Intel & Fog of War

Every sector, for every player, exists in one of three states:

Current

You have live, real-time intel on this sector. You see:

• Actual owner and territory color.
• Every base, structure, and unit present (for your own sectors, with full details; for enemy sectors you're currently scouting, with reduced detail).
• Any name given to the sector.
• Radiation level.

Current sectors render normally — clean borders, full color, no special effect.

Stale

You used to have current intel here, but your view has expired. The sector shows a snapshot of what was last observed — the owner, bases, and units as they were when you last scouted. The snapshot persists indefinitely until you re-scout.

Stale sectors are rendered with an orange halo outline and a slightly dimmed fill, so you never confuse them with current intel. The units and bases shown may have moved, been destroyed, or been replaced. Treat stale intel as a lead, not a fact.

Unknown

You've never scouted this sector. You see only terrain and elevation — no ownership, no entities, no activity. Some worlds hide terrain too, showing the sector as pure fog. (Once you scout a sector even once, it becomes stale rather than unknown when you lose vision — snapshots persist until overwritten by re-scouting.)

Your current vision comes from several sources, all pooled:

• Owned territory. Every sector you own is current, every cycle. Vision extends outward a few hops from your owned and unit sectors (2 hops by default), so a band of land just past your borders is usually current too.
• Your units. Every sector a unit occupies is current, plus the same few-hop radius around it.
• Spies. Each Spy reveals sectors in a radius around its position — often deep in enemy territory where your other units can't reach.
• Spy Planes. Each successful Spy Plane mission reveals a wide radius around its target sector (no path coverage — only what's near the target).
• Surveillance Centers. Each Center contributes permanent 5-hop vision around itself (see Structures) — much wider than the default border band.
• Infiltrated enemy intel (one cycle). A Spy that survives ending its turn on an enemy Land Base sector copies that country's entire visible map into your view for the next cycle. See Spies below.

Vision is not shared between countries — even treaty partners. If your neighbor has eyes on an area you can't see, you're still blind there. You each have to do your own scouting.

Intel has a shelf life. When a sector is revealed (by any source), a snapshot is recorded with an expiration time 1–2 cycles in the future. After the expiration:

• If you still have a live source on the sector (your unit is still there, you still own it, a Spy is still watching), intel stays current.
• If every live source has left or been eliminated, the sector becomes stale. The snapshot persists — you still see what was there — but new changes aren't reflected.

Re-scouting resets the expiration. A new Spy visit or Spy Plane flyover overwrites the snapshot and restarts the timer.

Your own territory and sectors adjacent to your own units are always current and never expire.

Current vision of enemy sectors is not quite the same as current vision of your own. When you're scouting an enemy position:

• You see ownership and terrain.
• You see base presence (but not necessarily strength).
• You see that units are there and their type, but you don't see their Skill level, because the enemy's veteran data is hidden. Enemy unit health bars show a reduced tier scale (low/medium/high) rather than exact values.

This is deliberate — attacking players shouldn't know exactly how experienced the defender is.

Spies are invisible land units. Once built, they don't appear on enemy maps — only you can see them.

Spy mechanics:

• They have zero attack power. They don't fight.
• They move during Phase 1 (Intel) — before any combat phases — so their final position contributes vision feeding the rest of that cycle's processing and your next set of orders.
• A Spy contributes the same vision a normal unit does (the world's visibility-range BFS — 2 hops by default — around its sector).
• A Spy that walks within 1 hop of an enemy unit or Defense Turret is detected by that country (their snapshot now shows the Spy). If the Spy tries to enter a sector containing an enemy Defense Turret, it's caught and destroyed outright.
• Spies have no armor and no combat ability — once detected, they're trivially picked off.

Spies are great for persistent surveillance of a specific enemy location — park one near an enemy capital or a key Refinery and watch activity cycle over cycle.

Base infiltration

When a Spy survives Phase 1 ending on a sector that contains an enemy Land Base, it infiltrates that base. Infiltration grants you, for one cycle, three things about the target country:

1. A copy of their entire current vision — every sector they can see is added to your visible set for the next cycle. You see what your target sees: their interior, their scouting band, anywhere their Spies and Spy Planes have eyes.
2. Their treasury — exact cash on hand at the moment of infiltration.
3. Their active treaties — every fixed-duration treaty currently in effect, with the partner country and remaining cycles.

A purple-tinted intel marker appears on the infiltrated base on your map. Click it to open a panel with the cash and treaty info. The fog reveal is automatic — sectors are visible until the reveal expires next cycle (no click required).

Each new infiltration of the same base refreshes the data and the timer. Infiltrating multiple different bases in the same cycle gives you reveals from each target stacked together. Surveillance Centers and Defense Turrets on the way still apply normally — getting a Spy onto an enemy base sector takes the same care it always did.

The reveal lasts exactly one cycle — treat the snapshot as time-stamped intel, not a persistent feed.

Spy Planes are air reconnaissance units, stored at air bases. Each mission:

1. Select a source air base and a target sector.
2. During Phase 1 (Intel), the plane flies from base to target.
3. Along the flight path, Defense Turrets intercept at full strength; enemy warships and land units along the path intercept at reduced effectiveness. The plane can take damage or be destroyed.
4. Surviving planes reveal sectors in a wide radius (3 hops) around the target sector.
5. Survivors return to base.

Spy Planes are great for scanning large unknown areas fast. They're cheaper than jets and have long range, but heavy air defense denies them. Turrets aren't just anti-air for strikes — they're also intel denial.

There's no dedicated counter-intel order — detection happens passively. Three things will surface or remove enemy Spies (and Submarines) near your assets:

• Your units within 1 hop of a passing Spy detect it (no roll, automatic).
• Defense Turrets do the same for Spies, and additionally capture and destroy any Spy that tries to enter a sector they hold. Turrets also expose enemy Submarines on adjacent water.
• Surveillance Centers scan 5 hops every cycle and generate a fuzzy 7-sector "blob" around each enemy Spy or Submarine they catch — you see an area to investigate, not the exact sector, and the blob is wiped and regenerated each cycle so a stationary infiltrator can't be pinned by inference over time. See Structures.

If you suspect an enemy Spy is sitting on a sensitive area, garrison the surrounding sectors with cheap units (Infantry works) or drop a Turret nearby. For deeper defensive coverage — especially around capitals, Refinery clusters, or other Spy-magnet assets — invest in a Surveillance Center.

Protecting against infiltration

A Land Base is a Spy magnet because of the intel drop a successful infiltration grants. To keep an attacker from cashing it in:

• Garrison the base sector itself. Any non-Spy friendly unit on the base sector will catch a Spy that tries to enter (the Spy moves into a sector with friendly forces and is detected/killed at end of move).
• Surround with Turrets. A Turret on the base sector kills any infiltrating Spy outright. Turrets within 1 hop detect the Spy on the way in.
• Run a Surveillance Center within 5 hops. You'll get blob warnings of inbound Spies before they reach the base.

A leaked treasury or treaty isn't catastrophic — but combined with the visibility leak, an infiltration tells the attacker exactly what to hit next.

• Scout before you commit. Launching a ground push into fog is usually a mistake. Spend a cycle sending a Spy or Spy Plane ahead first.
• Keep your frontier staffed with eyes. A frontline without Spies or active units quickly goes stale — meaning you're guessing at enemy positions.
• Garrison sensitive sectors. Even a single Infantry adjacent to a Refinery or capital lights up any Spy that walks within 1 hop. A Defense Turret does the same job and outright destroys any Spy that tries to enter.
• Air defense is intel defense. Turrets and intercepting forces don't just protect from bombing — they also shoot down Spy Planes. Invest in air defense around critical infrastructure.
• Treaties don't share vision. Diplomacy prevents combat, but it doesn't pool your maps. If you want your treaty partner's area scouted, you still have to scout it yourself.