No way to turn off trees?

[MiKye200]

I did a web search for this but couldn't find any way to turn off tree foliage.
Looking at campaign map in Third Age, the mod I'm playing, the terrain can look clear but it's full of trees and I can't see the troops, making combat virtually unplayable.

[Inardesco]

Then stay away from the trees.

[MiKye200]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Then stay away from the trees.

If I'm attacking then there's no choice, if the AI is camping on a hill in the trees.

[Gigantus]

As I said elsewhere: it's not an arcade game. Nor a 'my unit icons are glowing in the dark' strategic game. Reality (like not being able to see troops in dense forest) really sucks.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by MiKye200:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Then stay away from the trees.

If I'm attacking then there's no choice, if the AI is camping on a hill in the trees.

First rule of warfare;

Choose carefully where you attack.

Next to that, you can easily goad the AI into attacking you anyway. Simply send a single unit of cavalry around, charge into them, and the moment you enter melee they'll charge down at you.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

I will say that TATW has a huge map problem like the hills outside Gundabad... gosh, I hate those cliffs.

Other than that, not much you can do but try and pick your battles in a nice clear area.

Also you can pause and use the minimap to see where all your units are.

[Dredd Penguin]

I turn down the graphical settings for Vegetation. The trees will look like horrible cardboard cutouts but at least you're able to see what's going on better.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by Gigantus:

As I said elsewhere: it's not an arcade game. Nor a 'my unit icons are glowing in the dark' strategic game. Reality (like not being able to see troops in dense forest) really sucks.

Yes, because realistically generals had a birds-eye view of the battlefield...

The problem isn't the concealment given to the enemy units, it's the fact that you, as a human player viewing a monitor and giving fictional orders to hypothetical pixel troops, can't see s*** because of some non-transparent textures. Speaking of units glowing in the dark: you can make the situation slightly more tolerable by constantly mashing the "make units glow" button...

The developers should have implemented toggleable transparent trees. Or did Varus loose because the leafs were blocking the view what was happening 20 meters in front of him..?

[Gigantus]

It was more like 75 meters...

[Gekkibi]

If this indeed is working as intented then it's poorly thought out. For example no amount of foliage would prevent the commander from deploying spearmen into a line and skirmishers in front of them, instead of deploying left flank of the skirmishers in front of the spearmen, right flank behind the spearmen and in the middle the skirmishers are on the shoulders of the spearmen.

In later Total War games units remain concealed even when moving. This is infinitely better alternative to making everything inconvenient to the player: the units aren't really concealed, the player just has to pause every 2 seconds and zoom in to maintain the same situational awareness. A direct comparison would be to hinder the human player during night battles (a big No-No during history of warfare) by decreasing the overall brightness of the game to a level where it is very hard to see anything.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

A direct comparison would be to hinder the human player during night battles (a big No-No during history of warfare) by decreasing the overall brightness of the game to a level where it is very hard to see anything.

M2 bug: fight night battle + wait => bright daylight but their reinforcements arrive

[SuperGorp]

You should see (or not see actually) the tree battles in Europa Barbarorum

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by SuperGorp:

You should see (or not see actually) the tree battles in Europa Barbarorum

Recently played as Sweboz, and of course it's because of Realism-Simulaton™ that units under my command suck at being in the forest, unlike those mediterraneans who have lived their entire lives in the thick northern forests.
...or something.

At least EB 2 forests aren't as bad as the ones I encountered in R:TW BI while playing as saxons and graal knight stacks spawned in & attacked my army when it was in a forest tile.
Un-f***ing-playable. Still remember it clearly, and this happened in 2005.

[spooney]

I see this as being on the realistic side, a general trying to give orders to an army in a forest would be incredibly difficult.

[Gekkibi]

Originally posted by κz | spooney︼:

I see this as being on the realistic side, a general trying to give orders to an army in a forest would be incredibly difficult.

The trees don't make it incredibly difficult, they make it infuriatingly inconvenient. Pause all the time and zoom in all the time and you can do everything exactly as if the trees wouldn't exist.

Plus many orders the players give are ones a real-life general wouldn't. In real life generals don't micro. Plus I'm sure your cavalry would be able to react if they see spearmen or stakes in front of archers instead of going "nope, our general double clicked our orders, charge!".

Want realism? Wish the units would stay hidden even when moving, decrease the overall visibility range and make ranged units even less effective instead of cheering that the general's UAV doesn't have FLIR...