I have the "Recipe Visibility" advancement, but I cannot see which recipes are which - it just shows the territory as having a recipe on it, with the number of territories needed to conquer it, as "fogged". It even shows the location of the first smelter and crafter along with Copper Bar and Copper Wire, but other recipes are still marked as "fogged". This is very unfortunate since the main utility of recipe visibility is to acquire recipes I need for tech or economy - eg if a tech requires Structs, I would want to know which recipe is Structs.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/v9fGZoA

Edited 7/2/2021 20:26:20

yep. That's why I avoid investing in visibilities

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but i'm afraid this is a "feature", and not a bug.

The territories shown with visibility upgrades also don't count for the "Armies in visible unconquered territories" stat, despite it being visible how many armies they have on them. (Though this doesn't actually matter much for gameplay - that stat is mostly useful at the end of levels for figuring out if I will have enough mercenaries to clear the level, or if I need to do more hospital upgrades first.)

The territories shown with visibility upgrades also don't count for the "Armies in visible unconquered territories" stat, despite it being visible how many armies they have on them.

Well, that is a proper bug.

It's still sad it doesnt show you what recipe it is tho, since that would make this feature actually useful...

I think the Visibility AP Adv's are intentionally nerfed like that to avoid being too powerful (read: useful), and so you still need a fog buster to truly reveal it.

I thought that once I got all the AP Adv's useful for level-clearing, that those might be useful to get, but tbh I think the ore production increase items are more useful than those. They have to truly be fully fog busted to change a lot of people's minds.

It's a specialized recipe/cache/mine/army camp/merc camp visibility AP Adv ... which means it should be more specific and useful in how it reveals the specific items it targets, not less specific. It really should show you the types & amounts of ore it offers, the quantity & cost of mercs, the armies/sec, the recipe name & ingredients, the cache type & amounts. They should really be a recipe/cache/mine/army camp/merc camp fog busting AP Adv, not just "visibility" which is imho pretty weak and not worth the AP investment.

NOTE: I left smelter/crafter out of the list above, b/c those are fine to just show the locations. They have no special qualities, there are no weak/strong/quick/fast/good/bad smelters or crafters, they're all the same, so location is all you need to know. The crafter with the copper wire recipe would potentially be the only exception, but technically it's both a crafter and a recipe, so not really an issue.

Edited 7/2/2021 23:20:07

It's still sad it doesnt show you what recipe it is tho, since that would make this feature actually useful...

Intentionally making a game frustrating and egging the player on into paying for more unlockables is how p2w/p2p Idle games work. It's not sad; it's how the genre works. Games like Idle create user pain by design, and the only way to avoid that sort of stuff in this genre is to not seriously monetize it (e.g., Cookie Clicker is also frustrating by design, but less so because it accommodates cheating so users always have a workaround by just using the JS Console). Otherwise, you have the perverse incentive to deliberately create a frustrating experience for your own players.

Python is recruiting

idle games are supposed to be frustrating, but part of the fun is that you're supposed to believe in a future where things are more convenient than they are now. There are a lot of *different* visibility/automation advances in the game, but the problem is you can never fix the fact that the basic ones are really bad -- autoconquer doesn't use joint strike, among other problems with it, recipe visibility doesn't tell you the recipe, etc. The fun is to believe that eventually you *can* get eventually competent convenience upgrades. I do think it would be an exciting feature if customizable autos and better visibility upgrades existed in the game, even if it cost a lot of AP or were in phase 4 and therefore takes forever to get unlock.

Edited 7/12/2021 03:07:49

There are a lot of *different* visibility/automation advances in the game, but the problem is you can never fix the fact that the basic ones are really bad

Yep, I'm only using the auto-advancements for battles. The systems are too dumb for normal levels, and the challenge levels are impossible so i dont even bother playing those.

I still vote this is a bug, not a feature. With mine visibility, it tells you the name of the mine.

I dont think its a bug but a feature, but the feature should be changed cause not knowing what you will get makes it pretty much useless...

Recipe Visibility does seem weaker than the others.

Smelter/Crafters - you know what you are getting
Mines - you know what you are getting (what mines produce are dependent on their name)
Caches - you would know what you are getting Army/Money/Resource
Merc Camps - It doesn’t matter, they are all the same
Recipes - Mystery box

I know it’s like that by design, but it is still one step up from useless.

Not to mention any visibility shows you how many armies are needed to capture that territory. That is some valuable information to give away as an incidental freebie, when what I'm really trying to do is figure out where that blasted bolt recipe is at.

Well if you click on the territory it says fogged in the description and doesn't give the exact army total. The advancement say "Visibility" not unfog.

If there is a bug it's that it shows the army total on the map. Probably should just show where it's at and nothing else.

Edited 7/24/2021 04:51:29

I know it’s like that by design, but it is still one step up from useless.

Let's be clear though ... on a scale of:

10 super useful - unquestionably worth getting
5 reasonably useful - likely worth getting for most under the right circumstance
0 absolutely worthless - not worth getting by anyone in any circumstances

It is currently a 1 (one step up from useless) but still far from useful. The only ones that provide any value at all are the early ones b/c they're all useful to some degree for the early techs. But once you pass Welding Rod, the useless junk comes out of the woodwork and 90% of what you find are distractions.

On the other hand, you're going to cap all the early recipes fairly early on anyhow, so having their locations known is pretty non-game changing b/c you're going there soon regardless and won't change your strat.

So if it's not going to highlight where the tin can, welding rod, rivet, bolt, struct or explosive bolt recipes are, little to no value at all.

In the end, it's not important whether it's a Feature or a Bug ... this is just nomenclature, doesn't matter if the implementation matches its description or not, it's a matter of whether it's Useful or Not, Worth spending AP on or Not, and right now it's Not in both cases in the eyes of most players (even asdfgh who sounds like he's defending it is really only arguing the nomenclature, and not the value of the advancement).

Well I would agree that most of the visibility advancements are a 1 on the useful scale with one exception: The first smelter/crafter advancement. Being able to get that second smelter and first crafter earlier makes the early parts of levels easier. I would give it a ~5ish on the scale as 75 AP isn't terrible high price. If Market Visibility wasn't 200 AP for the first buy I could see that being useful as buying tin bars for tin cans is so important to my play style.

Now if there was an Army Camp or Hospital Visibility it would be a different story. Please give us that Fizzer.

while we're arguing that features are bugs: ain't no way that joint strike was intended/expected to be such an integral part of the game. it either would have been a level 4 enhancement, or free with some kind of condition on it (like you have to win an arena in each level before it activates for that level).

If Market Visibility wasn't 200 AP for the first buy I could see that being useful as buying tin bars for tin cans is so important to my play style.

I would pay 200 AP just to always see the location of the market with copper bars on every map, I'm only ever finding that thing after i needed to run 80% of my smelters on copper bars for the past 10 days to keep my crafters alive....

while we're arguing that features are bugs: ain't no way that joint strike was intended/expected to be such an integral part of the game. it either would have been a level 4 enhancement, or free with some kind of condition on it (like you have to win an arena in each level before it activates for that level).

Why so? Most people can predict that getting back X% of your armies reduces your playtime for a level by X%, and knowing Fizzer he definitely play tested WZI before he even made it alfa or beta.

Not everything in WZI has to be impossible and painful, even if it sometimes feels like that.