The classic "jump around bug"

[Frostyboy]

Well, I guess I am not the only one who have been frustrated over the way the program handles unit actions in the game.

If you have a bunch of units in a stack ready to attack a city, you will often, after finishing moving the stack be moved to the other side of the world where a worker waits for instructions, the back to the battle, and then back again to another worker or unit at the other side of the map.

This jumping forth and back can be very irritating, especially if you have several wars at different places.

It could easily been solved with a script that always moves you to the CLOSEST unit stack to the one you just finished.

They must have seen something under the gametesting regarding this, and still after several patches it is unsolved. It wouldn't surprise me if the problem continues into Civ4.

Why focus on fancy graphics when there are small bothersome problems like this in the game.

What are your opinion on this matter?

 

[thetrooper]

This is certainly annoying. But I've learned to live with it. I mass fortify or hit (w)ait to circumvent the problem.

 

[Own]

That was very annoying when I played vanilla, so get PTW or Conquests, it'll give a stack movement option.

 

[Frostyboy]

But still, it would be so easy to fix. A single line of script would do. I cant understand the playtesters and developers don't see those kinds of annoying bugs.

When should the game industri learn that playability counts more than graphics.

 

[thetrooper]

Money counts the most

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

But still, it would be so easy to fix. A single line of script would do. I cant understand the playtesters and developers don't see those kinds of annoying bugs.

I think that this is not a problem in small maps and in the begining of the game. This tends to be a problem later in the game and in huge maps. At least, in the beginning I did not notice this. It was only after more complex scenarios like the WWII Pacific that I started to be annoyed with this.

EDIT: My conclusion was that, if I was a playtester and didn't play endless hours of Civ (like now) I'd probably not realize the issue. I might not play for real, but more to check out the new possibilities and discover the amazing (hopefully) new world!

But I never knew it could be that simple. My option would be the cursor not to move to any unit, just to stay "empty". Preferably in an option that we could turn ON or OFF.

When should the game industri learn that playability counts more than graphics.

The thing is: we - even with this annoying problem - probably won't stop playing the game. I'd reckon, with or without complaints, we will get Civ4... so they'll likely want to focus on the "new" players, which is done with good graphics as these issues only appear later in some cases...
"Money makes the world go around"!

 

[Frostyboy]

Yes, there is on larger maps its starts to get annoying. But more annoying is it that they haven't thought of this problem after 10 years of gameplay.

 

[Pentium]

When should the game industri learn that playability counts more than graphics.

Yes, but that minor problems don't take much off playability. It's the mechanics that matter.

 

[SJ Frank]

I’m sure they have tried to solve this problem, and I think if you observe closely, there is some method to the madness.

Okay, let’s imagine that there is this list of units in the game, and that the game uses this list to determine the order that units receive their focus. There are two ways to sort this list: by location, which is what you wanted, and by function, which what I think they went with.

If you always let the game pick the next unit, then very rarely will you see it jumping from military units to worker units, and then back to military. It does a fairly good job of going through all units of one type first, then going to another.

Sometimes within the same type of unit, the game will jump from one unit to another unit that’s on the other side of the world. I see this much more often after railroading. Whenever this happens, it is always the case that those two units are related somehow. I probably stack-moved them together a few turns ago, then separated them. The game did not recognize the separation, but it did recognize the stack-move, and is smart enough to put those two units back-to-back in the unit list.

If it was just a matter of ordering a list of units, then the problem would be easy, but there is the much harder problem of how to deal with human interaction. When I pick a unit out-of-order, how does the game react? Does it go back to the original list, continuing down the list, or does it construct a new list, starting with the unit that I picked. What if I go out-of-order to stack-move a number of units, how does it react then? The focus should go to the first unit in the stack that still has movement point left, and go through the stack, but what about after going through stack?

It is the problem of writing a program that gives the best guess of what the human’s intentions are. There is no way to get it 100% right.

 

[iguana1]

I can't test this to be sure right now as the game is at home but I think there is a fix for you. I am pretty sure that the units move in the same order as you moved them on the previous turn. So, if you jump to a unit you don't wish to move yet, just press 'w' for wait and move the units you want to move after the initial stack. Then move the waited unit at the end. On the next turn the waited worker, etc will now not be moved until the end.

Again, I haven't tested this to prove it is true but it is the technique I generally use when playing and it always seems to work. I know it works at least well enough that I am generally only annoyed with it from time to time and that is generally at the beginning of a war after a lengthy period of peace when I have been mostly concentrating on worker movement. I then activate a bunch of military units and the movement is somewhat erratic. However, after one turn of making my workers wait until the end, they all remain at the end of the movement phase while the military moves first. I do the same thing with artillery units. I wait my attackers on the first turn of a siege and then bomb their cities with the cannons, artillery, etc. before pillaging and/or attacking. The next turn the cannons, etc are always the first unit I am prompted to move.

 

[vmxa]

The "W" or fortify are the only thing we can do right now. I have no idea how they could handle elegantly and not cause more issues.

This is one I run into when I am taken to a unit/stack and I do not want them to move, until I have the workers build that road or rail. So it is back and forth until I go ahead and wait/fort.

If I go with fort, I better hope I do not have too many piles of temporarily forted units, or I may forget one. I have done that many times. (Slaps head after seeing a wasted unit turn.)