Fog of war deception tactics

[GreatGonzales]

I think this is a topic that is not often discussed. There are a couple of fog of war deception tactics that I regularly employ. These are outside of the realm of skill, and are merely tricks that anyone can use to disguise your activities beyond your opponent's field of vision.

1. Pausing with purpose

Did you know that the length of time that you wait between actions has an impact on the way your actions appear from your opponent's perspective in the replay? For example, if I were to spawn a soldier and immediately move it from the spawn, this will appear differently than if I were to build a soldier, wait for 30 seconds, and then move the soldier. It's a slight difference - just a matter of a split second/second delay - but this is important to disguising your activities within the fog of war. You should do whatever you can to prevent your opponent from divining your activities, and counting your wits.

Applications: Suppose I plan to build a special on my turn, and boost it, nothing else. This is a small number of actions, and if I took these actions quickly, my opponent would be able to guess that I had probably built a special, or otherwise saved wits. So, your options are:

1. Build a special
2. Boost

Or

1. Build a special
2. Pause
3. Boost

The second option is better. Again, this will have only a slight impact on the replay, but I think this is an important for disguising your activities. Likewise, if you are planning to save wits for building a special on your next turn, but you would like to hide that fact, one way to do this is to take a couple of actions with large pauses in between them. In other words, if you would like your turn to appear longer, pausing between actions will help you convey this.

2. Camera manipulation

This one will only work with small iOS devices (iphone/ipod, NOT ipad). For fellow small ios devices users out there, you know how the camera moves around during a replay? This is because the replay detects the camera perspective changes of a player and includes this in the replay. Used in conjunction with #1 above, this has some utility for disguising fog of war activities.

Applications: Suppose you would like to hide the fact that you are building an army on the left side of the map, and none/little on the right side of the map. Let's say you want to build a mobi, boost it, warp a unit on the left side of thorn gulley, and merely move a single runner up on the right side. Utilizing the lessons from #1, your options are:

1. Build mobi left
2. Boost mobi
3. Warp unit
4. [Pause]
5. Move runner right

or

1. Build mobi left
2. [Move camera to right]
3. Boost mobi
4. Warp unit
5. [Pause] (not necessary if camera ploy works, but do so in case opponent is using an iPad)
6. Move runner right

The second option is better. You'll notice that I moved the camera right and continued to take actions on left. This is possible because the desired left hexes are still visible even with the camera justified completely to the right. When your opponent views a replay of this, it will appear that all your actions took place on the right side of the map, when in fact you took more actions on the left.

Understanding these two principles, and using them in various combinations, can be quite helpful in confusing your opponent. What I don't understand completely - maybe someone can help clarify this for me - is how this works for iPad users. I have never played on an iPad so I'm not sure if camera manipulation has any impact.

[lawtai]

I don't believe there is any camera movement on the ipad. However, I thought for the camera to move, you actually had to click on something, not just pan your view?

[CombatEX]

Camera manipulation does not have an impact against your opponent if s/he is using an iPad because the map fits on the screen (hence the camera never moves).

[GreatGonzales]

(03-12-2013 03:36 AM)CombatEX Wrote:  Camera manipulation does not have an impact against your opponent if s/he is using an iPad because the map fits on the screen (hence the camera never moves).

Yeah, this is what I thought. So, I guess you could argue that iPad users are both at a (very slight) advantage, because they do not provide this kind of feedback to their opponents during replays, and also at a (very slight) disadvantage, because they cannot view the camera manipulation of their iPhone-using opponents. So I suppose it's a wash.

[Necrocat219]

Yeah, I made a thread about this a while ago but most players dismissed it as of little use or a neccesity.

Another important thing to do is making as least gaps of possible of uknown and known actions, ideally a chunk of uknown followed by a chunk of known. This will increase the unpredictability of your actions. Another is my favourite; randomly boosting at the end of the turn for no immediate effect

[GreatGonzales]

(03-12-2013 03:56 AM)Necrocat219 Wrote:  Yeah, I made a thread about this a while ago but most players dismissed it as of little use or a neccesity.

Another important thing to do is making as least gaps of possible of uknown and known actions, ideally a chunk of uknown followed by a chunk of known. This will increase the unpredictability of your actions. Another is my favourite; randomly boosting at the end of the turn for no immediate effect

Yes, grouping actions into known and unknown is another good one. The more unknown you can string together, the more unknowable they are. Or, sometimes it's a good idea to mix them together. For example, if I have a pre-deployed soldier on a spawn, but I want to make it seem like I built that soldier on this turn, I can take some action in the fog of war, and then move the soldier. If I move the soldier before doing anything else, then my opponent knows that I had it pre-deployed, and therefore also knows that I could have a new unit sitting on the spawn.

[Qlearn]

GreatGonzales,

I appreciate your time and generosity in sharing your knowledge. Definitely interesting observations.

We have an iPad and an iPod. I have lost a game due to the camera panning issue. At first I always used the iPad and with the entire map on the screen, there is no camera panning. One time when the iPad was not available, I used the iPod to continue an existing game. I was unaccustomed to panning after each of my move so that all my field of vision can be seen on the iPod. I was shocked when I went back to the iPad on the following turn and noticed other enemy troops "appearing out of no where". Needless to say, I lost the game.

Now, when I use the iPod, I always pan around after each of my moves. Lesson learned.

Cheers.

[connor34911]

I thought it has been shown that the little man/waiting symbol is completely random. Is it not?

[GreatGonzales]

(03-12-2013 05:29 AM)connor34911 Wrote:  I thought it has been shown that the little man/waiting symbol is completely random. Is it not?

No, I think it behaves in predictable patterns, at least to a certain extent. It may appear random to you because there is an unknown x factor, which is the amount of time your opponent takes between actions.

[TheGreatErenan]

I had noticed the replay pausing, but as an iPad player, I had no idea about the camera manipulation.

I read somewhere that simply tapping on a spawn space and then dismissing the spawn menu without spawning anything will bring up the little sneaky man icon. Is this true?