FOW & Troop: Scouts

    I believe one of the biggest turnoffs for the game for me is how much information seems readily available and how much more politics & trust/backstabbing is open. I'm sure many enjoy that aspect of the game but one of the biggest appeals of Travian was the use of Scout troops and how some players even devoted massive amounts of resources to utilizing them efficiently.


    There is a certain amount of appeal in not knowing. For a smaller realms can be quite discouraged to continue playing if they actively know just how much their next door neighbor dwarfs them. Bigger realms could gain more defensive aspect of it such as catching their potential NAP scouting their territory. Troop concealment could add some depth to attacking and open up two big realms to PvP where if one has element of surprise wheres otherwise they might just ally against smaller realms for orbs.


    Still fairly new to the game so I'm sure those who played a few rounds could explain why it would be a bad idea?

    Assuming FOW is Fog of War, I am heavily against that.


    I believe that troop concealment should matter more, but I would not be interested in a "scouting troop" for it. Here is my suggestion to scouting information:


    New building: Tavern

    Tavern allows to purchase an Espionage action with XXX amount of resources depending on factors from the opponent. The action will take a YYY amount of time, based on the population of the opponent (a larger population would make the Spy's job much harder to get a full picture of the army.)


    Here are some options (good to offer the Dev's options to work with) that the Espionage can reveal:

    Opponent's Army Composition (Ark / Towers / Warlords could either be omitted or included)

    Opponent's Masteries

    Opponent's Ark snapshot (see building placements and such)



    Pros:

    1) as you mention, adds depth to strategy with unknown opponent sizes. Also, a realm that is in the middle of the war could hide their losses to global realms, preventing a dogpile effect on that realm.

    2) gives smaller more casual realms a better hope, rather than immediately quitting without fighting after seeing their realm size.

    3) can add a bit of politics and informal reputation system where people remember certain players/realms for having a deadly pvp army.


    Cons:

    1) deviates from the current game, where it focuses a lot on openness, coordination and reacting to that open information.

    2) people will react by defensively making their town cost more to espionage, or take longer for espionages to occur.

    3) espionage could be seen aggressively and as an act of war, but that is informal (such as current NAP and breaking NAPs)

    I agree having less information would make this whole thing way more intransparent to who can dominate whom. Obviously leaderboards should be adjusted, but I don't see any way of catching up if you start a server like 36-48 hours late.


    With Fog of War or the need of Espionage a realm with 1 Mil more Power than another realm (on island 2 e.g.) would not mindlessly be able to just take whatever supplies they desire from the neighboring weaker realm. Strongly vote for one way or another of implementing this kind of information-leak.