STILL no movement paths??? :(

Ok, so back in October I decided to quit playing a few months and let the game be developed more fully.  I remember way back then a lot of people had requested the game show movement paths for your units/characters displaying the path they would take and where they would end each turn, giving you a chance to approve/cancel this before the character began moving?

I am almost positive I remember the Devs saying this was on the short term todo list?

I don't mean to be rude here, but WHY has such a basic feature that is a genre standard STILL absent from this game after all this time??? 

12,965 views 16 replies
Reply #1 Top

As a newbie here, I am surprised this isn't in the game. I thought this was standard for any game. It's like buying a new car without power steering and breaks or no windshield wipers.

I do hope they will put it in soon.

Reply #2 Top

You don't get movement paths in Civ 5 either really. This is an outdated feature in alot of ways. Though I do like it in Galciv 2 and wouldnt object to it being added here. Then again I don't tend to do long move orders either...

Reply #3 Top

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 2
You don't get movement paths in Civ 5 either really. This is an outdated feature in alot of ways. Though I do like it in Galciv 2 and wouldnt object to it being added here. Then again I don't tend to do long move orders either...
End of dragoaskani's quote

You ABSOLUTELY DO have this feature in Civ5 (I personally can't think of any other modern TBS that doesn't have this feature?). 

In Civ V you right-click to a destination square and the game shows you exactly what path the unit will attempt to take to the desired destination and also where the unit will end its movement each and every turn until it gets there.  The unit does not move until you release the mouse button, allowing you to make adjustments or cancel the movement before it's too late if you don't like what you see.

Most times I try to play Elemental I have at least 1-2 costly and irritating incidents where a unit will choose a path that I would never have chosen and frequently gets killed for no reason at all except that this very basic feature is missing.  Feeling obligated to manually control each and every unit's every individual square of movement to avoid this problem is just a silly and totally unnecessary inconvenience that has no place in any modern game (IMO)???

Reply #4 Top

IDEALLY, there should be an OPTION to stop the unit's movement immediately if any newly discovered units and/or active terrain features are revealed during any single square of movement, allowing the player to adjust orders before that unit takes another step.

I don't know how many times in this kind of game I have sent a unit somewhere and it detects something that common sense would just literally SCREAM "stop and THINK about what you are doing before you keep just running blindly forward" and the unit either gets unnecessarily damaged/killed or misses an opportunity to act because it just stupidly kept running forward without asking for new orders.  =(

 

Reply #5 Top

While I think this would be cool, I have to ask myself a simple question, "Would I really want them to take time away from any other changes/fixes/additions to make this one addition?" The short answer is hell no. A longer answer is like this. While it may seem reasonable to add this, it probably would not be easy, quick, or even worth the effort in the short term. I mean would you really want some programmer at SD to work on this rather than updating the AI, or the magic system, or tactical combat, or making new quests, or any number of other awesome things? In the long run, when time and effort are not better spent on any number of other things, sure, but with the short time table they have for FE, this is probably not that big a deal. Honestly, if you look at games which support this, it is only really meaningful when a base unit/stack can have a significant hex/grid move. For instance, in galciv2, the later fleets can move like 2 sectors at a time so it makes alot of sense to know exactly how they are going to use all those moves in advance so you don't shoot something by like 20 grid spaces.

Reply #6 Top

For ME, not having movement paths is a borderline deal breaker, but I understand not everyone feels that strongly about it.

Not having this feature is a HUGE problem for me personally, because I find myself feeling frustrated every time my units do something I did not want them to (or every time I move when I have to do it manually square by square all the time which undermines almost the entire playing experience because you spend a good portion of your time every turn moving units). Personally, when I start feeling frustrated or irritated too many times when playing a game, I slowly stop wanting to play it.

I understand other people might not feel the way I do, but I really really wish they would at least put the movement paths in even if implementing the ideal "stop movement and ask for new orders" function is too much trouble.

I know laymen always tend to underestimate how much time it takes to add new features to a game, but with my limited programming experience I really can't imagine basic movement paths would take very long at all.

 

Reply #7 Top

Fuck this. If there is any proper pathfinding in the game, then overlaying that path visually doesn't take any time at all. It's been almost half a year already since the first request of this feature that I was aware of. Then again I'm not convinced there is any proper pathfinding done in this game since the units move in such idiotic ways.

The lack of this feature is starting to piss me off.

 

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 2
You don't get movement paths in Civ 5 either really.
End of dragoaskani's quote

And this is absolute nonsense.

Reply #8 Top

I would love to see this added too. I'm so used to it in the Civ games and other TBS games it seems to really stand out as something that should be there, but isn't!

Can only assume that it's a big implementation because I'm sure they'd have added it by now considering all the other changes they've made.

They'll probably do it for FE and then they'll be able to add it to EWOM.

 

Reply #9 Top

I was writing about it since the release. It was never on sort or any todo lists. It wouldn't be so painful if the game had some decent idle unit finder. Yes, there is Shift+U but scrolling through caravans is not what I mean. I always play with auto next unit and focus and still there are many times that some of my armies, especially the first one in the row was left somewher for many turns. I play lots of Civ and there it happens with the unit is autoexploring or at least doing something.

Reply #10 Top

i would like movement paths displayed. without them i don't trust the game to remember my orders and just end up moving my units individually every turn, which is really tedious.

Reply #11 Top

Do all enemy civilizations in the game have the same yellow border?

 

That should be changed along with the movement paths as well as have a ZofC(zone of control) implemented in the tactical side of the game.

Reply #12 Top

Quoting DariasDruss, reply 11
Do all enemy civilizations in the game have the same yellow border?

 

That should be changed along with the movement paths as well as have a ZofC(zone of control) implemented in the tactical side of the game.
End of DariasDruss's quote

 

There's an option to make the borders simplified which makes enemy borders all similar based on their political standing with you. It sounds like you have it on. if you don't have it on it's color coded to the faction colors.

Reply #13 Top

Quoting Soulfire777, reply 3

Quoting dragoaskani, reply 2You don't get movement paths in Civ 5 either really. This is an outdated feature in alot of ways. Though I do like it in Galciv 2 and wouldnt object to it being added here. Then again I don't tend to do long move orders either...
You ABSOLUTELY DO have this feature in Civ5 (I personally can't think of any other modern TBS that doesn't have this feature?). 

In Civ V you right-click to a destination square and the game shows you exactly what path the unit will attempt to take to the desired destination and also where the unit will end its movement each and every turn until it gets there.  The unit does not move until you release the mouse button, allowing you to make adjustments or cancel the movement before it's too late if you don't like what you see.

Most times I try to play Elemental I have at least 1-2 costly and irritating incidents where a unit will choose a path that I would never have chosen and frequently gets killed for no reason at all except that this very basic feature is missing.  Feeling obligated to manually control each and every unit's every individual square of movement to avoid this problem is just a silly and totally unnecessary inconvenience that has no place in any modern game (IMO)???
End of Soulfire777's quote
I was refering to leaving movement paths on map like in Galciv 2. Guess I should have clarified, but it seemed fairly obvious. In Civ 5 it does not super impose a movement patch overlay on the map like in some other games. So thanks for trying to correct me, but you and I are talking about different things.

 

Quoting Sir_Linque, reply 7

And this is absolute nonsense.
End of Sir_Linque's quote
You also fail at understanding that some of us are talking about 2 different types of overlays. So before you start saying I am talking nonsense pull your  head out of your ass and look at it from a few different angles.

Reply #14 Top

Thanks Tydorius

 

Didn't realize I could turn that off.

Reply #15 Top

i would like movement paths displayed. without them i don't trust the game to remember my orders and just end up moving my units individually every turn, which is really tedious.
End of quote

I find it funny as most of the time, I use these types of path overlays to remember my own orders for units with extremely long movement paths. Yet, I still think that this is a final polish type feature and should wait until the other systems have gotten some polish before being implemented. Right now, it doesn't bother me so much since they game does show an overlay for the end position of a move order, but if we are two expansions in and it is still MIA, then I might be upset about it.

Reply #16 Top

Would love that feature too.
I have to admit though that I realized it was missing pretty quickly, but never really felt the need for it later on.
Guess that is because there are no units that e.g. build roads along a userdefined path.
For me personally, a unit is either well enough defended that I can send it out without having to look after it, or it is so weak that I have to care for it myself anyway.

Perhaps Stardock has not yet released such a feature because they want to do it right, right from the beginning.
A system that not only shows you the paths but also enables you to change those paths by simply dragging the "movement-nodes" (like in Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander for example) would sure be a nice thing.

But as much as I´m wondering that this feature hasn´t made it into the game already, I personally don´t consider it too be of high priority.