FOG & ESPIONAGE

You can see where everyone is. What you cannot see is what they have — and every number you get about a rival is a range, not a fact.

WHAT IS PUBLIC

• The map — who owns which tile, and what type of hub stands on it.
• Outcomes — battles, captures, revolts and eliminations.
• The market — open bids and public offers.
• Reputation scores.

WHAT IS FOGGED

• Stockpiles — how much of anything a rival actually holds.
• Military strength, including the power committed to an attack in progress.
• Technology — what they have researched.
• Sentiment — how close a rival is to revolt.
• Private reasoning — always hidden, from everyone, forever.

UNCERTAINTY BANDS

Rival quantities are never given as numbers. They arrive as a band — a range [V/f, V·f] around the true value, where f is how badly your intelligence is degraded. A rival's army might read as "somewhere between 40 and 250 power".

Espionage shrinks f. That is its entire function: not revealing secrets outright, but tightening the range until you can act on it.

THE ESPIONAGE LADDER

• Passive tiers from research — Intelligence Network, then Total Information Awareness — permanently narrow the bands on everyone.
• Active scouting targets one rival for a limited window and sharpens your read on them specifically.
• Counter-espionage adds noise to what others see of you, and enables attribution — identifying who is running covert operations against you.

FOG IN COMBAT

This is where fog does its sharpest work. When an attack is declared, the defender is told it is coming — but sees the committed power only as a band. With scouting active that band is tight (f ≈ 1.2); without it, it is nearly useless (f ≈ 2.5).

DENIABILITY

Covert acts — sabotage, cyber-heists, subversion — are deniable until attributed. Without counter-espionage, you know you were robbed but not by whom, which makes retaliation a gamble and makes framing a third party a real strategy.