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Fog of War: Difference between revisions
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** Also, in Civ-series games, launching your first satellite will remove the Fog of War once and for all. Spysats rule!
*** In Civ4, they only do this once (when you discover the Satellite technology), but not for all.
** Additionally, if you founded a religion and that religion is in a city, you can see that city and the immediate area, the same is true as you increase your spy points with a civ. You can even steal the location of all military units, though it is only good from that turn.
*** This system was reworked for the ''Beyond the Sword'' expansion - owning the religion's holy city (where it was founded) no longer entitles you to automatic line of sight of a rival city with that religion. Rather, espionage now has its own points system (among them, accumulating a certain amount of points entitles you to look at known rival cities).
* Original [[Dawn of War]] made heavy use of the this, even detailing it by this name in the tutorial.
* [[Dark Reign]] was one of the first games to use complex fog of war, making it possible to set ambushes by hiding below cliffs, in depressions in the ground, behind hills, etc.
* Certain levels in the strategy-card game ''[[Metal Gear Acid]]'' and its sequel were in 'Search Mode', which allowed you to see terrain and items but not enemies -- until you were standing very close to them. Thankfully, there are multiple cards which extend your range of eyesight. Not so thankfully, getting hit by an enemy in Search Mode renders you completely blind for some reason we can only guess at. While the effect wears off in a set number of turns, you have few ways of fighting back and no idea where to run from to hide, turning you into a sitting duck. The good news is that it completely subverts [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]-type AI; you play in [[Fog of War]]-mode for only a handful of levels. The computer plays in it ''all the time''.
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*** Both games had Fog of War, where there was no vision from units, but only Total Annihilation had the unexplored shroud.
* In ''[[Fallout]] 2'', your character can moan about the [[Fog of War]]-like effect your PipBoy demonstrates when you haven't explored an area.
* The [[Command
** In C&C ''Generals'', the radar screen only sees enemies in the line of sight of units on the field. It's built into the USA and China command centers and still requires power. The GLA have a special vehicle (and don't contend with power at all).
** Also some of the C&C games give players access to units and structures that can ''create'' fog of war through either radar jamming or large-scale cloaking fields.
*** Which have the unfortunate tendency to backfire by creating conspicuous areas on the map that ''look'' like fog of war but ''move'' like enemy units.
**** Not to mention there is always some sort of equipment that reveals part of or the entire map. If your opponent tried to reveal only a portion of your base, and it gets recovered, he just found out where your base is. If he revealed the entire map (and the [[Command
*** In Red Alert the Allies also had a Radar Jammer, which would temporarily stop the opponent's Radar Dome from working if it got within range. Unsurprisingly its range is pathetically short.
** In Tiberian Sun and its sequel Tiberium Wars, Nod can build stealth generators which are actually usable, since you can effectively hide your units and bases while still letting your opponent explore the area. It's hilariously useless in a game with AI, as the AI will gladly build walls and pavement around it (which are NOT cloaked) and can see invisible units. When you're wandering around a suspiciously well-kept concrete fort, you know where to aim that nuke.
*** Swings back again to pitifully useless in Tiberium Wars, as the generators themselves do not cloak and cannot be cloaked in any way whatsoever. Since everything else is cloaked, the enemy easily knows what to shoot now.
**** That's to [[Mind Screw|mess with the heads]] of human opponents; make them think there are bases in places where they aren't
* ''[[Disgaea]]'''s multiplayer mode has this as an option. No one's quite certain why.
** Because at higher levels, attacks tend to become [[One-Hit Kill|One Hit Kills]]. Without a fog, players would likely just hang around just outside the enemy's range until the opponent makes a mistake or they start throwing each other around.
* Even ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' has a [[Fog of War]] of sorts. Unlike most examples, it's underground.
* [[Justified Trope|Justified]] in ''Star Wars: [[Empire At War]]'' with infantry sight ranges and vehicle sensor (or whatever) ranges. One particularly annoying bug in the expansion ''Forces of Corruption'', at least with the Zann Consortium, is the Fog of War lifting for no explained reason what-so-ever, allowing a player with their faction's space special weapon (Ion Cannon, Hypervelocity Cannon, and Plasma Cannon for Rebellion, Empire, and Consortium, respectively) to blow up enemy ships LONG BEFORE THOSE SHIPS WOULD BE WITHIN SIGHT RANGE.
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* The [[Total War]] games suffer from having a fog of war that makes it difficult to learn about major historical events. Apparently Rome would have taken years to find out if Carthage had conquered Egypt, and the English king may have been kept waiting for decades before he found out that the Turks had taken Constantinople and Vienna.
** You are informed about rather more general events however, like which country in the world that you've never encountered in any form has the largest income or army in the world. Even though you don't know where they are.
** Thus the reason for having diplomats. Trading maps helps to keep you up on who has conquered who. Also keeping track of whose at war helps.
** The game also has ''literal'' fog of war, because if your battle takes place in rain or early in the morning, there can be fog that makes it difficult to see your enemy.
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' has a partial [[Fog of War]]. After exploring a sector on the map, any enemy movement through that sector is quite visible. However, you will not know the strength or size of the enemy group until it comes within range of your militia (or attacks you). This is changed somewhat with much later mods, where enemies may be completely invisible on the map until spotted by a militia unit.
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* ''[[X-COM]]'' reveals the terrain as it's explored, but doesn't show which parts are not visible at the moment, while aliens are only visible if they're within your troops' line of sight. After you've explored the entire map, it becomes frustrating trying to find that last alien when you're not even sure where to look.
* Played straight in the 1992 film of ''[[The Last of the Mohicans|Last of the Mohicans]]''. Musket fire apparently creates clouds of smoke thick enough to blanket the adjoining lake, and the heroes literally escape through the resulting [[Fog of War]].
* Bizarrely averted in the ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|Lord of the Rings]]: the Return of the King'', where the lack of dust on the battlefield makes the CGI armies look fake -- a flaw compared to other films around the same time that used CGI doubling to create huge armies.
* In real life, large crowds create huge clouds of dust, especially with horses or vehicles, unless the field is muddy -- in which case armored cavalry will die up when placed against pikes and arrows.
** In addition to dust and fog obscuring vision it is still very difficult to get an accurate assessment of a battlefield even with satellites, radios and observational aircraft due to the inherent chaos of the situation.
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