Re: [eia] Corps identities

[Joel Uckelman <uckelman@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thus spake "Kyle H":
>     Recently I've been making a big deal about how the counters on the map
> only indicate whether a given corps is an infantry corps or a cavalry corps
> because the precise identities of corps is only revealed during battle.  But
> I'm starting to wonder whether maintaining that secrecy is worth the
> trouble.  Here's why.  Normally, in a face-to-face game, hiding the
> identities of the different corps is no big deal because whenever a player
> forgets which corps are where, all he has to do is look at the back of the
> chit to find the corps's identity.  However, in this game, there is no
> (accurate) back of the chit to look at.  That means people have to take
> extra special care in keeping track of which corps is which, because there
> is no external record.  And, take it from me, it's very easy to forget to
> keep track and get confused.
>     So I've started wondering whether it is really worth the trouble to keep
> corps identities secret.  After all, the contents of each corps would still
> remain secret even if the identities were not.
>     I think France has the most to lose by revealing corps identities,
> because of the variety of types of corps available to France.  But I'm
> willing to do so if other people think it would be worth while.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> kdh

It makes a lot of difference to me, since having corps identities public
would allow others to differientiate between my lousy troups (regulars)
and my really lousy troups (feudal).

(BTW, the thing I have yet to implement for my virtual board is exactly the
feature we need to handle this situation: chit locking. If you can lock
chits---in this case, by preventing them from being flipped by anyone but
their owner---and encyrpt the data in the save file, then the save file can
both contain all the game information *and* be safe to pass around to
everyone.)