lahill...granted, men will rally around the unit commander, but if the unit commander is not a moron, he will take his men to the general.
elmark...will there still be signs of enemy approach, as in... the dust kicked up by approaching cav, birds flying from trees. the fog of war i want is not so much invisible men, unless they are in trees, or on the other side of the hill, but a fow that makes it hard to tell what is comeing until they are in range...ie, if playing on a large flat map, and the enemy is about 3 times the range of your arbs, you should be able to see that something is comeing, just not know what they are. are far as restricted camera is concerned, i deffinately don't want it to be so completely free that you can go to the other side of the map where none of your men are, or that it would simulate an ability to see thru hills. but i would like some freedom, such as if you are near the red zone, my camera should be able to sit in the redzone, just not my men. and when and if i am sitting on a hill, (not that i do that), i would like to be able to see my army without haveing to screw too much with the camera angles. i'm not very good at this total war thing, and can seldom spare the time to screw around trying to get a good view. so any help i can get get from decent camera views would help greatly. perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the flags at the bottom of the screen appeared as they were on the field. in other words, if my general was on the left, his flag would be on the left. this would likely be a hard thing to do, as groupings might get screwed over a bit, and units behind or in front would still be missrepresented. but even a loose order of which troops are where would be greatly useful. cause if i want my right flank to advance, it would be so much easier if i picked just the flags on the right of the screen, without have to verify i'm sending the right troops. i realize it's a generals responsibilty to know where his men are at all times, but generals have aids. if he loses track, he turns to his right hand man and asks, "where's mico's unit of spears?" his aid answers, "sir, it's on our left flank, sir" perhaps if we got rid of the radar screen, and turned it into an army formations screen, with icons instead of colored blobs, we wouldn't have to change the camera restriction properties all that much. hmmmmm.
just had an added thought...perhaps we could restrict the camera to just a 360 degree bubble around the general, being able to also look up and down hills, or at tree tops, etc... couple this with an army formation screen, the unit you send to scout could start to flash if it came in site of enemy troops? you still wouldn't know what the troops were until your scouting party returns with their report, but you would have an idea that something was there. granted, a unit out of range from the generals line of sight would be hard to command, but a unit that was commanded to scout should know better then to engage the enemy, and to avoid contact at all cost. perhaps a double click on your scout to orient the camera on it just long enough to issue commands, and after about 10 seconds or so, it returns to the general's view?