DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement

[J Bytheway]

Actually no,

it just uses max.MP - Mp usage for to be entered terrain.

For MP=1 units, it doesn't care at all.
If MP>1, then you need to have at least MP=max or MP=usage for terrain to enter.

Not entirely... I think it actually handles all units in the way you say second - 1MP units don't get special treatment. If you move one sqare allong a maglev and then try to move onto grassland you won't be able to.

I find it frustrating enough(and sometimes combat critical) when that happens, as its very difficult to casualy calculate at a glance how to get your critical unit to square 'x' at the right time.

What i'm slightly concerned about in making this system even more complicated(not obvious to the player) is that this kind of misunderstanding will happen more often.

I think that so long as the path projection that you get for each unit correctly calculates everything you shouldn't be seriously troubled by the complexity - it will be apparent exactly how many turns will be spent doing anything. Of course, this is only true if you already have the unit in the appropriate place - not if it has yet to get there (or yet to be built...).

In fact, if we make '+' moves more expensive it will be more intuitive, and you should be able to guess just by glancing like you do in the real world, and be fairly accurate.

[Gilgamensch]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by J Bytheway

Not entirely... I think it actually handles all units in the way you say second - 1MP units don't get special treatment. If you move one sqare allong a maglev and then try to move onto grassland you won't be able to.
[quote]

Sorry I was talking about for a unit with full MPs. And yes you are right, once the 1MP unit moved he can't enter anything enymore (which hasn't a road or similar)

[Locutus]

Note: on Gilg's request, the history discussion of this thread was moved here. The split may lead to some confusing comments and disrupted discussion, but overall should clean both threads up.

[Immortal Wombat]

Re: DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement

Originally posted by J Bytheway
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.

I disagree. The basic unit of distance on a CtP2 map is the 'tile'. The actual physical distance onscreen or viewing the map is irrelevant to every other gameplay issue. Cities are one tile, resources are one tile, terrain clumps are by tile. To make the horizontal movement arbitarily longer than the diagonal would only serve to penalise horizontal movement, and wouldn't improve gameplay whatsoever IMO. All it would do would be to make the map a slightly more realistic representation of a world - which to me comes way down the list of priorities.

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 agree with Flinx:

It seems logical to me that you can charge down out of the mountains onto plains faster than you can climb up into the mountain from the plains. Instead of thinking of movement as moving from the centre of one tile to the centre of the next, think of it as leaving the very edge of the tile you are on, and traveling across the entire tile you enter.

And I have no problem either with the current system where units with >1 movement are reduced to the same level as 1-movement units in difficult terrain (forests, swamps, jungles). As has been said, mounted units lose manouverability, and would possibly even be slower than foot-units over a swamp.

On elevated terrain, I think it depends whether we keep the current terrain model, or do what Harlan has always suggested as an ideal and implement topology and vegetation separately:
ie. Have slopes (hillside, mountainside) independant from terrain (forest, grassland). So effectively you can have mountain-plains (plateaus) which would be the same as floodplains in terms of movement cost, with only the move up and down the hill making a difference to the movement cost. And then of course the vegetation on the slope (forest/grassland/swamp(?) ) would alter that again.

[Mihai]

Road movement

Personally I would like more the hexagonal tiles, but that would cause a lot of problems in other areas (just to say that a city will be surrounded by only 6 tiles instead of 8).

I am in favor of different movement cost for diagonal, as it really matters. When I go for exploring, I always go in zig-zag, because the speed in that direction is the same, but I reveal more unexplored land.

I see that nobody was upset with the movement cost on roads/railways/maglev. As it is now, moving on a road on grassland cost the same as moving on road on mountain. Where are the snaky roads? I think that more realistic it would be that road movements to be "tile movement cost/3" and not just 1/3. The same for hills. All the other "flat" tiles could have the 1/3.

[Solver]

Those are realism concerns, indeed, but gameplay should be the primary focus. Which is also why I would like movement into any adjacent square be as simple as it is currently - I believe that's a pretty good way, gameplay wise.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

the biggest lack in realism regarding movement is a totally different one:

why can a tank using a railroad or maglev travel faster than a pedestrian? they both use the same coach and should hence travel with the same speed... that of a 1840s steamtrain or that of a 22nd century vacuum tube maglev... but the same speed for both regardless of their own movement speed.

-----
damn.. has been a long time i visited apolyton

[Maquiladora]

WB Zaphod.

I agree with that, its been mentioned in the civ4 ideas section too. Its the kind of thing CtP2 does best, something we know wont happen in civ4.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

thanks maq

but what does ctp2 do good here?
makes the same fault like all games i know.
though of course you could even say civ3 does it right, because everybody and everything has inifinite movement on railroads

[Maquiladora]

I meant CtP2 changes elements of the game for the better, whereas civ generally sticks to the same old rules, even if there are better. LIke we should be open to improvements.

[Martin Gühmann]

If we would consider this idea to the then units don't use any movement points on a ralroad/maglev, because that does the railroad/maglev for the unit, well you could limit the amount of moves per railroad tile per turn so that you have afterwrards the movement left. But that inbalance the game again.

-Martin

[wheathin]

@Movement on rails:
units currently have Sizes - so make rail/maglev movement dependent on size. Small units move farther/faster - sort of an inverse relationship. You can rush your infantry to the front faster than your tanks.

@Movement over terrain (3 MP units no faster than 1Mp through mountains, etc...):
Eliminate the 1MP unit: slowest units have 2 or 3 MP, so there's always an incentive to take the open terrain. Everything else is doubled. Faster units have 5 or 6 MP, so they actually move through rough terrain much faster. If we want mountains to be difficult for mounted or wheeled units, there's flags for that.

Suggested values:
Foot units: 2MP
Heavy mounted units: 4MP
Modern foot units (men with jeeps and trucks): 4MP
Light mounted units: 5MP
Mechanized units: 8MP
Forests, Tundra, and hills take 3MP.
Jungle takes 5MP.
Mountains, Swamps, take 6MP.
Glaciers take 8MP.

I'd suggest greatly increasing the "cell size" for ruins seeding though... Vision ranges, map sizes, city sizes, min-start distances, distance-unhappiness coefs, too.

I've got an idea for a "BIG" Mod - increase speeds and distances, but lower the resource values of terrain so that cities with 2 or 3 square radii aren't much more productive than current cities with 1 sq radii. The change in scale might add a lot to the game.