If you have sent troops through an area and they were demolished, you will still be able to view that area's layout and buildings, but not the actual forces of the enemy.
Among the nicer touches in Warcraft 2 is the 'Fog of War,' which allows you to see only those parts of the battlefield where your troops have been sent. But after you've killed ten or twenty helpless 'critters' and have witnessed the extremely disturbing yet comical way in which they expire, you tire of that novelty and concentrate on the mission at hand.
There is also enough graphic brutality to please most wargame enthusiasts. Still, the game is more realistic in its action than in its graphics-keeping in mind that the graphics were not intended to represent reality. Since Warcraft 2 is set in a fantasy realm where orcs and humans €battle for supremacy, realism only partially applies as a category anyway. But once I delved deeper into the play of the game, what seemed childish soon became endearing.
After playing Command and Conquer a great deal, the cartoonish look and feel of Warcraft 2 was hard to take seriously. I must admit that the graphics of Warcraft 2 threw me off a bit at first.
