DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement

[J Bytheway]

There are a couple of things that always bugged me about movement in most TBS games based on a square grid.

Firstly, that it takes as few movement points to move "the long way" diagonally across the corner as it does to move across an edge. It should take about 1.4 times as many. MoM implemented this (with a cost of 1.5) and I liked it there. It means that there is more likely to be a single optimal path to any objective, rather than several different ones, which always struck me as silly. When there are several options it is often optimal to take a path different from that which the game suggests, which is a nuisance. I noticed this during the democracy game - it made it more difficult to decide where we should send our units.

Secondly, It's annoying that movement costs are based soley on the properties of the square being moved into - which means that moving in one direction can be much more expensive than moving along the same path in reverse. It seems to me that it would be better to average the costs of the squares on which th move begins and ends, so for example moving from grassland to mountains or mountains to grassland would cost 2, rather than 3 and 1 respectively (IIRC). I'm not sure what gameplay impact this would have - the only thing that springs to mind is that it becomes less beneficial to sit fortified on a mountain.

Since CTP2 stores movement in hundredths of movment points, there should be no trouble with rounding, etc., with implementing these things.

Thoughts?

[Ekmek]

J Bytheway

You make good points on problems with movement. I would like to add that the range of units should be controlled in some way. Legions or chariots could not go from span to china. I would like to atleast see ground units have a range like aircraft, but with a return back into borders instead of a unit or improvement (because the AI hasnt been able to deal with carriers).

[SMIFFGIG]

yea thats a good idea E, although i think things like (support costs should double when units leave the boarders of your country) or something like that should be implemented

and/or

movement for each tile is decreased when within your or an allies boarders (as your military knows the areas well)

Support costs could also vary depending on what sort of terrain (outside of boarders) that the military unit(s) where on, due to the fact its gunna be alot more costly and time consuming for a supply line to traverse arctic mountains than it is for it to traverse humble grassland (this of course are "virtual" supply lines in CTP2" but units like warriors (assuming the CTP1 warrior will be part of the source code project as standard) will be self supporting i would imagine

[Locutus]

I absolutely agree In fact, I wanted to make point #1 myself at some point, I've seen it in one or two other games as well (I think Clash has it). #2 makes sense as well.

Support costs would be a nice option as well, providing it works (I can see a few problems, with the AI especially).

[Maquiladora]

How do 1 movement units work moving diagonally at a cost of 1.5?

Not sure how point 2 would be without testing it, but then i dont have a problem with the current way, its more intuitive the way it is now.

[SMIFFGIG]

Getting abit offtopic here but these sorts of ideas would really give the Explorer unit a whole new meaning and make it much more neccessary and benificial (which it certainly should be compared to as it currently stands)
It also opens doors for Unique Unit abilies etc

[Gilgamensch]

Movement: agreed. And not only MoM. Battle Isle, using a hex, rather than square, movement regarding of direction cost 1 MP (depending on terrain). As it uses 6 sides, not really the same situation .

To further add:

How do 1 movement units work moving diagonally at a cost of 1.5?

I would say it works the same way, as: How does a 1 MP unit move into woods/mountains ? And this could be taken into account with adjusting/changing the overall MP costs and values (maybe)

For the rest:

movement for each tile is decreased when within your or an allies boarders (as your military knows the areas well)

Agreed as well. As a home player you shall have advantage. Although in modern times, this is to a certain extend nullified. But in 'ancient' times (and I would say till the ~19th century) this was true. Enemy armies always had to rely on spies and similar. There were also exceptions, like the move of Hannibal over the Alps. But otherwise the attacker was so often surprised by unexpected moves, due to better knowledge, of the locals………….(to name only a few areas: America/Africa)

Support:

We have the abstract system and we shall leave it like this. And the factor about more cost in foreign territory: It is already implemented with the status of the Army: Peace/War (can't remember how the middle position is called). Maybe people just completely forgotten about this slider

Range of units:

Let me think: You ever heard of the silk-street? You ever heard of the Salt-street? You ever heard of the Silver-fleet? You ever heard of Alexander the great (just to remind, he went till India)? You ever heard of the Roman conquests? You ever heard about the Mongols? Just a few questions……….. So this sounds a bit not real

Movement (2) (hills&grassland):

I think this would be needed to be playtested. But I am not sure about the added value. And again, I already see us complaining about the funny way the algorithm is gonna send us

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
Getting abit offtopic here but these sorts of ideas would really give the Explorer unit a whole new meaning and make it much more neccessary and benificial (which it certainly should be compared to as it currently stands)
It also opens doors for Unique Unit abilies etc

Yep, the explorer is kind of useless .............

[Maquiladora]

[quote] I would say it works the same way, as: How does a 1 MP unit move into woods/mountains ? [/qupte]

*smacks forehead* that makes sense.

[The Big Mc]

Do we really need a (quick lets get all the ruins) explorer unit.

[J Bytheway]

I was recently reading a series of books (Starting with An Oblique Approach) where the charachters kept quoting "Amatuers study tactics, proffessionals study logistics". At present CTP2 is all about tactics and almost completely ignores logistics, and I don't think we can really incorporate logistics in any remotely realistic fashion, and for the moment I think it's not worth trying to introduce inaccurate approximations to it.

[child of Thor]

Ref Logistics: It may cripple the Ai's plans more than it benefits the game?

the diagonal movement thing - it will be interesting to see how it works, i'm wondering how it will impact on the Ai path finding alogarithm that St.Swithin likes so much

[Locutus]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Ref Logistics: It may cripple the Ai's plans more than it benefits the game?

That's exactly why I have some considerable reservations about implementing such a system.

[The Big Mc]

Lets have a scenario here

I am 20 tiles away from my nearest city with my mounted archer. I find ruins and a mounted archer. I have now got to disband that mounted archer because I am so far from my city that I am getting killed by maintenance cost.

[Ekmek]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch

For the slider, we shall make it more important to show a bit more realistic the difference between war and peace. That shall do the job. I mean, I NEVER ever changed it to piece. If we would make it relevant, than you would have the abstracted logistics. Make it like food& PW & Gold and resource dependend.
Food: you march on your stomach
PW: for military roads used for support-purpose (invisible, but could be replaced by normal roads, just the distance from road till army needed)
Gold: Paying locals for support
Resource: For the rest, maintanence/usage/repairs.

By the way, there is a game which handles logistics (can't remember the bloody name anymore), there you had to handle 'everything' for your army, from arrows/bows/shoes/whatever/..... Whenever you missed something the unit behind wasn't able to fight or defend or run........It was fun for a few minutes, but me thinks, jts a big nightmare. It might be fun for a few units, but doing it for the whole empire.........thanks no.........

Logistics IS A BIG HEADACHE. I know from experience. But the reason I asked it be modelled better as a balance to the bigger is better and militaristic nations as the only way to win the game. Have logistics as a restraint on always conquering always expanding will allow other options like a trade empire etc.

I proposed the RANGE concept because it will be similar to the use of aircraft and the carriers that I believe is going to be worked on for the AI.

But I do favor the abstracting by adding unit cost (food, gold, PW) but have it increase depending on range. So if a legion has a range of five, then when you are 15 spaces away (thats very far in ctp2 terms) its cost is 4 times the normal logistic food/Gold/PW cost (increase exponentially 1,2,4,8,...). It keeps increasing the farther you are away so its very expensive to travel so far. This will also increase the use of colonies. (Of course the AI will have to calculate the costs of movement etc)

As for the historical comparison. Alexander etc had to conquer cities in order to maintain his forward logistic bases. And if you read Van Crevalds book on logistics you'll see that the various methods of logistics (forage/magazines/depot/rolling magazines etc) were costsly etc. But most significantly those living off the land could only stay for a few months before they consumed all the resources of the land. (Of course only the US and UK today can carry on a sustained conflict far away but at high price and do due to control of sea and skies)

If we do have a logistic system it would be nice to have certain advances allievate some of the burden too.

Probably the best way would be the cost system.