simple question:
do you prefer light fog or normal fog on a 4 player FFA game?

thanks

Normal Fog. In multi-team games, (FFA, or 2v2v2, etc) the Light Fog options that show who is strongest either by 1: Income, or 2) actual values in each territory like No-Fog) turn games FFA Games into a pick on the strongest game, which just turns into an endless see-saw of who's on top.

I avoid Light/No Fog FFA Games at all costs.

I Imagine there is something to say for alliances and diplomacy, but I don't buy it.

I agree with John, but I'll add my own take to it.

When you lose a game that has regular fog, then find out someone was crushing everyone else, that's your fault for not talking to others and correctly reading the state of the game. Game state is a good skill to learn, and even helps a lot in light fog games. If you lose a game with regular fog and you correctly read the game, then good job to whoever beat you, because they simply played better.

If you win a game with regular fog, you either successfully hid your actions from others (quite the skill to have in FFA), or beat the opposing players through tactical skill, or both. If they fight each other exclusively while you gain power, that's either your skill or their fault. Winning under such circumstances is praiseworthy (in my opinion at least) either way. If your opponents suck, they should not win, and you should win.

There's no downside to the basic regular fog scenario that can be solved by light fog.

What happens in light fog is that the person who plays the best early on gets dogpiled through the midgame. Then the second person to do well might also get dogpiled by the remaining players. Then the 2-5th best played position wins the game. Alternately, players intentionally limit their growth and hide their armies until someone else makes the same mistake.

But why is playing the game well a mistake? Someone is eventually going to win, so why not prioritize so that the better player is the one who wins more often?

I will add that there are scenarios where light fog might be superior. One is when the map is too large for the number of players present. For instance quad earth as 3 player FFA as an obvious example. It's too hard to judge the state of the game until it's far too late to counter the guy who had two worlds all to himself, or whatever. The solution to this can be to simply play a smaller map, or increase the number of players. Light fog is more of a bandaid here, especially if the three players end up playing evenly and the one who pulls ahead gets dogpiled as soon as he does (which would be the inevitable outcome).

http://WarLight.net/MultiPlayer.aspx?GameID=1913944

Check out this game for what my light fog experience has consistently become. Each player that got strong got killed. One of the worst starting positions with a poor starting pick eventually won. The final three all struggled through the early game.

That does suck duke, but to be fair to the other guy. you let him expand to the south and didn't pursue his backside. I'm not sure if this was a PM agreement you made with him or not but nonetheless you could cut him off early. Also he hid his troops very well so you underestimated his power near you're borders with him.

ok thanks for the info.
I don't play FFA unless with people I know, but I want to host more open games in the future, and I want to get feedback on some settings.

What about the private message option? good or bad?
Is making pacts/secret agreements part of the game?

babs, we did have an agreement from turn one not to attack. Since we were right next to each other and an early war would have been our doom, it was a good agreement to make.

I could have killed General in that war, if lawm wasn't there. If lawm could not see the board so well, he would likely have been using his troops somewhere, rather than stacking them to attack whoever started the next war.


Chaos:

I prefer private messaging. To me, the FFAs without messaging end up looking similar to a single player game against a better AI. In particular, I've noticed a tendency for people to constantly fight their neighbors, even if someone else is getting huge, or they could have both benefited from expanding instead of fighting. Generally speaking, the person who gets the best early lead will almost always win under these settings. If they are better at playing the game, so be it. It appears that quite often they are simply the luckiest in starting location and having the most room to expand into.

I am biased in favor of settings that allow better players to win more often, and PMs allow that. A really good player that gets stuck next to three players, without PMs, is a dead player. Same situation with PMs, and they have a chance to negotiate and plan and possibly break out of that situation.

There are also problems with having PMs, though. It allows two or more people to act as if they are part of a team. If they are serious about doing it, they can still create a 1v1 game and talk outside, so it's not limited to having PMs. This isn't so bad if both players are looking out for their own interests and are planning for their own victory. It's quite bad when one player was always planning on playing kingmaker to the second. Hopefully among friends this isn't an issue.