However, to the OP: It is most certainly *not* easy to implement this feature. Pathfinding is not a trivial task; if you try to calculate the absolute optimal path with brute force, the calculations will take forever. It's a complex optimization task to write an adequate pathfinding algorithm for a game such as FE. It seems to be a field that Stardock has a lot of problems. My guess is that they don't have a game dev that has a lot of expertise in complex networks.
I know pathfinding is not easy, but
a ) it is a solved problem (see A* on wikipedia for a "trivial" implementation), but i still agree with you for "real time" situations e.g. RTS games. But we are talking one army to move (and ai tasks in the background)
b ) most important: the army does already do this, the path is calculated, we do not move tile by tile. Its not new, its just providing the information to the user which is already present.
Maybe the art style and making the graphics will take some effort. Don t get me wrong, I'm sure there is already enough work for you guys, but we need this! It will cost so much fun not having it.
