Bad Pathfinding

For some reason the pathfinding wants to go route that takes more movement. For instance, you are at the edge of a forest and want to move two open tiles along the edge. The unit will move in to the forest taking up two movement instead of properly taking the best path.

Also, roads don't seem to be used well either. I've seen units move parallel to a road for more than a few tiles.

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Also when a unit tries to pathfind over a particularly long distance, such as from your first town in the campaign up to the town where you start harvesting crystal, it acts like you're selecting impassable terrain (it doesn't move at all).

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I have made a few observation about path-finding:

1) _It does not consider roads. Between two cities with road it will rather walk 6 squares of non-road, than 7 squares of road, though the road would almost twice as fast

2) It does not consider city-limits. This means it will not search for the part of the city that would take the shortest route to get to. Combined with the road-bug, this means it will sometimes take a longer route with no road than a short road-trip to a funny corner of the city.

3) It does not appear to understand movement penalties. This means the units will often walk through 2-movement cost forest when there is a slighty longer route with 1-movement cost.

4) It does not abuse movement penalities. Because you can also move into any legal field with you last move, it is most effective to walk n-1 steps at lowest cost (where n is the movement rate) and then use the last step to walk onto something slow (forest, rugged terrain, etc).

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I see it use roads about 60% of the time, but mostly if the target is in a rough line from the start point and the road parallel to that same line. If the target is off to the side, the AI will go off on that vector, even if there is a road that might save a bit. I checked two different units, one kept on the road manually and the other allowed to go the way the AI wanted (cross country) and they ended up getting there at the same time. Maybe not so dumb after all.

The game really does need some UI help in SHOWING us what the potential paths are before we do the final click to send the unit on its way. That would be really cool, as would a highlighting of reachable squares when a unit with movement points left is selected.

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Quoting gunnergoz,

reply 3

as would a highlighting of reachable squares when a unit with movement points left is selected.

Ooooo....agree, agree, agree

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