26-03-2004 13:50									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Flinx I was thinking of any movement command either by keyboard or mouse. Give a unit with a positive movement score a movement command; It moves one tile and the movement penalty of that tile is subtracted from the unit's movement score; If the unit still has a >0 movement score, it is available to move again that turn; If the unit has a 0 or negative movement score it cannot be moved that turn; each unit 'remembers' it's movement score and at the beginning of the next turn the movement points of the unit are added to that score up to a maximum positive score equal to the movement points of that unit; if the unit has a positive movement score, it can move that turn, if the movement score is still negative, it cannot move.

Sounds quite OK,

BUT: (sorry if I sound to negative )

This would give the person with Horse-riding a HUGE advantage in the beginning of the game.

And it is not all the way 'logical'. Like why does a warrior need 3 turns to move through mountains? Main reason why fast units need longer, they have to take care of their horses and similar (like building bridges). But it is far easier to move foot-based units through the mountains than others. Similar for hills/forest/whatever.

So me thinks that units with 1MP shall be exluded from the calculation like this, or only be punished by halve. To illustrate a bit further:

Yes, for sure you can't run through forest, but you are not running all the way over plains either
A forest is easier to pass by foot-units as anything else. A human is compared to mounted units far more flexible, they can bypass most obstacles without need of cutting down trees or similar.

	26-03-2004 15:22									#32
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quote: Originally posted by Gilgamensch Yes, for sure you can't run through forest, but you are not running all the way over plains either A forest is easier to pass by foot-units as anything else. A human is compared to mounted units far more flexible, they can bypass most obstacles without need of cutting down trees or similar.

Just to point this out the ancient postal service in the Aztec empire could move a message just as fast as now. Ok they had paths to run but you can get a lot of speed throw light jungle.

	26-03-2004 15:37									#33
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quote: Originally posted by The Big Mc Just to point this out the ancient postal service in the Aztec empire could move a message just as fast as now. Ok they had paths to run but you can get a lot of speed throw light jungle.

Yes you can run quite a bit, but it sounds like you never tried to run with some laguage, or?

I did quite some travelling with the rucksack and believe me, you don't really want to run with it

And those people were trained to run.........

	26-03-2004 16:19									#34
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And just a quick one on the horse/foot soldier going through trees.

It has been a classic infantry tactic, used globaly, that when fighting units on horse, you used the advantage of forrest or wood for cover and because it restricted the mounted unit from fighting effectively[EDIT: So i'm kinda thinking that a horse unit should also have an disadvantage when going through woodland without a road, as for mountains].

Im going to have to digest the other posts for a bit before comment, but one question - how does CTP2 calculate its movement points at present, i thought it kinda did as Flinx is suggesting - take away from the unit total depending onthe terain travelled over?

Last edited by child of Thor on 26-03-2004 at 16:29

	26-03-2004 16:32									#35
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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.

	26-03-2004 16:42									#36
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ok, but for example lets look at a unit with more than 1 MP(like a knight(4MP)).

It remembers the terrain it travels over, so different terrains seem to deduct different amounts. You can move the knight along a road for example which increeses its range(by reducing the tile penalty), and you can still end its movement(due to only having a % of required movement points left) BEFORE its used up its total amount(the unit still comes up as you cycle through next unit).

does this make sense, what i've just written!

This is the current system no?

	26-03-2004 16:45									#37
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Yep, understood it. (At least one here )

And the worst thing for me:

You moved him along the road and have like 1 2/3 left and it can't enter the hill in front of him...yeah...great.

	26-03-2004 16:53									#38
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Yes exactly

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.

And i think most players wont want to sit there with a calculator for each troop movement?

Whats people's thoughts on this? maybe i'm being overly stupid?

	26-03-2004 17:19									#39
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quote: Yep, understood it. (At least one here ) And the worst thing for me: You moved him along the road and have like 1 2/3 left and it can't enter the hill in front of him...yeah...great.

I can say with certainty that this has never crossed my mind, and if it did it wouldnt bother me in the slightest. I mean come on people, is it really a tragedy if you lose 1.75 move points (because you didnt plan ahead), for the sake of keeping movement simple and intuitive?

quote: -A warrior has 1 movement point. -The warrior ends a turn with a movement score of 1 i.e. it did not move that turn. -At the beginning of the new turn its movement points are added to its movement score up to a maximum score equal to its points i.e. it again has a movement score of 1 {min(1+1,1)=1} -You select the warrior and press 9 and the warrior moves diagonally up and to the right onto a mountain tile which has a movement penalty of 3 which is subtracted from its movement score making it -2 (=1-3) -The warrior has a negative movement score and can move no further this turn; you move other units etc. and then press the turn button (or enter) -At the beginning of the new turn its movement points are added to its movement score up to a maximum score equal to its points i.e. it now has a movement score of -1 {min(-2+1,1)=-1} -The warrior has a negative movement score and can move no further this turn; you move other units etc. and then press the turn button (or enter) -At the beginning of the new turn its movement points are added to its movement score up to a maximum score equal to its points i.e. it now has a movement score of 0 {min(-1+1,1)=0} -The warrior has a zero movement score and can move no further this turn; you move other units etc. and then press the turn button (or enter) -At the beginning of the new turn its movement points are added to its movement score up to a maximum score equal to its points i.e. it now has a movement score of 1 {min(0+1,1)=1} -The warrior has a positive movement score and you press 6 to move the warrior to the right onto a grassland tile which has a movement penalty of 1 which is subtracted from its movement score making it 0 (=1-1)

	26-03-2004 18:50									#40
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quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora I can say with certainty that this has never crossed my mind, and if it did it wouldnt bother me in the slightest. I mean come on people, is it really a tragedy if you lose 1.75 move points (because you didnt plan ahead), for the sake of keeping movement simple and intuitive?

Well planning ahead is all well and good, but you cant realy be telling us you've never had a serious momment in CTP2, where by a crucial army movement resulted in either the loss of an army/city etc - because your unit(s) had run out of movement points that you hadn't planned for?

I think the problem is that there is no real visible clue to movement cost, you just have to know in your head that woods cost '.3'mp more.

So maybe as we complicate this process it will become even less apparant where all the points are going. And thus harder to just look at the screen, see your armies, see your enemies and say 'ok it will take my army x turns to move too and defend that pass' ?

And at your - i felt the same

	26-03-2004 21:04									#42
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But i like the idea, so dont surrender just yet we just need some more thoughts on this.

	26-03-2004 21:23									#43
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quote: Well planning ahead is all well and good, but you cant realy be telling us you've never had a serious momment in CTP2, where by a crucial army movement resulted in either the loss of an army/city etc - because your unit(s) had run out of movement points that you hadn't planned for?

No, im saying how is it the system's fault if i expect it to do things it wont? I understand the simple rules of movement and if my unit wont go any further thats my fault. If we change the system then i can expect different results. But then again if we change the system of movement i wont expect much because itll be too complicated to work out

	26-03-2004 21:43									#44
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When movement in all directions is a whole number, it should not be too hard, but when you make movement in some directions 1.4 or 1.5 times movement in others (not my suggestion) it gets

we will need to make sure pathfinding is fixed before the '+' versus 'x' movement is seriously considered, and I think it should maybe be an option on the map setup.

	27-03-2004 01:42									#45
	Re: DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by J Bytheway 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.

Well I didn't have much time, so I reply on that without reading the rest of that thread. One thing think to note about that is that the game didn't suggest the best path probably. Fromafar already posted a fix to make the path finding algorithm more like an A*.

-Martin

	27-03-2004 01:45									#46
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quote: 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.

quote: 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.

	29-03-2004 13:41									#47
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[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)

	30-03-2004 13:21									#48
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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.

	31-03-2004 01:34									#49
	Re: DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement Support Apolyton

quote: 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.

quote: 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:

quote: 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.

	02-07-2004 18:43									#50
	Road movement Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

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.

	02-07-2004 19:13									#51
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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.

	29-04-2005 02:43									#52
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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

	29-04-2005 02:53									#53
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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.

	29-04-2005 12:59									#54
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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

	30-04-2005 01:05									#55
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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.

	30-04-2005 01:14									#56
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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

	30-04-2005 05:21									#57
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@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.

Last edited by wheathin on 30-04-2005 at 05:27