before, though.

