real_tabasco_sauce

Aside from re-writing code, one could still implement changes to reduce overkill (and therefore, lag) such as attack-ground. It would still be the player's decision whether or not to use attack-ground, but it would also be more effective in large battles due to less overkill. However, this does looks laggy on its own right, maybe it just appears bad since its shown in 0.5x speed. Attack-ground:

@alre I was hoping to tie it to the distribution of the forest floor and whether or not there are trees for a certain area of the floor, so single trees do not influence vision of troops in the open. I don't know exactly what is more feasible, just giving suggestions since @wowgetoffyourcellphone and others brought up stealth and ambush tactics. Should this be implemented it would also need to be decided what units are affected. Personally, I think outposts should still have a large vision radius in the forest. down the road, it would be cool to have a hero with a "guerilla warfare" perk that gives soldiers much better vision in the forest.

@maroder yeah, thats what I feared. Could the forest floor instead be used to give the aura as long as it could be taken away in the absence of trees on the forest floor? Maybe that would be no more efficient than giving the aura to each tree.

Would it be bad to simply give each gaia tree(provided its part of a generated forest) this aura (3 meters or so), so when they are cut down the overall aura the forest has is reduced? I think if this is implemented, groves would not be necessary.

perhaps it would be more logical to limit vision range in forest regions as seen in AOE4? 2:38 is where it shows the vision range behavior near forest. In this direction, wouldnt it be cool if a civ, hero, or unit had a vision range in forest perk? Imagine if naked fanatics could see farther in forests. an ambush could be set up by running into the forest, building an outpost for better vision, and waiting for the right moment to attack!

@BreakfastBurrito_007 I don't understand why the damage decrease is necessary? I guess this feature could be balanced as needed if it is considered OP @FreagarachThanks for sharing the demo! perhaps it would be better for attack ground to be a one-time attack executed by the player with a hotkey. That way one could damage a group of units and continue to deal damage (with individual volleys) to a large group of skirms, instead of all the archers sniping one skirm at a time. It does seem weird for this to be used as a trap that enemies die to by walking past. Maybe lag would make this feature difficult to use, but I think using skill and microing your units should be stronger than simply letting the archers use their default behavior.

Yes, as long as the attack isn't for one unit, but rather an area with enemies. It's not so much like in aoe2 where onagers have to shoot where their targets are going. Instead, this would be to minimize overkill and to have more control over where your archers can do damage in a ranged fight (where archers will prioritize closer units). I just think it would add more skill to ranged fights and make archers more interesting in game.

I think a volley formation could be really beneficial to gameplay. It would increase the skill cap in ranged fights and also address the annoyance of overkill and archers attacking the closest unit: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/55848-why-should-ranged-units-be-forced-to-attack-closest-units/ Volley formations should be available to groups of 20+ archers or crossbowmen. The volley would be equal to the area of the formation and would be centered around the unit that the formation is commanded to attack. Damage could be dealt with the pre-existing splash damage mechanic, where splash damage is equivalent to the average pierce attack of the units in formation. To avoid the scenario where a few archers can deal splash damage to many more compact units, the formation should be quite compact. ^there may be better ways to implement this, but it seems the simplest would be to use splash damage. After the volley is fired, the units will fire at will (ie. default archer behavior) until the player clicks attack on another unit.