I was playing earlier today trying out some new camo cards I received in my starter packs. They were cool in the start of the game, but I realized that after the first few rounds, camo was made useless by building's ability to see camo units a hex away. This seems to destroy their ability to do what camo is intended to do, harass.

Camo units are weak infantry units that can only stand up to other infantry units (as it should be). Having all enemy controlled buildings renders them useless in their role. Camo should cause the enemy to be reactive and not proactive. I have a few ways to fix this without making camo the end all be all.

So think to Starcraft. In the Broodwars expansion, the Protoss got a unit that really helped round out their arsenal; the Dark Templars. Using these, a player who was using unbalanced tactics to play would get dominated. It would force other players to play in a more balanced fashion (and that is something we all want). Camo is another side of that balance. Camo is used to divert your enemy's attention to something you've just done. Currently in-game, it brings attention to what you are ABOUT to do. This gives the enemy an entire extra turn to react and in this game that is A LOT of time against a unit that doesn't have much firepower OR defenses. To make this better, my suggestions are as follows.

-Remove the camo rule from resources. they shouldn't be able to see camo. it allows a proactive approach from an enemy which defeats the purpose, to harass.
-Remove the one hex rule from CP. Allow it to give site on you once you are on it, BUT do not let enemy units attack you unless they are 1-2 hexes from you. I give the attacking rule a 1-2 hex extention because it plays to the strength AND weaknesses of your camo unit. It allows the enemy just enough break to SEE you've landed on their CP, but not enough overpowered-ness to allow a 2-6 art unit to just decimate him.

Make HIM come to YOU. This allows more strategy. Will he move other units off his defenses to take out the camo? If so, camo has done the job it was designed to do. It's like a good magician. He's waving his left hand so you don't see he just palmed the object in his right. This gives the game even more feeling of a war of wits instead of a super rush to destroy an HQ.

Here is another idea. Using the idea above, allow a camo unit to capture a CP, but NOT an enemy resource. Allow him to take the same amount of time it normally takes to capture an enemy resource, but instead of capturing it outright, disable it for 2 turns or until an enemy units lands back on it. This unit should have to be an infantry unit like normal to recover it before the 2 turns are up. This once again, adds more strategery (coined Hohense phrase, used without permission) to the game. Instead of outright giving you a resource advantage, this allows you to just temporarily disable the resource. at which point you could send in a guy to cap it or he could send one to re-enable it. A disabled resource should only be able to give vision on something standing on it, excluding the camo unit. Camo units cannot extend the disable duration until the resource has come back online.

The finaly suggestion is one more of balance. Seeing the above, you would probably think camo is TOO good. Able to go anywhere unless a unit steps one hex from it. You would probably be right. So the final suggestion is to add a new immobile unit to the game. The detector. This unit could give site and targeting capability on a camo unit to a 3 hex range. Make it a card with a permanent duration and a price similar to that of having to build an infantry and play a camo card on him. Say maybe 75g (I'm going of the price of a cheap infantry card since this unit will be immobile). This helps prevent camo abuse in the same way that having some observers or science vessels in starcraft prevented dark templar abuse without making it as absurd as zerg detection was in starcraft 1.

I feel like this would help make camo feel like an actual tactic instead of the tact on feeling it has now and give the overall game a bit more depth.

The reason I'm so adamant about this suggestion is otherwise, after 5 turns, the game becomes more of a rush to see who can amass an bigger army faster and not one of any strategic value. Sure, maybe make camo a little more expensive so you have to pick and choose, do you want to use a camo strat or a huge army strat. Good luck trying to run both tho. Of course, in that case you would need to make mercs and maybe 2-for-1's a little more expensive too so they would be forced into that role if you pick that deck.

Checks and balances is what it's about or you get a boring game of who can zerg faster. If I wana play that, I'll load up my Starcraft 2 beta, thanks though.

Camo can be very useful as is. It is great to first take a control point or resource.

Later in the game you just need to be careful where you walk and only get in sight of a buiding if you've cleared the area enough that you can live the turn of fire once you are visible.

If you have to clear the area first, why even both having camo? just send in a regular infantry

I agree that buildings SHOULD NOT be able to see through camo. However, I had a camo'd Infantry NOT shoot back at all when it was attacked by an infantry adjacent to it.

regular camo cannot attack. Only the guerrilla fighter has the ability to attack. Me and cooldown have gone over this more and refined the idea a bit more since I made this post.

Basically, to assist people who refuse to play a balanced deck, you could give the recon unit what I call a "half sight" ability. for 1-6 it has normal vision, for 1-2 it has half sight, and then for 1-1 it has true sight.

true sight just means it can see anything that comes within one hex of it.

half sight mean that anything 2 hexes away it can either a blip or the animation of a unit moving, but it can't see the landing point. Since talking to cooldown, I've actually refined this even more. Ping the hex the camo user was JUST on, but not the one it moved to.

The other idea was to get rid of building true sight all together. If a camo user lands on a resource, he can disable it on the turn he lands on it and then capture it on the next turn if he hasn't moved off of it. With CP's make it disable it the turn he lands on it (change it to gray so the enemy knows something is there, but then take TWO turns to capture it.

We also had an idea to make the guerrilla fighter card only give +25% bonus damage (a minimal amount just so you can't play another damage card on top of him) and to reduce his vision and range by 1 but give him the +1 vision/rangen bonus (this means he keeps same vision and range as a normal infantry but prevents the play of a vision/range booster card to rebuff him) and maybe because of this, drop his card cost to 35-40g.

Another confusing thing about camo is how attack and movement priorities are played out in the replay. I've had a unit without true sight shoot me from 2 hexes away because its next move would put him on the hex next to me. This should be corrected. It should have to move to that hex BEFORE it can attack.

I think that regular camo should not be BARRED completely from attacking. say, only shoot when shot at, perhaps? don't know if that' really a practical idea, might be overly complex coding necessary.

actually it would be really easy. give it a firing range of 1-1 since you have to be 1 hex from a camo unit to attack it anyway