A third party looking at a fogged game can't see anything. However, in many fogged games--especially team games--there are many territories that are visible to all players of the game. Why not make those fully visible territories visible to third parties as well? The third party would get a pretty cool picture of the battle front.

This is a pretty minor quibble, but it would be a nice addition especially in tournaments for checking the status of other games and in general for looking at a friend's game in progress or a game you've been eliminated from to see how it's turning out. 

Frog wrote:

there are many territories that are visible to all players of the game.

True, but I'm not sure if you could systematically determine if everyone can really see a territory without potentially giving away more board information.  i.e. Player 1 owns Territory A and therefore sees Territory B, Player 2 owns Territory C and therefore sees Territory B, right now there is not a sure way for Player 1 to deduce that Player 2 owns Territory C, but if what you suggest occurs then Territory B would be open to non-players and therefore Player 1 could deduce Player 2 owns Territory C and vice-versa...

So, neat idea, but I'd be surprised if it could work.

^^ what Yertle says!

an interesting idea, but I'm not quite sure what an outsider would be able to infer from such a view.  In games with many players, early views would likely show nothing, and mid to late game views (with 3 or 4 player's left would probably start to illuminate a few volatile areas, but only on boards with multiple borders per territory.  All-in-all, I don't think it would add much to the experience.

Oh, and also ..what Yertle says!

Frog wrote:

A third party looking at a fogged game can't see anything. However, in many fogged games--especially team games--there are many territories that are visible to all players of the game. Why not make those fully visible territories visible to third parties as well? The third party would get a pretty cool picture of the battle front.

This is a pretty minor quibble, but it would be a nice addition especially in tournaments for checking the status of other games and in general for looking at a friend's game in progress or a game you've been eliminated from to see how it's turning out. 

There is a very fine line here.  I've found myself wishing for something like this when looking at a 2-player tournament game, and indeed nothing would be given away.  (I can logically reason to figure out who likely owns what based on which side of the point of conflict it applies to.)

However in a 5 person game in which 2 people have been eliminated, it is generally useless because few spots are visible to all 3 players.

In a 5 person game in which 3 people have been eliminated, you could see a lot.  But making it available would leak the information that there are only 2 people left.  Which is sometimes a major plot point.

Therefore I think that handling the one use case - tournaments - is not worth the complication and possible information leakage.