Technologies that affect line of sight

DeckerdJames

Warlord
Joined
Nov 1, 2019
Messages
235
Line of sight distance should change with certain technologies. History experts could say when these changes should occur, but when early breakthroughs in optics happen, we should start to see further.

I think we should have to launch a series of satellites to remove the fog of war from the whole planet. The bigger the map, the more satellites it takes. Also, if your space districts are pillaged, you lose the effect of the satellites.
 
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Line of sight distance should change with certain technologies. History experts could say when these changes should occur, but when early breakthroughs in optics happen, we should start to see further.

I think we should have to launch a series of satellites to remove the fog of war from the whole planet. The bigger the map, the more satellites it takes. Also, if your space districts are pillaged, you lose the effect of the satellites.

I would like to bring back the way Civ III addressed this issue. All was revealed once World Maps were exchanged. Or perhaps once the age of Copernicus is reached. That way we can start colonizing areas much earlier.
 
I remember liking that feature when I played it. I wonder what the reasoning was to do away with that ability.
 
I remember liking that feature when I played it. I wonder what the reasoning was to do away with that ability.

To me Civ III was the best of the series. It was the most realistic, and enjoyable to play. There's quite a lot I would love to bring back from that installment.
 
Talking about two things here: Line of Sight, which is a Tactical phenomena affecting how far you can spot enemy units and, potentially, target them, and Fog of War, which reflects how much you know about the Region or World.

Line of Sight in the game's scale is not only about how far you can see (telescopes and other 'sight-enhancing' instruments date from the 16th century in both Europe and China) but also how fast the information gets to someone who can use it: real indirect fire artillery wasn't practical until radio-telegraph communications made it possible to transmit the enemy location to the guns faster than the enemy could change his location and avoid the fire. Armies or commanders who had a system of runners, gallopers or scouts to tell what the terrain was and where the enemy was had an extended 'line of sight' without the need of any technological additions.

I suggest then, that extended Line of Sight would be a product of a Recon unit (as now in Civ VI) and/or having a Command Structure with a regular bunch of men reporting to the Commander - like the efficient Mongol system of signals or the Roman Tribunes who assisted any Roman army commander, or John Churchill's 'Running Footmen' who carried messages and information from all over the battlefield to him, or simply hiring people who's regular business was Raid and Ambush, warfare that puts a priority on knowing where the enemy is before he knows where you are -i.e., hiring Barbarians, Poachers or Bandits.
In other words, most of the changes to Line of Sight would come from Social Policy or Civics - 'soft technology' changes, not Technical/Tech Tree changes, or from Great Generals or Mercenary Barbarians or Unique Units.

Fog of War or 'Global Line of Sight' is a different matter. People have been making maps since the Neolithic, but that doesn't always help to transmit the information about the planet to someone outside their own group - the conventions, or Graphic Interface if you will, of map making can vary wildly based on what the group considers important and what it can easily measure. A prime example was the map making of North American natives. They didn't bother measuring distances between important points, since they didn't have any way to accurately measure such things. Instead, they graphically showed landmarks like hills, mesas or rivers, and made a notation of how long it took to get to them: perfectly practical from their standpoint, but completely unrecognizable as 'maps' to Europeans, who consistently characterized the American landscape as 'trackless' when it had in fact been Tracked for centuries.

So some groups will have maps that are more universally useable than others. Early access to mathematics/geometry/trigonometry and astrology/astronomy to learn how to measure distance, which in turn means a reason to want to measure the landscape (land ownership from agriculture, long distance trade by land or sea) would seem to lead to maps that can be used by many groups and therefore 'traded' usefully.
The majority of knowledge about landscape, though, comes from humans who live there. In previous Civ renditions there was a possibility that a 'Goodie Hut' would give you a glimpse of the map around it for some distance, and that should return, along with the possibility of hiring Barbarian units that have a longer Line of Sight and intimate knowledge of the map around their origins because they've been hunting and raiding in it for generations. Interacting with Traders who know the map between your Civ and theirs would be another historical source of information, although it might not always be accurate - at times intentionally so, as Traders try to maintain a monopoly on the trade routes.
 
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