Unit pathing

[beorn]

Elsewhere, I hear endless debates as to whether Civ VI is a great game or a terrible game, with the latter case centering on AI and feature bloat. (Annoying to me given that I have had over a thousand hours of highly enjoyable gameplay, at this point.)

But there is one relatively minor matter that drives me to distraction. Unit pathing. Good unit pathing is an incredibly powerful antidote to problems of the mid and late game, when you have large numbers of units doing relatively mundane things. A war ends, and you want to send three units back to the southern border, four to the western border, two to the northern border, and one to the capital. Give the order, and off they should go.

Except that in Civ VI, they do not. Two turns later, a city unit happens to land on the destination hex for one of your units (a destination still several turns distant), and the order is canceled. Sure, just re-issue the order -- except you have to stop and figure out which destination this particular unit had, which generally means finding all the routed units and counting up how many are headed where. This happens a lot!

Maybe worse, set a route and your unit comes to a midway hex that is blocked... and your unit takes off into the wild blue yonder. "Instead of waiting a turn or two to get through, I think I'll head 10 tiles north and circle that mountain range." It is not at all uncommon to send a unit on a six turn journey, check back three turns later, and find out the unit is now ten turns from the destination.

I'm sure that this is not at all an easy thing to write code for. But unlike the demand for human-like military AI, this is something that many games have accomplished and so I really think it could be improved.

 

[kaspergm]

I agree, this is a source to an almost endless amount of frustration. I'd add one more pet pieve:

You take a unit - say, a scout or a settler - and send it to a destination two or three hexes away. When it moves into the first hex, it uncovers an enemy unit - say, a barbarian swordsman - hiding in the fog of war. Does this make the unit stop? No! It blissfully continues on its designated path, walking right up and ending its turn next to the enemy unit.

WHY is it so hard to program the game to NOT stop the unit when a future path is blocked but to STOP the unit when it uncovers an immediate danger?

 

[Pfeffersack]

WHY is it so hard to program the game to NOT stop the unit when a future path is blocked but to STOP the unit when it uncovers an immediate danger?

Especially as past titles like SMAC had this.

 

[Tech Osen]

You take a unit - say, a scout or a settler - and send it to a destination two or three hexes away. When it moves into the first hex, it uncovers an enemy unit - say, a barbarian swordsman - hiding in the fog of war. Does this make the unit stop? No! It blissfully continues on its designated path, walking right up and ending its turn next to the enemy unit.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember that units did stop for enemies in Civ 5? It is indeed maddening.

 

[kaspergm]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember that units did stop for enemies in Civ 5? It is indeed maddening.

Yes, in Civ5, units would stop if an enemy unit was uncovered. So it's a feature that's been either intentionally or unintentionally removed (or that's bugged).

 

[Alexis Layton]

The other issue is that pathing sometimes completely breaks down. I had a builder in a lake who needed to move from a resource tile just improved to one two hexes away in the same lake, but in a different city’s territory. Rather than move in the water it proceeded to disembark on the adjacent land tile for some reason, thus losing two turns.... (This was deep in my territory and no foreign units were anywhere close.)

 

[tiamats4esgares]

Oh, that's ALL you have to complain about as far as unit pathing go? Well...go try and play the Maori for a game. xD

The game doesn't seem to understand that units move faster in the water. It will path you through the land any chance it gets. It sometimes even happens in something that is supposed to happen in ONE turn, let alone multi-turn commands! I am used to it now, but it's frustrating as hell. I know if I'm telling a unit to go to the other side of an small island or peninsula, I best be doing it 1 tile at a time, lest the auto-pathing try to make me go onto land for no reason.

 

[montalaar]

big pathfinding struggles for AI started when they decided to implement one unit per hex system. and if that was not enough, they implemented even more struggling with AI pathfinding - movement differences between hills, planes, forest hills, rivercrossing, embarking.
i suspect, AI will not be able to do proper wars until those obstacles are in path calculation course.

players say AI is unable to properly occupy cities, manage to differentiate ranged, siege, mounted and melee units positioning. one of reasons AI is so weak at war, because it can not do proper math with pathing, i think.

it is nightmare for player to move units even on relatively easy terrain. on mountanous maps, i for example, not warring at all, for this reason.

 

[Virdrago]

I don't know is this is also a pathing issue, but sometimes 2 units with full movement won't switch spaces, even on roads. One unit has to move out of the way, sometimes onto a hill or even into water. When I'm trying to have a damaged unit leave an area and a fresh one replace it, such as during a siege or while protecting a chokepoint, it can get frustrating.

 

[kaspergm]

The other issue is that pathing sometimes completely breaks down. I had a builder in a lake who needed to move from a resource tile just improved to one two hexes away in the same lake, but in a different city’s territory. Rather than move in the water it proceeded to disembark on the adjacent land tile for some reason, thus losing two turns.... (This was deep in my territory and no foreign units were anywhere close.)

I think this relates to a bug that goes far back and, incredibly, has yet not been fixed. The game seems to think that every civ is Norway when it comes to embarking/disembarking rules. The game fails to realize that when you play as other civs, you will in fact lose all your movement when disembarking. This bug has been active for ... I don't know how long, but we're talking years.

 

[Bosque]

I think this is more likely an AI decision that a unit is safer on land than in the water, and therefore attempts to travel overland when possible.

Perhaps this may keep the AI civs from leaving settlers and other units exposed in water where a ship can easily capture them. But it is maddening for the human player.

 

[kaspergm]

I think this is more likely an AI decision that a unit is safer on land than in the water, and therefore attempts to travel overland when possible.

Perhaps this may keep the AI civs from leaving settlers and other units exposed in water where a ship can easily capture them. But it is maddening for the human player.

I'm 99 % sure that is not the case. The interface actually shows the faulty estimate of how long the unit will be able to move, and often it shows that the game believes the unit can move longer by going onto land. I think this is because Norway gets a movement bonus when disembarking, although I can't remember the details of how their UA works.

 

[fy00sh]

I'm certain that I've observed many times units that have like 6 movement in water and 2 movement on land get sent across my shoreline, and instead of staying in the water and traveling straight, they deliberately go out of their way to go on land.

The thing is, I've noticed that this basically always happens to me when their land path has them going over industrial/modern roads or railroads. I think it's true that the unit pathing just doesn't see the embarkment and disembarkment, it just sees that it has 6 movement right now, and over there to the side the tiles have movement costs of less that one, so it thinks it'll save time by going to where the movement costs are lower. And then once it lands, it thinks it just has 2 movement now so it might as well stay on the faster route.

I don't think the game really understands that a unit can have different movement speeds on different terrain, which is suuuuuper annoying to deal with as the player.

 

[King Rad]

I don't know is this is also a pathing issue, but sometimes 2 units with full movement won't switch spaces, even on roads. One unit has to move out of the way, sometimes onto a hill or even into water. When I'm trying to have a damaged unit leave an area and a fresh one replace it, such as during a siege or while protecting a chokepoint, it can get frustrating.

I have also had a problem where one military unit could cross the tile another of my military units is in to get to the intended destination, but it goes completely around, sometimes taking 2-3 turns because it gets off the road/whatever instead of just walking thru the other unit to the free tile beyond.

 

[Mahi]

Oh, that's ALL you have to complain about as far as unit pathing go? Well...go try and play the Maori for a game. xD

The game doesn't seem to understand that units move faster in the water. It will path you through the land any chance it gets. It sometimes even happens in something that is supposed to happen in ONE turn, let alone multi-turn commands! I am used to it now, but it's frustrating as hell. I know if I'm telling a unit to go to the other side of an small island or peninsula, I best be doing it 1 tile at a time, lest the auto-pathing try to make me go onto land for no reason.

Funny I don't seem to have this problem. On the contrary I usually struggle with the pathfinding trying to travel on water, when there is a barbarian caravel roaming my coast.

 

[Josephias]

Given we are all here crying our problems with pathfinding, I tought I could share what happened in a game yesterday:

Fractal map. Needed to get some oil source as RNG did not help me with that, and Rockefeller alone could not make for not having any oil Patch nearby. Best option were some small islands lost in the middle of the bigger ocean of the map.

Linked a settler to a submarine, so he could have some escort while reaching there, and traced (whith the submarine) the 28-turn path to the other side of the map.

¿Do you think the settler stayed following the same path of the submarine?. Nope, as soon as the first cape had to be moved around, he unlinked, and went his way through land . I mean, it is not only pathing, but that the game decides to separate linked units just because...

 

[Fogelhaus]

I have also had a problem where one military unit could cross the tile another of my military units is in to get to the intended destination, but it goes completely around, sometimes taking 2-3 turns because it gets off the road/whatever instead of just walking thru the other unit to the free tile beyond.

YES! This have happened to me several times. It’s one of the most frustrating things for me in the game. I can understand how the calculations break down when entering and leaving water, but this!? The movement is there, I can see it is highlighted as a hex to move to. Just move the unit to the damn hex!