It's good to have that as an option.  I like fog of war, though.  At least, when playing multiplayer or when the AI takes advantage of it.  With the passive AI in the beta, fog of war is just an annoyance.  It's more fun when the enemy sneaks up on you.

Someone suggested allowing towers or castles, outside cities, to expand the player's line of sight.

Fog of war should definitely stay, but I'd love to be able to build watchtowers on tiles of my choice to provide vision.. it's sad not knowing what goes on in my own territory.

I support the OP's "very least" option.  I wouldn't want to see the removal of the Fog of War mechanic.  But I'd like for the fog over explored_areas to not be so heavy.  In viewing numerous game play videos (many thanks to Gorstagg! and others), the fog seems a distraction.  It hides the nice terrain.  Muddies up the view.  I also wonder if the fog graphics affect computing performance?  If thats the case, perhaps there can be a graphics option for a fog that is simply a slightly darker shade of the revealed terrain?

My wish would be for increased transparency of the fog.  So we can still see the land, but will not see any changes until we explore it again.  I also support Annatar11's Watchtower idea (reply#3).

 

EDIT: Grove12345 speaks my mind, but using less words while being more concise :~)

Please don't do that (remove it completely I mean).  I can see having both as an option like some other games do but I hate knowing about things I shouldn't know about.  Having the last known state shown though might be a good idea as long as it is clear it is old information and might not be valid.

Allow me to construct Watchtowers and I'm happy.