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At the beginning of the game, the map is unexplored; all the tiles are black, except the tiles where the starting units are located, and the tiles adjacent to theses units.

 Each civilization has a list of know tiles, and a list of temporarily known tiles. The first ones are displayed normally, the latest are displayed with a grey overlay.

 When a unit enters a new tile, this tile and the adjacent tiles are added in the list of temporarily known tiles of this unit (except if they were already known of course). Thus black tiles become visible with a grey overlay.

 When the unit comes back into friendly territory, there is a percentage of chance that the tiles which are in the list of temporarily know tiles of the unit become permanently known. If the check is failed, the tile reverts to unknown state. The chance is greater if the unit has the “explorer” flag, and increase with some techs (like “mapmaking” or “satellite positioning”).

 If the unit is destroyed before coming back, the tile reverts to unknown. A tile cannot stay temporarily know more than 4 strategic turns: it reverts to unknown if the discovering unit doesn’t come back soon enough.

 As the unit can be destroyed if it goes to far and is out of supply, it is not possible to simply send a unit in the unknown and move it for dozens of turns, thus discovering many lands. Exploration is limited to neighboring lands at the beginning of the game.

 F     The Greeks send a hoplite army in unknown territory to the North. They discover some wealthy lands, but the army is destroyed by barbarians. The Northern lands remain unknown: rumors say it’s rich, but well defended, but no chart exist. A few years later, a new expedition is sent. The army destroyed the barbarians and come back. Some checking are done, but only 6 tiles out of 10 or permanently discovered. The others revert to unknown: the exploring army made mistake when charting the area and the passes cannot be found again. Last, a new expedition with a specialist explorer unit is sent again, and this time they manage to draw an accurate map : when they come back, the area is permanently explored.

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