Re: Building a map, start of a project, help will be needed

[DarkRob]

What if it was possible to go in the other direction with this, since it is impossible to Stop the units from entering the "Water", what if the Movement Speed was something like "minus a thousand" in the water.

Moving through water already significantly reduces movement speed. In my experience, the AI doesn't really care about such things, it will move through water anyway. The only way to avoid it is for the player to actively take control of his units and make sure they don't enter the water. So whether you cut movement by a thousand or a million, the player still has to intervene to stop his units from taking a dunk.
And even then, the AI will still move its own units through the water as well, but hey at least they aren't our units.

Do, retreating units become affected by the movement speeds of the Map, I can't remember.

Not in my experience no. A unit forced to retreat will run through a river as fast as over open terrain.

I do remember that retreating troops will not go through a structure, but around it.

Even this behavior can sometimes be buggy. Units forced to retreat around a building can get caught in what I call the building vortex and end up just running endless laps around the building. Since they are retreating and you cant halt them, they just marathon it forever, round and round we go.

Additionally, although a separate issue, units that are to big and try to walk between two buildings that are to close together can become wedged between the two buildings and get stuck in a similar vortex where they just keep walking, but not moving, and of course, their fatigue continues to go down as well. Plancenoit is notorious for this problem. It can also happen in Ligny and St.Armand, but neither are anywhere near as bad as Plancenoit.

[Davinci]

Since they are retreating and you cant halt them, they just marathon it forever, round and round we go.

That was Actually Funny!

Thanks, for the Information!

Well, I'm all out of ideas on this one....

davinci

[DarkRob]

Well, I'm all out of ideas on this one....

I say we just start issuing towels to the troops and call it a day.

[Crikey]

Blocking with 3D objects doesn’t work. Tried, believe me.

25 ..merely a hidden path which the Ai considers a road, and uses, until it doesn’t... :pinch: You can place these around the ocean to help troops avoid. You could also place a sizeable boundary around it using grey scale with a cannot deploy value to stop initial troop deployments from being too near,

Routed troops have no regard to water from what i’ve seen.

You can overcome some issues when scripting scenarios, but once things get moving, oceans and river crossings can’t be implemented as well as I’d like.

On DarkRob’s point, it does raise the issue of should 3D collisions be removed in towns. Is it any less realistic than troops getting trapped...

[Crikey]

One final thought relating to rivers....rather than oceans, when playing against the AI.

If you wanted to represent multiple broken or blocked bridges, you could create a mapname.bmp with no AI pathway to that point. You’d keep the road on the RGBs in PR but remove the relevant greyscales in the mapname.bmp

You’d only leave AI routes to those points you wanted to be available

In effect, the AI would ignore those OTHER routes in single player mode, and only focus on intended crossing points.

This wouldn’t prevent troops from crossing rivers when attacking a defended crossing point, but it would focus an attack on the intended area.

In player vs player....this wouldn’t work unless pre agreed that broken crossing points can,t be used.

[52ndOx]

I definitely need to work out how the road terrain (on map.bmp) works.
I made a small 1 mile map to test some stuff, with water crossing the middle and a land spur joining at one end.
There are no roads yet.

In the shot below, water is 0, there is a 25 border, and an open terrain route to the commanded destination.
But the AI scales the vertical cliffs, crosses the go around and the no move.

[Crikey]

Did you use the use road command?

As has been said, 25 doesn’t stop troops crossing it merely gives them a preferred route.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

The ( 25 ) border applied to the Mapname.bmp described by "Crikey" is just an "invisible road \ path" that was put into the Game during the TC2M days, by "Norb".
In order for it to work correctly, it has to be tied to the current road-system or it won't work.
It does nothing to prevent the units from entering the water.

This is mostly untrue. It does work, it's just not implemented correctly on the NSD maps.
To work correctly, the 25 pixels must be attached to a road. This has already been mentioned. Both ends must be attached. No dangling 25 pixel lines.
Second, the 25 pixels must touch each other on a side, NOT just via two corners, (diagonal placement is not allowed).
Third, the 25 pixels must be just one pixel wide.
If you do this, it will work. The KS maps have used the 25 pixels for years.
The condition that causes them not to work are retreating units. They ignore the 25 pixel. This too has been mentioned. However, once a unit retreats, it will always ignore the 25 pixel. This is a game bug that has existed in since SOWGB days.
The downside of using them is that the game engine does not take them into account. So AI controlled troops will do some pretty stupid things to try to get across an uncrossable river. As has been pointed out in this thread, the game engine does not take into account any terrain features when moving units. It strictly point A to Point B. It's one of the sad failings of the game.

[52ndOx]

There were no roads, I am starting to look at how they work now.
What do you mean that the 25 path needs to connect to roads?
Is there an optimum width for 25 in pixels?

In the shot below I show my test map setup.
There is a road (115) over the water (0) which is bounded by go around (25)
The 25 goes right up to the 115 with no gaps.
Troops at A commanded to move to B go direct, regardless of road command.
As they march the terrain type they are crossing (below clock in game) changes to "move around" to "no move" to "move around". :dry:



EDIT: Posted before seeing MTG's reply.
In light of that:
The 25 is 1 pixel wide and is continuous via sides.
But I have it also next to the road, maybe wrong?
And not connected at both ends (because 1 end goes to map edge)??

[52ndOx]

OK, this seems to work



The small patches of road at the right hand edge seem important, and also not linking the two 25 paths on the river banks to each other.

Units follow route 1 to B, would prefer route 2 of course, but lets not be unrealistically optimistic.

Crikey mentioned maybe being able to prevent units from deploying using a "cannot deploy value"
What settings are needed in the map.csv to define that?