Fog of War: Difference between revisions

A feature of many [[Strategy Game|strategy games]] that keeps the player from seeing everything that happens on the game map by limiting his knowledge of "enemy" units and movements to those areas where he has (or has recently had) units of his own. Some games enhance the effect by having a "partial" fog over areas that the player's explored at least once, but without any units in range at the time to observe.

 

 

This exists in [[Real Life]], in the sense that you need to have someone or some sensor observing the enemy in order to actually know their whereabouts. However, generally when someone talks about the '''Fog of War''' they mean the sense of confusion created in one's mind when subjected to the chaos of combat. Usually they're talking about commanders making or trying to make decisions while sorting through the morass of time—late, conflicting, and rushed reports with limited time in which to act. The stress of getting shot at doesn't help.

* A [[Real Life]] example and possible [[Trope Namer]]: [[wikipedia:Carl von Clausewitz|Carl von Clausewitz]], wrote in ''On War'' "The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently ? like the effect of a fog or moonshine -- gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance."

** Clausewitz was referring to both a proverbial and literal fog, the first due to the complex logistics of processing and gathering intelligence, which takes enough time to spoil the freshness of the data, and the second being the amount of dust kicked up by artillery, moving thousand-troop battalions and barrages of black-powder firearms. Contemporary technology has vastly reduced the proverbial fog and plays with (sometimes even invokes) the literal one.

** The first Warcraft had shroud, but no fog while the second had a simple option to turn it off; Starcraft was the first to consider disabling it cheating.

* Anime illustration: In an episode of ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi|The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya]]'', the SOS-dan was challenged to a computer game with this limitation. Yuki quickly figures out that the opposing side has cheated by removing the Fog Of War on their side, hacks the system, and levels the playing field.

[[Category:Weather and Environment]]

[[Category:Strategy Game Tropes]]