Understanding map pathfiinding

[Bullman]

Hi

I have encountered an odd situation on a map that has occurred before in other areas that I never really bothred to stop and try to understand, but this one is particularly bizzare and I better sort it out now before it actually catches me out when it matters.

In the screenshot thee is a cavalry unit I am trying to move to Mountain region Acci from the adjacent region Casrulum. Sounds quite straight forward.



So I now give an order to move to Acci...



Is there anything on the map that would have otherwise told me that the path between Acci and Carsulum is blocked and that the path you see in the screenshot was the next valid path?

While I am on understanding the map, the "rivers" you see that run between borders of some regions (like the one between Iliberris and Acci), those thin ones are just cosmetic? They don't actually have any effect on gameplay?

[Durk]

What I do in these situations is move the unit region by region to see what makes sense. Always, the game default is the correct path, with one exception, if there is a second path of the same time.
Try it.

[Ebbingford]

You can also "force" move a unit. Pick it up and drag it from Castulum to the neighbouring region of Acci while holding the "Ctrl" key.
The default route will normally be the quickest though.

[Bullman]

You can also "force" move a unit. Pick it up and drag it from Castulum to the neighbouring region of Acci while holding the "Ctrl" key.
The default route will normally be the quickest though.

Ah! So moving between regions isn't sometime just "blocked"?! Thanks I never knew you could do that and thought it was just an impossible move. It still needs an explanation WHY moving through two other regions before entering the adjacent region is actually faster than moving directly into the adjacent region.

FYI on further examination, all the regions that you see have "Roads", with the regions with the road graphic in them actually being "Roman Roads".

OK, I can understand if there may be no roads/tracks etc "linking" the two adjacent areas but how is any of this information communicated on the map?
I would at least expect some kind of "subtle" graphic (like type and thickness of line) that perhaps alters the kind of border that exists between two adjacent regions to indicate the kind of "connection" the two regions have with each other. This kind of graphic could perhaps just be even visible to the player when you click the "Show terrains in different colours" button.

It is very strange that there apparently is no visual cue to communicate any of this information to the player.

[Jim-NC]

The game engine automatically looks at how many days to enter a region (which is based on factors that we can't always see as players), and picks the fastest route. I did not say the shortest or safest. For some reason, your cavalry will take longer than 6 days to move from Castulum to Acci. It may be due to mud, or hillside, or mountain. For whatever reason, it is faster to move past the region you want and then come back around.

You can think of this like modern airplanes, you fly to the hub, then to your destination airport. You may fly further, but that is how they get you to the right place.

[Gatling]

Hi Bullman,

A small addition to the topic, which can help for region adjacent to the unit. If you select the unit and press the <SHIFT>, you will see colored straight lines which are marking the existing path to the adjacent regions. The color gives the kind of path. I'm not sure about all the colors but for exemple the light blue is river crossing, dark blue naval path, brown land path ...

Cheers
Gatling

[Bullman]

Seems I have encountered more puzzling path finding situations that don't quite make any obvious sense.

If you select the unit and press the <SHIFT>, you will see colored straight lines which are marking the existing path to the adjacent regions. The color gives the kind of path. I'm not sure about all the colors but for exemple the light blue is river crossing, dark blue naval path, brown land path

Hi. Yes I have stumbled across that function. However I can't find any documentation that explains exactly what the colours mean. It looks like a very useful function.

I would guess that for speed (which is what the pathfinding solution seems to default to), that, given a choice, travelling through a region that is Woods, Civilized, with Roman Roads is going to always be faster than travelling through Wooded Hills, Cleared with just Roads (weather being identical, Military Control both 100% friendly, Loyalty about the same).

Why is it, in the following example then, does better terrain and road type apparently make no difference and with the autopath actually favouring the Wooded Hills, Cleared with just Roads option?

The cavalry unit was given a command to move from Narbo Mrtius to Antipolis and auto-pathfinding says it takes 45 days.


As you can see, it chose to actually enter the Wooded Hills, Cleared, Roads region of Vindomagus INSTEAD of the region Ambrussum, which is Woods, Civilized, Roman Roads.

If I force the cavalry unit to move though Ambrussum this is what you get:


So travelling through Wooded Hills, Cleared, Road regions is no slower than travelling through Woods, Civilized, Roman Road regions? Here is what the manual says about Roman Roads: "The Roman Roads are displayed as grey colored roads on the map. They are not always the same depending on the era of the scenario played. Their main effect is to greatly speed up movement (if units follow the roads, movement cost is usually one third of movement cost in clear terrain, before modification for wheather (sp), development level and Cohesion)"

This does not seem to be the case in this example.

Would be good to get some clarification on this.

[Jim-NC]

In the latest patch, they changed the usefulness of roads. They appear to not help with movement like they used to. This was done to address concerns that an army could march from Rome to Spain in around 40 days (which seemed too fast for some).

[Bullman]

In the latest patch, they changed the usefulness of roads. They appear to not help with movement like they used to. This was done to address concerns that an army could march from Rome to Spain in around 40 days (which seemed too fast for some).

If that is the case then what we have is something quite divorced from the original ruleset and quite odd. Have the changes been documented in any change logs? My example possibly shows that Roads don't affect movement at least along this part of the map. May need to do further testing to see the full extent of any changes like this.

FWIW, in my last scenario as the Sertotians, I did find that trying to move my Sertorian army along the coast towards Rome from Spain proved to be AMAZINGLY difficult/impossible, and not because of the enemy facing me. There was something odd about moving between regions there. It was like it was just too hard to move between regions (high fatigue/low supply/weeks to change regions etc). Wonder if there is more to this. I think it bottled me up for a whole year and I never got in to Northern Italy!

[Jim-NC]

The Sertorians may be a local force (they suffer massive penalties moving outside of their region). This would mean that they suffer mightily moving to Rome. This would have been a design decision.

[Bullman]

The Sertorians may be a local force (they suffer massive penalties moving outside of their region). This would mean that they suffer mightily moving to Rome. This would have been a design decision.

Has this been confirmed? Where can I read about these effects?

[yellow ribbon]

Has this been confirmed? Where can I read about these effects?

manuals are still incomplete, as far i saw. balancing for game still happens, like the changed bonus from roads etc. lets wait for having that done and major rework on manual can be done by AGEOD or vonlunteers, if not already in progress

for the OFF HOME AREA EFFECT please read:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?26879-Penalty-outside-of-home-area


*****************


As you can see, the max. cohesion is lowered, the normal cohesion is lowered AND you are marching slower (plus the changed roads, what is more about Roman troops)
in generally this might effect subunits int he stack to be on zero cohesion after short marches and that means the rest of the stack is slowed down.

As the engine doesnt stop the stack/terminates the marching order, the announced, estimated marching time tends to grow "indefinitely" (ever increasing, hundreds and even thousands of days).
plan in some turns to recover and the troops will be better off.

[Bullman]

Hi,

I have once again encountered odd unit movement costs based on the map. (I am questioning now if any of the previous exploitation's previously given are entirely valid for the examples I am showing)

Check out the following example:

I have a unit in Salduba that I ordered to move to Segobriga. The auto-route chose what would be the fastest path that would have it travel through 4 regions taking a total of 18 days.



Here are other overlays that show Ownership, Supply, Allegiance and Weather.



PS: ALl these regions have "Track" as a transportation level.

What seems apparently odd is that the path makes the unit enter the destination region from the southern region Libsosa rather than say directly from Saelices to Segobriga.

I thought maybe there is something about moving from one Mountain region to another Mountain region. So I edited the path so that the unit moves through the adjacent mountain region Ercavica. From there I then set the destination region once again to Segobriga and see what happens:



The game still determined that it would be faster moving through an additional Mountain region (Saleices) and a Woods region (Libisosa) than move directly from Ercavica to the adjacent target region Segobriga! You can see that based on this information, moving from one Mountain region to another (Ercavica to Saelices) that it can take 4 days, so why should it take any more to move from the Mountain region Ercavica to the adjacent target region Segobriga?

I now forced the path to move from Ercavica to Segobriga and see what it would cost:



This time, it doesn't cost 4 days to move from one Mountain region to another. It costs 18 days!!!???
Why? What is the difference?

Surely there is something odd going on here.

Comments?

[Ebbingford]

Think of it as ridges and valleys. It is easier to move along the valleys although it may make your journey further but it is still quicker than climbing over a mountain ridge without a pass.

[Bullman]

Think of it as ridges and valleys. It is easier to move along the valleys although it may make your journey further but it is still quicker than climbing over a mountain ridge without a pass.

I can think of many things. But where does it say/show me/indicate to the player that there is a mountain ridge between Ercavica and Segobriga that affects movement between the two regions?

I would expect to see this information in an overlay (probably included in the present Terrain map filter) that showed the boundaries between regions marked with different types of line (solid, hashed,thin to heavy etc) to indicate the type of "movement cost/type" to cross the boundary from one region to the next.

If AGEOD isn't going to do this, I would want some kind of mod that shows this information.

[Ebbingford]

I can think of many things. But where does it say/show me/indicate to the player that there is a mountain ridge between Ercavica and Segobriga that affects movement between the two regions?

It tells you indirectly in the number of days it takes to enter a region.
But yes, some form of tooltip, graphic, or something would be better to represent this.

[Bullman]

It tells you indirectly in the number of days it takes to enter a region.

Maybe you wouldn't mind if the map just showed regions and the terrain/weather type was only revealed when you tried to move/engage in combat. Sounds like a great map design and gameplay idea.