Revealing attackers in Fog of War

[ChronA]

On 30/03/2021 at 11:43 AM, wraitii said:

Age of Empires-like "reveal attackers in the fog of war" capability.

I'd like to confirm that this is desirable.

It depends what the line-of-sight radius is supposed to represent in the gameplay metaphor, which in turn depends on what units are supposed to represent.

If a unit's LOS represents a person's individual sensory perception range, then it would not be desirable as it is quite possible to come under attack and not know what is attacking you. On the other hand, if this is what LOS wants to simulate then it does a pretty poor job of it. In the real world vision range is primarily limited by obstruction and secondarily by resolution. There is no absolute limit on an individual's vision-range except in rare atmospheric conditions.

Alternatively, perhaps each unit represents an entire company or brigade and their LOS represents their command-level region of awareness. In that case I think revealing attackers in the fog of war is desirable. A company may not know the disposition or intentions of all the other units in their vicinity, especially if recon is not part of their battlefield role, but the whole company is likely to catch on pretty quickly when lead and iron starts flying. They may not know the exact details of where each attack is coming from, but they'll still have a general idea of where and what the enemies are (so long as we are still talking about ancient warfare).

Likewise, you could say each unit represents an individual and their LOS is their actionable region of awareness. In that case revealing attackers in the fog of war is desirable for the same reasons. A spearman might easily be able to see an enemy archer walking around 200 m off, but there is nothing he would reasonably do about it. He might not even inform his chain of command if his job is not to be a sentry. Thus the archer is invisible for all practical purposes. Once that archer starts shooting at him though, you can bet there will be a response regardless of if he can actually see the enemy's position.