Explain this route to me.

[padillah]

What is the logic behind this route?



Where the heck is this guy going?

Tom P.

[padillah]

Or this one...



Huh, I don't get it.

Tom P.

[Solver]

Given equal length, a path is chosen that provides the most defensive benefits - above, due to forests.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Solver
Given equal length, a path is chosen that provides the most defensive benefits - above, due to forests.

But the lengths aren't equal. More direct paths can be had to the destinations.

[ghen]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


But the lengths aren't equal. More direct paths can be had to the destinations.

they are equal. Count them.

[James M]

Civ has a very strange topology, but the pathfinding algorithm is doing the right thing.

Not like in CivII, where units would get stuck hopping from one tile to another...

[alva]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


But the lengths aren't equal. More direct paths can be had to the destinations.

They are.
The "two" in the white circle, due to the warrior already having moved, is misleading but there is no shorter route to the destination.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by alva
They are.
The "two" in the white circle, due to the warrior already having moved, is misleading but there is no shorter route to the destination.

Ah, yes, that was my mistake.

[Fosse]

The routes that are shown are often very good, for both units and auto-road orders for workers. What I like about them is that I would never think to move through those defensive tiles.... the computer can check that for me and take the smartest longterm route. If I don't like its route I just pick another waypoint and go to there first. Easy.

BUT... sometimes the actual route taken - and worse still the actual road laid - is different than the auto route. That stinks.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Fosse
BUT... sometimes the actual route taken - and worse still the actual road laid - is different than the auto route. That stinks.

This almost always happens when you tell your troops to attack across a river. If they can take a road over the river to avoid the river penalty, the path will indicate this route, but it is not used for the attack.

-Drachasor

[Tiberius]

This is happening due the strange way how the tiles are now arranged in civ4. A path which normally should be 1,4 longer than the direct path takes the same number of turns to travel. Very weird.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

While I like the auto-pathing on land, I don't really like it at sea. Ships hug the coastline whenever possible...whether it's your coastline or not. At one point I was sending some transports with a single escort halfway across the map horizontally, but only a tile or two vertically. The pathfinder sent them north to hug the shore of a country I was at war with when it should have just sent them straight east-west...while the path wasn't any longer, it definitely wasn't where I wanted them to go...

[polarnomad]

Originally posted by Drachasor
This almost always happens when you tell your troops to attack across a river. If they can take a road over the river to avoid the river penalty, the path will indicate this route, but it is not used for the attack.

-Drachasor

I find that quite frequently (not when attacking) I will select a unit to move, check the "ideal" path selected by the game for the unit's movement before releasing the mouse button, then release the mouse button and watch my little friend go off in another direction.

[Nacht]

Originally posted by Tiberius
This is happening due the strange way how the tiles are now arranged in civ4. A path which normally should be 1,4 longer than the direct path takes the same number of turns to travel. Very weird.

I don't see how a chess board like arrangement of squares can be called strange in any way.

And this 'problem' was always there in every civ game (and many other tile based games). The only solution is to make diagonal movement more expensive, which will unnessecary complicate unit movement.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Nacht

I don't see how a chess board like arrangement of squares can be called strange in any way.

And this 'problem' was always there in every civ game (and many other tile based games). The only solution is to make diagonal movement more expensive, which will unnessecary complicate unit movement.

It is strange compared to the old versions of civ, where the squares were rotated with 45 degrees compared to how they look now. This way a movement which "seems" straight (parallel with the screen edges) in civ2 is shorter than the diagonal, as opposed to civ4 where the civ2 diagonal becomes the straight line and it produces this strange visual effect, making you wonder how the hell can the unit go the "longer" route (like in the thread opening example). Many won't even realize that it is the same "distance", until they effectively count the tiles.

Taking into account mathematics only, there is absolutely no difference between a civ2 and a civ4 map. However, because of the 45 degrees rotation, the perception changes and I have this weird feeling that something is wrong with the unit movement, whereas in civ2/3 never had this feeling.