Auto-explore: beyond pathetic!

[morchuflex]

Hello.

DISCLAIMER: I love Civ3! I really do.

This being said, I must confess I **sometimes** can't help feeling a bit irritated by the persistent, absolute lack of rationality in the way the computer moves your units when you set them to auto-explore.
In fact, you would rather believe it tries to maximize the number of turns to complete exploration...

Let's start with land units, which even ignore the very basic principle of moving in zig-zag to cover more ground. And of course, multiple units ignore each other and often end up exploring the same part of the map simultaneously.

As for sea units, it's even funnier...

- Let's say for instance you build two curraghs. You'd expect the comp to send one east and one west. But that's probably asking too much. They'll often just follow one another...
- When they find an AI civ, and that civ controls some coast tiles on their way, they just go back without warning rather than crossing borders or at least asking for orders.
- They never leave safe tiles, even for one move. With 3 movement points, a human player will at least navigate one unsafe tile per turn, just to extend scouting range... But the stupid computer won't.
- It won't even end a turn in a safe tile connected to land by an angle: the tile has to be fully adjacent to land. Therefore, if another island is 4 tiles away in diagonal, the auto-exploring galley will never reach it!
- And finally, the damn program can't even end a turn without using all the movement points. Therefore, if there is a 2 tile gap between your starting location and the destination, and the ship has only 1 move left, you can't set it to auto-go there. Or even worse: it will agree to go there... and make a huge detour by a safe way, thus needing 14 turns to cross 2 squares.

So, when exploring or sending ships away, you face the same dilemma as when micro-managing: you can do it yourself well but slowly or let the comp do it poorly...

Still, when I start to feel a bit itchy and consider erasing the stupid thing once for all from my HD, I remember the AI is stuck with these absurdities and doesn't have the choice to do things "manually". In fact, it is a miracle that the AI civs can actually survive and even thrive under such conditions...

 

[Tomoyo]

Solution: Don't use auto-explore.

Congratulations on your enlightenment!

 

[morchuflex]

Solution: Don't use auto-explore.

Congratulations on your enlightenment!

I knew I could count on a veteran like you to come with some great piece of advice.

 

[Mr. Do]

You needn't feel bad for the AI not being able to explore very well, it already knows the layout of the land, and where to go if it wants to encounter any new tribes.

 

[Longasc]

You know, the AI knows where resources are and heads directly to them. Their exploration is more for the "human eye" than for real need.

Turning on Auto-Explore is not really smart, I think the option should be removed in further civ games, as probably nobody uses it and it does not really work either.

BTW, I would Civ3 rather erase for the Army, sub and other bugs than for that, or was this just the drop that drove you into madness and make you deinstall Civ3?

 

[Smellincoffee]

There's an autoexplore? I seriously never noticed..

 

[Tomoyo]

Actually, I was confused at why my units randomly started moving when I hit "e" instead of "w".

 

[Flintlock]

What happens to me is when it try to hit 'r' to build a road, I miss and hit 'e', then the worker runs away, and I have to move it back on the square I want the road, etc. This gets really annoying, especially when it happens many times in a row

And, what does 'w' do, anyway?

 

[Tomoyo]

"w" is wait.

 

[morchuflex]

"E" is precisely what I am complaining about: auto-explore.
I don't agree it should be removed from the game: why? Exploring is part of the excitement, but I wish I could occasionnally automate it to focus on other tasks. Alas, it seems difficult to implement.
BTW, it is strange that programmers have so many difficulties to implement routines than seem extremely easy for humans. Auto-go-to, for instance, has always been pathetic in almost all civ-likes, while it seems pretty basic for a human to see which way is the shortest...

 

[Fifty]

I have never really used auto-explore. Usually my turns are short enough in the exploration phase that I have no problem moving my units manually. The only time I automate anything is late in the game workers, and only if I'm way ahead.

 

[zurichuk]

i actually use autoexplore on a ship or two once navigation is in, the ships then clear all the black stuff for me while i sell the WM

 

[Turner]

I use autoexplore on my ships. I do monitor them, and when they start to backtrack I'll manually move them for a few turns in the direction I want them to move. Then AE generally starts moving them back.

Two problems I have with AE is 1) Sometimes they do try to follow each other. Workaround I have for that is the first couple of moves I do it myself, then AE generally goes in the direction I 'aim' them.

2) AE won't go around things that I would. I could move the galley to end on sea or ocean, but AE won't. It's worth the risk sometimes in order to get around the city borders. (and then, only when they keep kicking me out.)

That being said, I generally only have one or two on autoexplore.

I usually move my land units myself.

 

[Dragonsbain]

WOW autoexplore, I never knew it was in there.
And on top of it al its practically useless ,
I love the game but how many more obsolete options can one fit in one game.

 

[Wolfwood]

I used this feature once, but did not really see the point. If I want some black area uncovered, I just roll the map there and click there with my mouse and the ship will eventually get there and do the job. It will not suddenly decide to do something else or forget its assignment, like in auto-explore...