After playing a few times more with friends on FoW maps that aren't completely made for and around the idea, other than some cut-off corners for you to hide in (as well as forests), I really do have to say that there needs to be something done in terms of granted vision. The vision-score for most grounded units is 4, with the exception of the archer having 5, and the Giant being at 3, which is pretty generous already and sometimes feels a bit too much, especially considering dogs have true vision that does not get impaired by walls, mountains or forest. This as a base, could be fine and fairly balanced, however, things go bad very quickly. Villages have a vision-score of 6, which is as much as a grounded unit (excluding Archer) standing on a mountain to increase their range, now the problem with that is, that only Riders have a range of 6 for movement, aggressive units that is, Wagons have a wheel-range of 12, which equals to 6 like Knights on field, but doubles on roads, so you basically only have a single grounded unit that can surprise from FoW to attack, now the other problem is, that he would need vision on the village itself first, before he would be able to attack it in general and as such, ruins the entire surprise attack on it, because his unit would be spotted first, unless there are forests nearby to hide in. Yet, flying units like the dragon have 6 vision as well, as well as being able to fly 8 spaces in one turn, they cannot move at full range and attack because their own vision doesn't allow that, but a solo-attack (read: No other means of vision on the target) range of 6 is still pretty damn strong, yes they cost a lot, but that's not all. The attacking person is basically always in disadvantage because of how vision works, and as long as he's hiding behind a forest, or maybe even not since only Riders can really attack trebuchets or ballistae that far, and rushing in with a dragon is devastating, but for both players, and once again, more for the attacker than the defender, because Dragons cost 1250, and a mage, or just a basllista, cost 400 and 800 respectively. Even combined they wouldn't equal the money he lost for attacking once, maybe even failing in killing the target instantly and following up. So whichever unit he might or might not have killed, a strong defense will always kill the dragon afterwards, or/and any Knights rushing in afterwards. "So why not use other units?" The problem with that, is that none are fast enough to be outside of a trebuchet's or ballista's range in trying to do so, and in the worst case scenario, you instantly lost that unit because you got crit by either of them or just attacked by another of either and it only gets worse if there's a wall of Forests between attacker and defender, meaning that he can basically only attack with flying units quickly. Let's look at it with some images instead so it's easier to understand: I'll go ahead and take this scenario for this example, while yes, it could be different and changed with more units, but that's currently not the point. This is roughly what a defense wall with range will look like in FoW, you might think he'd be pretty fine in this, neither player can see each other and he can flank with riders, send a pikeman forward to get vision. And as you can see, he doesn't know that there's an attack in the works (aside from showing enemy movement in FoW, but we'll say he didn't watch or that isn't a thing in this.), so he could do pretty well with an attack maybe, some more units afterwards in and he could be claiming victory in a turn or two over this already. There's just one mistake in that: And that is placing a dog in the front row of the forest so even enemy forests aren't safe, and setting this kind of attack would have ended right here, Blue placed his units like this to go for an attack next turn, but now it's Red's turn, and he can clearly see two of those units, so he not only knows that there's enemies on the move (Again, the weird "Enemy movement" map-pan isn't in this scenario), and you can be sure that this prepared attack of Blue won't last long at all. Even using only his ranged attacks and not giving away where his other units stand, he already killed a Knight and heavily damaged one of the two pikemen, while this could be going better or worse for each side, and even if Blue had tried to put a dog there first, maybe not to only scout but to plan his attack, he would have been instantly spotted by the other dog and killed in the same turn by the ballistae, and if need be, by another unit to clear Blue of his vision and put him basically back to square one. Not even flying unit vision that can peek behind forests would really have helped, as those would probably be instantly shot down, and risking something like a Dragon or other, more vulnerable to anti-air units is just too high of a price. And while this is just an example and maybe not just how it could be played out in one of your games, this still applies a whole ton to FoW games, and on a side note, Turtles have the same properties as dogs, meaning they can look into forests with no vision blocked at all, or reefs, so if there's that chance anywhere close, that's even worse to go up against, and Blue can't take the initiative with ranged units either, because they can only attack when standing still, Archers and boats can move and attack, setting their roles more flexible, rather than be technically pure defense, but this is still far too strong for how costy attack units are, 600 for a knight each, 1250 for a dragon, and while trebuchet and ballista cost 900 and 800 respectively, they're not that easy to take out and still have a lot of threat in them, even by just existing. And wind can make that even worse, so hoping for bad weather is just a flawed strategy, even if more efficient. I don't really mind what way of balance this will be taken, either by being allowed to change parameters for vision in the editor or just by changing vision all on its own, with how it is right now, attacks are at a pretty big disadvantage against defence, with commanders or not, and you do have to consider that if you use your commander to break through enemy lines, a shot or two with a trebuchet and a pikeman crit can put them down very quickly, and you might just lose the entire game for that attempt alone. Either way- I do really feel like vision needs to be changed in some way, reduce the general range of basically everything, make dogs and turtles not just look inside every forest but have it act like movement instead, e.g. for Dogs and Turtles 2 vision per square of forest to look through, mountains 2 or even 3 for each square you want to look through, but please not without any hindrance- This was my two cents about what I've experienced in the past few games of FoW with some friends, and attack just really doesn't feel good, resulting in a whole lot of stalemates and just staring at each other's defences. (And pikemen being MUCH to strong for their price, they can oneshit a Knight with a crit, using only 300g for the more difficult to apply crit of the knight, which even then doesn't even kill them in one attack like the other way around, but that's a different issue.) Tell me I'm wrong or not, this is how I experienced things to go down a few times after one another. Thank you for following along and reading through this, and I sincerely hope that I might have helped in some way or another to make this an even more fun game than it is.
