You broke your promise to move your troops away from the border

[Light Cleric]

That certainly provides a lot of clarity for this discussion, then. Might you know where they would define the conditions under which the AI will ask you about your troops and to make such a promise?

 

[Aristos]

That certainly provides a lot of clarity for this discussion, then. Might you know where they would define the conditions under which the AI will ask you about your troops and to make such a promise?

Didn't find that yet, but I suspect it is truly hard coded inside the engine (the .exe). If I find it, I will post.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Thank you very much Aristos - you've shed light on an important point and understanding the game better through the code is always a plus.

At 20 turns, it's not as bad as it sounded before, but it's still pretty bad compared to a mechanic that simply ensures a player keeps his promise and *actually* moves troops away.

Also, if a 20 turn NAP is created, it should be known to the player how long it is, not hidden.

And yes, holding a key like shift and clicking should create a waypoint. Waypoints are the stuff of 90's games; every turn based strategy made since then should have them, and if something obstructs a unit's movement along a waypoint after it's created, the game should stop the unit and prompt the player for new orders.

That kind of stuff isn't rocket science, but historically civ developers have been absolutely awful with it. The most extreme example I can think of is Warlords II (made 1993 or so) properly interrupting a blocked unit's pathing, while Civ IV BTS (over a decade later) would auto path the unit backwards if the way was blocked, unprompted . Sometimes it's not a bad idea to keep working concepts from previous games if no better alternative is placed instead .

 

[Aristos]

That certainly provides a lot of clarity for this discussion, then. Might you know where they would define the conditions under which the AI will ask you about your troops and to make such a promise?

I think I found it... deeply buried inside a 20,000 lines file.

Will check what it really does, try to make sure I don't post any BS, and then let you know.

EDIT: Nope, I didn't. Yet.

 

[Mr. Do]

I just had an interesting experience where Shaka conquered a neighbour, then got angry at me for having units nearby. He followed this up by making a citadel right between the Aztec city he just conquered and one of my cities,stealing a ton of land; the next turn, he finished razing the Aztec city and all the land he'd stolen with the Citadel disappeared. Insanity or genius? I'm still not sure.

 

[Aristos]

And yes, holding a key like shift and clicking should create a waypoint. Waypoints are the stuff of 90's games; every turn based strategy made since then should have them, and if something obstructs a unit's movement along a waypoint after it's created, the game should stop the unit and prompt the player for new orders.

This is a victim of 1UPT. Pathfinding under 1UPT conditions is a huge algorithmic nightmare (akin to the Travelling Salesman problem). Checking all possible "collisions" of units when way-pointing under 1UPT rules is probably way beyond what we are willing to accept as a max turn time.

Previous versions had xUPT with unlimited x, so there was no need to check for collisions.

A possible solution would be NOT to check for collisions, and stop the game any time they happen, but that would surely annoy most of us the same way the "sensitive worker" issue was (is?) annoying us.

But this it OT. Back to the Non-attack promise.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A possible solution would be NOT to check for collisions, and stop the game any time they happen, but that would surely annoy most of us the same way the "sensitive worker" issue was (is?) annoying us.

I think that is preferable to no waypoint option at all. That is indeed how the old game I referenced handled collisions, especially because your pathing at the start could be unblocked, but later become obscured. It certainly beats attempting to move the unit unprompted!

Currently we have interruptable pathing anyway however, by simply clicking on a distant tile. I'm not sure what a waypoint would change; simply provide the same result as a move order to a given hex. You could even ignore the existence of units in the way currently, only interrupting if it's still there and obstructing you on the turn your unit moves. It's a similar issue with move queuing.

But this it OT. Back to the Non-attack promise.

The reason waypoints/pathing was brought up is that it would make avoiding the NAP significantly less tedious. The tedium to avoid the mechanic is one of the reasons it's unpopular, though certainly not the only one.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

What waypointing does is not try and send all the units through a bottleneck, or in this case, tell them to take the long way around a civ rather than crowding up on the borders.

To those who called me lazy, yeah, I am. I want to reduce the number of micro decisions I have to make every turn. Especially when you are warmongering and have a huge number of units. I want to concentrate on the strategic and tactics. I don't want to babysit twenty units every turn.

Sometimes I play tall and peaceful just to avoid the mundane, boring clicky clicky pain in my mouse finger that a wide warmongering game causes.

Yeah, I want the game to help me out! I am lazy.

Here is another suggestion: let me tell all the units to follow a great general, so all I do is move him, and the others follow.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I think what the game really needs is a way to click and drag a box to highlight several units at a time, RTS style, and tell them all to move somewhere. This would definitely not be the most efficient way to move them, and individual micro would always be an option, but it would be for those times when you've clearly won the game already, have a million units, and just want to mop up the rest.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If the game didn't render 23509872409857240987 bits of nonsense when clicking on and moving units, it would be possible move units at a significantly faster rate than 1 per second, but we are indeed getting away from the core issue in this thread now, and reworking this mechanic would be useful since it's currently broken.

 

[Xiao Xiong]

I think what the game really needs is a way to click and drag a box to highlight several units at a time, RTS style, and tell them all to move somewhere. This would definitely not be the most efficient way to move them, and individual micro would always be an option, but it would be for those times when you've clearly won the game already, have a million units, and just want to mop up the rest.

Not even when you won. Like, you beat the guy on your left, and while you are boosting happiness and building roads, you move all your guys across to the right to be prepared for the next war. Once they get close you can micro them into place.

Or another common, sending them across the ocean to a friendly CS from which you plan to war.

Very common to want to move a lot of units to a general area, then get them organized once they arrive.

 

[JimBobV]

It is really annoying how you get penalties for issues like this. In real life, if someone started a war with another country, the whole world wouldn't suddenly turn on the offensive country.

 

[rexman07]

It is really annoying how you get penalties for issues like this. In real life, if someone started a war with another country, the whole world wouldn't suddenly turn on the offensive country.

[citation needed]

 

[TheMeInTeam]

[citation needed]

Pick a history book. Any history book.

Real empires tend to be very self-interested in motivation .

 

[Browd]

Even a brief review of such books will reveal that countries do not, and never have had, "friendships" that are or were based on anything other than their own interests.

As Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street, "If you need a friend, get a dog. It’s trench warfare out there, pal."

 

[neoaspilet11]

I think the AI raises the troops on borders screen indicates that the AI is also not ready to defend. The AI armies are somewhere else that is why it is raising the border troops screen because in either option the human player can take diplo hits. what i usually do is just dow anyway even if my troops are not yet ready. any way i dont attack unprepared. i usually let the worker create roads to the borders for faster troop movements + automatic city connectiom when the enemy city is captured.

 

[Alesson]

The original poster was trying to balance or find a workaround way against one of the (many) dirty AI-favouring mechanics of the game and people actually showered him with pointless moral comments, how can anyone who played Civ 5 actually take the AI's side in anything?

The AI's in Civ 5 are extremely spiteful and treacherous, and treat each other in an unreal way compared to how they treat the human player, they get insane happiness, production bonuses, and I'm certain their warmonger penalties towards each other are extremely lower than the human's any day of the week. It has always been a thing in civ games to fix the game in AI's favor, you're set up to lose. And people STILL try to take the AI's side when someone complains about some unfair mechanics, this is unbelievable.

If you fall behind in any civ 5 game and get to experience how ruthless, overbearing and extremely treacherous the AIs can be you will probably understand that it would be much better if the human has a fair game.

 

[beetle]

...you will probably understand that it would be much better if the human has a fair game.

Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. The AI being able to demand that the player move or DOW is a feature.

I frequently fall behind, and agree with all you write about the AI. But I still feel this way about this particular game mechanic.

 

[agonistes]

I'm pretty sure I've taken the diplo hit for saying "I'm just passing through" to civ A, and then attacking civ B, A's neighbor.

I'm also gassed about being hated because I had a defensive pact with Theo, who was attacked by Austria, who I had a DoF with. Seems to me, if everyone knows I have a defensive pact, I shouldn't take a diplo hit for honoring it. M.T. should KNOW that I'm going to toast her buns if she DoWs on Theo.

 

[beetle]

I'm pretty sure I've taken the diplo hit for saying "I'm just passing through" to civ A, and then attacking civ B, A's neighbor.

No diplo hit for that.

I'm also gassed about being hated because I had a defensive pact with Theo, who was attacked by Austria, who I had a DoF with. Seems to me, if everyone knows I have a defensive pact, I shouldn't take a diplo hit for honoring it. M.T. should KNOW that I'm going to toast her buns if she DoWs on Theo.

The DP is very dangerous. I only use it when I am certain that *I* am about get at DoW.
You do not get a diplo hit for honoring the DP.
You get a diplo hit for DOWing an AI that you have a DoF with. As you should.
And maybe M.T. DoW’d Theo just to show all the other AIs that you are treacherous?