Poor pathfinding

from Elemental Forums

City pathfinding is bugged. If there is not enough space in the city for the moving army it will not pass through the city. instead it will plot a path around it.

 This is one of the most annoying things ever. In order to fix the problem I have to make the army in the city or cities along the path move elsewhere leaving them undefended.

 It also causes units to take a route that can literally circle most the continent in order to find a path that is not blocked by a city. So instead of a path that should take 5-6 turns it turns into a path that takes 20-30 tuns. Not to mention the loss of a couple turns movement if you do not want to take the route. Soon as you click the unit moves along the crappy route wasting your moves for that turn and the following turn to get back to the starting position.

This also chokes AI units as they can not pass through their own cities or other player cities. 

I used raise land to create a pathway for my units to bypass my own city only to have it clogged with AI units within a few turns rendering the new path useless.

To me this falls into the major flaw category.

8,446 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

wait for beta 4, city hubs will be changed completely and this will probably be fixed

often units decide to go through a forest or over a hill, instead of sticking to the road, losing all their movement points, now this is annoying

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I have seen both issues, and both are indeed annoying.

Also, there needs to be a way to cancel movement mid-move.  It would really help with the undesired movement pattern sometimes taken (including when a hill in the fog of war causes you to try to move to the far side of said hill.)

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top


Well part of the reason a unit will dart off into the woods is because the path finding avoids going through a city.

 

As for canceling the undesired movement, by the time you notice it is too late. The movement points and turn is wasted.  undo a move would be nice but that creates exploits with loot squares.

 

Changing the city hub to a few squares does not solve the problem. It just gives less chance for it to occur.

 

I cna not vouch for others but when I play I like to create mountain passes that are blocked by cities to keep the Ai and monsters form wandering around randomly destroying all my resource improvements. This path finding problem with cities makes that into a problem unless you leave your city undefended.