1.0.0.62 Patch: Roadbuilding STILL extraneously unoptimal, unstraight

Chibiabos

Prince
Joined
May 24, 2005
Messages
424
Whatever worker pathfinding in building roads fix Firaxis claims to have made in the latest patch (1.0.0.62), if you start a worker in a tile and tell it to build a road to another tile in a "straight tile" row, it will still build a kinked road that has extra road tiles, making it wasteful of road maintenance. :/

Has anyone tested to find out what, exactly, was changeed by the "Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing." item in the changelog?

I realize hex tiles are new, but surely if you have a worker starting in a tile, and the "build road-to" end tile in the same row (horizontal, left or right diagonal), that should not be too terribly hard for the worker to build a road straight from the start-tile to the build-to-end-tile without making extra kinks :/ Having to pay maintenance on every tile of road, I need my roads to be as concise and efficient as possible and not waste tiles on extraneous kink tiles.
 
Whatever worker pathfinding in building roads fix Firaxis claims to have made in the latest patch (1.0.0.62), if you start a worker in a tile and tell it to build a road to another tile in a "straight tile" row, it will still build a kinked road that has extra road tiles, making it wasteful of road maintenance. :/

Has anyone tested to find out what, exactly, was changeed by the "Workers - Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing." item in the changelog?

I realize hex tiles are new, but surely if you have a worker starting in a tile, and the "build road-to" end tile in the same row (horizontal, left or right diagonal), that should not be too terribly hard for the worker to build a road straight from the start-tile to the build-to-end-tile without making extra kinks :/ Having to pay maintenance on every tile of road, I need my roads to be as concise and efficient as possible and not waste tiles on extraneous kink tiles.

I am havin the strong feeling that underneath of the hexes there are still the old squares. Just look at some of the "funny screenshots".

If this would be right, then they most probably have messed up with the conversion routines.
 
I am havin the strong feeling that underneath of the hexes there are still the old squares. Just look at some of the "funny screenshots".

If this would be right, then they most probably have messed up with the conversion routines.

Pretty much 100% sure that's not what is going on. Those "squares" you see are graphical anomalies where the texture for the hex isn't wrapped up properly around the hex's terrain. Instead it is just placed flat. Naturally these textures are stored as squares or rectangles. That's how it looks to me.
 
Pretty much 100% sure that's not what is going on. Those "squares" you see are graphical anomalies where the texture for the hex isn't wrapped up properly around the hex's terrain. Instead it is just placed flat. Naturally these textures are stored as squares or rectangles. That's how it looks to me.

Why would it be "natural" to store those textures in rectangular way if the terrain by itself is build on hexagons? THAT doesn't make any sense to me.

And even if there would be some reason for that kind of storing then we already see that there is a combination of hexagons and squares. To me it seems likely that then not only the display, but things like pathfinding are based on underneath squares, too.
 
Because thats the natural format for textures. You can easily use a square texture in any shape with a stencil mask or similar or even transform it to an arbitrary shape with texture coordinates.
 
My OP is not a tile texturing problem, but road build-to pathfinding. If the start and end tile when you use road build-to are in the same horizontal or diagonal row, the worker should build the row in a straight line from the start to end tile, but even with the latest patch (despite improved the build-to pathfinding is explicitly listed in the patch changelog) the build-to pathfinding fails and will build waste what should be straight roads with kinks that create maintenance-costly extra road tiles.
 
My OP is not a tile texturing problem, but road build-to pathfinding. If the start and end tile when you use road build-to are in the same horizontal or diagonal row, the worker should build the row in a straight line from the start to end tile, but even with the latest patch (despite improved the build-to pathfinding is explicitly listed in the patch changelog) the build-to pathfinding fails and will build waste what should be straight roads with kinks that create maintenance-costly extra road tiles.

I haven't tried the new patch, but before I told my worker to build a road from one square to a city and he built to the coast and then embarked. They are really stupid.
 
It still drives me insane that when you use "build to" mode between two cities that are connected by roads, but you want to build a shorter road to connect the two directly, the stoopid worker follows the long road to the other city!!!!

For now, be like me and be glad that the game forces you to do it manually. Gives you something to do while building culture buildings :lol:
 
I hate having to babysit my workers when I am trying to build roads between my cities. I can't trust them to build a straight, efficient road and have to road-to to the next tile over. I do not know the logic mechanism that controls the unit in its road-building, but it put a kink when my starting and build-to-finish tiles were only 5 tiles apart.
 
Must be union workers
 
Could it be caused by another unit getting in the way? I hate it when an AI with open borders shoves its units in my territory blocking my workers from doing their work. It seems to be worse at higher difficulties too, where AIs are more able to spam units.

I really don't understand why Firaxis chose to make workers not stack with open-borders rival military units.
 
Could it be caused by another unit getting in the way?
Of course, that's the answer.
I hate it when an AI with open borders shoves its units in my territory blocking my workers from doing their work.
True but the more typical case is that your own units do the blocking.
 
Could it be caused by another unit getting in the way? I hate it when an AI with open borders shoves its units in my territory blocking my workers from doing their work. It seems to be worse at higher difficulties too, where AIs are more able to spam units.

I really don't understand why Firaxis chose to make workers not stack with open-borders rival military units.

No, this was fairly early in the game just when I established my second city.

Further, I have noticed that the game now gives you a (!) notice when a worker abandons a road-to order because a unit is occupying the next tile it wants to build a road on from the road-to order; this seems to be something new in 1.0.0.62. Doesn't address the problem of the road-to pathfinding still being off.
 
Of course, that's the answer.
That's sarcasm, right?
True but the more typical case is that your own units do the blocking.

lol, not at Deity. Have you seen the blob of death screenshots? When the Deity AIs have so many units that they are literally overflowing their borders and having to embark, you really do not want to open borders with them.

In your own territory, and with your own units, at least military units don't get in the way. It can only be other workers or things like great people that get in the way - much less serious and frustrating an issue.

No, this was fairly early in the game just when I established my second city.

Further, I have noticed that the game now gives you a (!) notice when a worker abandons a road-to order because a unit is occupying the next tile it wants to build a road on from the road-to order; this seems to be something new in 1.0.0.62. Doesn't address the problem of the road-to pathfinding still being off.

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

If we can get a savegame or two demonstrating this problem, it would most likely go well in the bug reports. Maybe it's already in there?

Is it being cuased by workers trying to avoid rough terrain? Does it look like there is any cause at all?
 
As a matter of fact, the worker that did this veered OFF open terrain to try and build a kink through rough terrain.

I got past that point, but due to a headache-inducing AI trade ridiculousness (see my thread about AI trading in 1.0.0.62), I wound up abandoning the game.

Overall, they did not seem to fix the kinking road-to pathfinding despite the changelog note, and the AI is even more ridiculous in its trade demands and undervaluing trade resources. So far, the changes I've seen in .62 over the previous patch have actually worsened the game.
 
Perhaps it is a bug with path finding in general. In Civ 4 it seemed like units prefered to move along hills and forests, perhaps if there is a 'safer' route to build a route between two points, it will pick this option rather than taking the 'shortest' path.

I have no first hand experience in this matter as worker play for me is at least 30-50% of the civ experience. Making smart choices in allocating my workforce keeps the game fun for me between turns during peacetime.
 
As a matter of fact, the worker that did this veered OFF open terrain to try and build a kink through rough terrain.

That's sort of reasonable. There are situations in which it's worth an extra 1 gpt to allow extra mobility through the rough terrain. It could be that the pathfinding algorithm is intentionally choosing routes through rough terrain when road-building, even if they're slightly longer.
 
Top Bottom