LoS for whole army?

[kronenblatt]

It would be great with a hotkey that shows the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole, i.e., the squares that at least one unit in the army can see, or is there such a hotkey already?

(Otherwise I just need to go through unit by unit to see what's seen and what's not.)

[rbodleyscott]

It would be great with a hotkey that shows the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole, i.e., the squares that at least one unit in the army can see, or is there such a hotkey already?

(Otherwise I just need to go through unit by unit to see what's seen and what's not.)

This and seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view would be useful game aids, but they would not be at all realistic and would reduce skill.

It is up to the general who wishes to hide some troops to use his skill to find a suitable place to do so. Ancient generals did not even have adequate maps, let alone computers to automatically find suitable ambush sites for them.

Hence we have deliberately not implemented such tools. Even the tools the game currently has for LOS are more than a real general would have.

It is the same reason we don't have neon signs over rough terrain, deep streams etc. The information can be discovered by mousing over the squares, which is a hell of a lot easier than real life scouting. It must be possible for players to make mistakes about the nature of terrain, because such errors often happened in real battles, frequently with disastrous results.

Even mistaking one of your units for an enemy unit is entirely historically realistic, which is why we don't colour code their base tiles. At least the game does not actually allow friendly fire!

A degree of confusion and uncertainty adds to the realism of the game.

[Athos1660]

(...) need to go through unit by unit to see what's seen and what's not.

Generally, LOS and hidding do not concern many units, do they ?
Besides, there are rules about e.g. what can be hidden at the edge of the woods, in swamps, etc.

I guess it would be a useful feature, but would it be in the spirit of the game ?
When you play FoG, you play alternatively both at unit level and at army level.
I tend to think that LoS is more a matter of individual unit. But I may be wrong

[kronenblatt]

It would be great with a hotkey that shows the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole, i.e., the squares that at least one unit in the army can see, or is there such a hotkey already?

(Otherwise I just need to go through unit by unit to see what's seen and what's not.)

This and seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view would be useful game aids, but they would not be at all realistic and would reduce skill.

It is up to the general who wishes to hide some troops to use his skill to find a suitable place to do so. Ancient generals did not have a computer to do it for them.

Hence we have deliberately not implemented such tools.

I absolutely agree on the "seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view" part. When it comes to "the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole", in my view it neither reduces skill nor is unrealistic, since for the former perspective it's simply a matter of avoiding having to go through a cumbersome task of checking each own unit's LoS, one by one, and for the latter, the general could be considered to accumulate all information provided by the units to him/her, aggregating the army's LoS. nb: it's not for the sake of finding hidden units, only for knowing whether a darkened square from the '2' hotkey is actually empty or whether not in my LoS for any of my units.

(But no big deal for me. I'm happy to check each individual unit and put it all in an Excel spreadsheet. )

CLARIFICATION: I'm not talking about detecting hidden units. I'm talking about seeing whether a square is within LoS of any of my units.

[rbodleyscott]

It would be great with a hotkey that shows the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole, i.e., the squares that at least one unit in the army can see, or is there such a hotkey already?

(Otherwise I just need to go through unit by unit to see what's seen and what's not.)

This and seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view would be useful game aids, but they would not be at all realistic and would reduce skill.

It is up to the general who wishes to hide some troops to use his skill to find a suitable place to do so. Ancient generals did not have a computer to do it for them.

Hence we have deliberately not implemented such tools.

I absolutely agree on the "seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view" part. When it comes to "the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole", in my view it neither reduces skill nor is unrealistic, since for the former perspective it's simply a matter of avoiding having to go through a cumbersome task of checking each own unit's LoS, one by one, and for the latter, the general could be considered to accumulate all information provided by the units to him/her, aggregating the army's LoS. nb: it's not for the sake of finding hidden units, only for knowing whether a darkened square from the '2' hotkey is actually empty or whether not in my LoS for any of my units.

(But no big deal for me. I'm happy to check each individual unit and put it all in an Excel spreadsheet. )

Seems a bit unnecessary when squares that your army cannot see are shaded in the normal map view anyway.

Apart from siting artillery, the main practical use of the LOS tool is in fact to try to guess whether units you are trying to hide will be visible to the enemy. Which they largely will be if there are no enemy units in their own LOS, and (at deployment) their LOS does not extend into the enemy deployment area.

[kronenblatt]

This and seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view would be useful game aids, but they would not be at all realistic and would reduce skill.

It is up to the general who wishes to hide some troops to use his skill to find a suitable place to do so. Ancient generals did not have a computer to do it for them.

Hence we have deliberately not implemented such tools.

I absolutely agree on the "seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view" part. When it comes to "the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole", in my view it neither reduces skill nor is unrealistic, since for the former perspective it's simply a matter of avoiding having to go through a cumbersome task of checking each own unit's LoS, one by one, and for the latter, the general could be considered to accumulate all information provided by the units to him/her, aggregating the army's LoS. nb: it's not for the sake of finding hidden units, only for knowing whether a darkened square from the '2' hotkey is actually empty or whether not in my LoS for any of my units.

(But no big deal for me. I'm happy to check each individual unit and put it all in an Excel spreadsheet. )

Seems a bit unnecessary when squares that your army cannot see are shaded in the normal map view anyway.

Aha, are they? Then it wouldn't be that necessary of course.

[rbodleyscott]

I absolutely agree on the "seeing the LOS from the enemy army point of view" part. When it comes to "the Line of Sight (LoS) for the army as a whole", in my view it neither reduces skill nor is unrealistic, since for the former perspective it's simply a matter of avoiding having to go through a cumbersome task of checking each own unit's LoS, one by one, and for the latter, the general could be considered to accumulate all information provided by the units to him/her, aggregating the army's LoS. nb: it's not for the sake of finding hidden units, only for knowing whether a darkened square from the '2' hotkey is actually empty or whether not in my LoS for any of my units.

(But no big deal for me. I'm happy to check each individual unit and put it all in an Excel spreadsheet. )

Seems a bit unnecessary when squares that your army cannot see are shaded in the normal map view anyway.

Aha, are they? Then it wouldn't be that necessary of course.

The shading isn't hard edged like the LOS tool (although they wouldn't have been in that either if we could have easily implemented it), but they are shaded. You may have to look at the map a bit harder to spot some of them. It is deliberately subtle to permit errors by unobservant players.

Forests are not shaded because it just looked bad having all forests greyed out, but it isn't necessary because all troops inside a forest (not in the outer row of forest squares) will be hidden from all enemy, and infantry on the outer row of forest squares will be hidden to all enemy more than 2 squares away. Also you can turn the yellow question marks on in Settings if you want - that will show squares hidden because of the terrain type, but won't show squares hidden by intervening forests or high ground.

[kronenblatt]

Seems a bit unnecessary when squares that your army cannot see are shaded in the normal map view anyway.

Aha, are they? Then it wouldn't be that necessary of course.

The shading isn't hard edged like the LOS tool (although they wouldn't have been in that either if we could have easily implemented it), but they are shaded. You may have to look at the map a bit harder to spot some of them. It is deliberately subtle to permit errors by unobservant players.

Forests are not shaded because it just looked bad having all forests greyed out, but it isn't necessary because all troops inside a forest (not in the outer row of forest squares) will be hidden from all enemy, and infantry on the outer row of forest squares will be hidden to all enemy more than 2 squares away. Also you can turn the yellow question marks on in Settings if you want - that will show squares hidden because of the terrain type, but won't show squares hidden by intervening forests or high ground.

No probs: it all makes sense now that I'm aware of the shading. But I'm worse than unobservant since not only didn't I spot some of them; I didn't spot any of them... But now I know and will pay closer attention.