Legio XXXVII
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 05:10 EDT (US)
Okay okay, this is basically just a rant but...
Why does the AI sometimes interpret a movement command in such a stupid way that it sends your troops on a four year hike round a mountain range or something, when clearly, the obvious route is 'a few miles down the road that way'.
I spent a couple of turns manouevering legions to corner an enemy and the trap was about to be sprung but when I issued the movement command, Spurius Dimwit decided to wander off in the totally opposite direction.
The laptop almost went through the window.
End of rant. Thank you for listening.
ShieldWall
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 05:34
EDT (US)
1 / 8
Yeah it's incredibly irritating when it does that. I think it's always because there's another one of your units in the path of the one you're trying to move. This shouldn't be a problem, he could walk past easy enough, instead the AI sends you by the scenic route. I think you're okay if you walk right up to the blocking unit and then tell it to carry on forward, but from a long range it always finds a ludicrous alternative.
Emperor Augustus
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 05:41
EDT (US)
2 / 8
I rather enjoy it when you have your units in separate groups and when you give one group an order THE ENTIRE GODDAMN ARMY DOES IT. Then you have to spend much valuable time ungroupign and regrouping units so they follow their own damn orders!
Legio XXXVII
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 10:12
EDT (US)
4 / 8
Mighty Lord Terikel, though I hesitate to question your obvious experience in all matters RTW, I feel fairly sure that my recce parties have done their job well.
In cases such as I outlined, I will often manouevre using the enemy's own zone of control as a point of reference and use it to work against them - shepherding them so to speak, to my chosen ground.
Surely friendly units are able to move through other friendlies zones of control? If so, I am still at a loss as to why units sometimes take these stupid routes.
However, I will double check in future.
theboyne
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 13:27
EDT (US)
5 / 8
I'm guessing you've got it set to "hyperspeed" through movement, correct.
The only reliable way make them go where you want is to keep the speed set to "tortoise" and soon as you see them heading in the wrong direction, you hit the enter key which cancels their orders.
My peeve with strategic movement relates to fleeing opponents. I've seen more than one enemy army with their back to a river and no "possible" escape, do a march that takes me 2-3 turns to catch up with them on the other side of the river.
Terikel Grayhair
Imperator
(id: Terikel706)
posted 06 February 2008 13:44
EDT (US)
6 / 8
Betimes the path we so ordered was not quite as clear as we otherwise would have. We recall specifically an incident north of the burg of Bylazora, where brigands were harassing the traders who bring such wealth to our coffers. They were ensconced where the great hills part to allow passage. We deployed a warhost from that burg to just outside the vision of the brigands' camp. Then we ordered the warhost feasting in Thessalonica to deploy and join the Bylazora host in battle by preventing the escape of the brigands (they flee like rats!) by bypassing the brigands in the open area outside the zone of control and taking up station to the west.
The foolish captain leading the host decided in his wisdom that this was not possible, thus walked east around the great hills and planned his route to circle behind the brigands and thus assume his appointed position to their west- a journey that would have taken him three years instead of three days.
It became apparent, after much reflection as to the idiocy of this route, why it was so chosen. It seems that the road the fool intended to use touched upon the brown zone, thus negating it. Instead of merely passing to the west of the road and rejoining it once past the thieves, he determined the clearest path to be to avoid the road altogether and wander about the countryside popping in to every farm along the way to sample the local produce and the local women.
Then it dawned upon us why he did as he did. It was not that he himself avoided the zone, it appeared that his own zone, moving with him of course also must avoid the zone of the foe. Only by avoiding the parting of the great hills altogether could he travel hence undetected and with no zone overlapping another.
We have given this much thought and see no other possibility for such blatant foolery. Unless of course the gods in their wisdom deemed this needed in order to generate the necessary irritation and aggravation a true fog of war would invoke upon gallant warlords.
mikecz
Legionary
posted 06 February 2008 15:04
EDT (US)
7 / 8
I'm rather with Terikel's first reply here. Some things to consider:
A mouse click is NOT COMPLETED until you release the mouse button! There is little reason to be in a great hurry when running the strategy map. After selecting the army (or navy or agent) & right clicking where you want them to go, if the proposed travel path surprisingly goes to green-red-yellow-purple-etc, the long way around, DON'T LET GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON! Move the pointer back exactly on top of the selected unit & THEN release the mouse button. The unit won't have used any of its movement points & you can try to find a different path. So, when it's a touchy situation, be very deliberate with your mouse-move commands.
When it gets real touchy, I zoom way in on the map & often scroll it sideways (both ways) and/or up & down for a somewhat different angled view. When dealing with Zone Of Control issues, there is often a tiny way around the ZOC, but you have to path it just right, often in more than one partial move to get where you want to go. The game "tries" to get your units where you want on the map via a reasonable path. This is not necessarily the ONLY or best path! I started programming in Fortran II on ILLIAC II at the UIUC in 1966 - I don't even want to THINK about how you would program pathfinding for games like RTW. You can often set a "better" path yourself (because YOU know what your actual objective is) using partial moves than the AI's program-derived path.
I almost never run the strategy map with "fast movement" on, largely because of this exact issue, as theboyne also suggests. Even if the unit starts plodding along an all-of-a-sudden "long path", when it's moving slowly you can at least hit the backspace key to stop it & hopefully save most of your movement points.
Savegames - yeah, there is surely a certain satisfaction to playing any game in "iron man" mode - no saves! But... when the control mechanics of the game may totally screw up hours of play because the player isn't looking at the screen just the right way, I easily justify to myself a savegame so I can try a move over. It's a matter of dealing with the game interface itself, not that I lost a battle to the AI because of poor tactics or I got myself into a totally overwhelmed situation because I wasn't planning ahead well enough. (It's a STRATEGY game, right? Sucky strategy should be punished.)
Have fun out there!