Editing and playing strategy games can be a very technical process with its own specialised language. The following terms are how I mean them (but knowing me even I'll not follow these definitions!) and should hopefully be of some help.
Abstraction - this is the process of taking a messy real world and reducing it to a clean mathematical description consisting of mathematical formulas and numbers.
AI - short for Artificial Intelligence. When I use this term I'm refering to the routines built into the game that allows a person to play against the computer.
Details - these are items added on top of the terrain. These are typically small, but provide important contributions to the geography. Some examples of details are hillsides, roads, and rivers.
Engine - this is where you take the results of an abstraction and program them into a computer application, resulting in pages and pages of application source. To an outsider, the application source can look like a big pile of mystical, cryptic and completely meaningless jumble of characters. To a programmer, the application source can look like a big pile of mystical, cryptic and completely meaningless jumble of characters.
Fog Of War - this is a term used to describe the confusion that arises during the heat of battle. In the Joy Of Hex fog of war appears as varying levels of limited data that you can discover about your enemy's units.
Game - I use this term in a rather fuzzy way. Sometimes it can mean the application which you use to play a scenario. Sometimes it can refer to the scenario itself.
Hex - this is short for hexagonal, a 6-sided polygon. Hexagonals are supposedly the most efficient way to fill a two dimensional space.
Hex Map - a feature common to all strategy games is that they are played on a map of some sort. A "Hex Map" is a map for a strategy game that is based on hexagonally shaped blocks.
HQ - short for head-quarters. In the Joy Of Hex head-quarters are vital for organising a pathway for supply: from a supply hex through to combat units that use the supply.
Order Of Battle - this refers to the command structure that exists during battle. Put crudely the order of battle is meant to represent the flow of commands and who gives fighting orders to whom. In the Joy Of Hex the order of battle is merely used to organise the flow of supply.
Project - see Projekt.
Projekt - sometimes you will see me refer to the Joy Of Hex game, editor, the documention and everything else associated with the Joy Of Hex as the "Joy Of Hex projekt". This is a personal quirk of mine that I use when refering to a large programming project. The funny spelling was inspired by those ingenius weapon design ideas that the Germans came up with during World War 2 (for example, I have a soft spot for the Horten flying wing). These weapon designs always seemed to have some crazy name like "Die Blitzen Durchfall Projekt".
Scenario - this is taken to be the final product of the game design process. A scenario consists of a map and some units and is ready for playing.
Scenario Editor - the application which one uses to edit scenarios. In this case Joy Of Hex Editor.
Scenario Maker - this is taken to be the person who actually sits down in front of a computer and edits a scenario.
Terrain - these are large, uniform and extended regions of geography. In the abstraction that makes up the Joy Of Hex engine these are represented by graphics that fill the entire hex. Examples of terrain are heavy forest, cities and swamps.
Terrain Details - see Details.
Turn - startegy games make an abstraction of reality by dividing time up into blocks, and each block of time is worked on during each turn. The scale of a game typically determines the amount of time that goes into each turn. For a squad level game this block of time can be as short as a few minutes, while for an Army level game this block of time could be measured in weeks. For the Joy Of Hex the amount of time that makes up a turn is 4 hours.
Unit - a abstraction for a coherent group of combatants. For example an unit of artillery will represent all the men and equipement that go together to make a functioning artillery fighting force.