TheGrayMouser wrote:
So working with what we have what about this suggestion?
Units exposed during a players movement but then back in hiding at the end turn are only partially “spotted” as they move in and out of one fields of vision, ie: instead of seeing a glimpse of a cataphact, you only see a horse sillouette, same thing with any or all infantry. Would only require 2 new graphics , a washed out gray scale maybe?
Nah, that would still ruin my plan. Basically, if my pikemen are moving forward, they'd all be going at the same time, it's only the engine that frustrates this. You'd never get a chance to see a horsie, because they'd never be out from behind the pikemen. Just imagine the Ps and the Cs in my diagram walking forward together in formation, moving at the slow, pikeman pace. Perfectly reasonable, and I always assumed this would be the core of the LOS rules, but impossible to do with the current system.
Basically, secretely moving men behind your line is impossible now. This is because (a) units moving forward go one by one, allowing the enemy to peer through the line, and (b) after you move your line forward, the area behind the new position of the front line is not shrouded until you end turn, so when your rear units move up, they are all revealed, despite being behind the front line. These two points render LOS completely useless for me, unless there is a well-placed hill or forest (and even then, I use pike armies a lot and avoid obstacles). It's an obvious point, but historically line of sight was used to move things back and forth behind the front line; just think of screening things with cavalry, or stacking part of your line and leaving another part thin in the hopes of quickly overwhelming a flank.
I am also not aware of the AI attempting to play sneaky buggers with the LOS, so a change would do nothing to the AI.