Pathfinding going thru Rock Reef

[dirlewagen]

Pathfinding going thru Rock Reef, based on Mobility I and not avoid the damage in the process. None of the tiles around the Rock Reef have movement penalty.

Develop version as of 04/15/2024 and the save file has the ship ready for movement.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/we-the-people-bug-reporting.636760/post-16593129

[raystuttgart]

As I said, there was an additional problem in the report: The movement cost of 3 of the Stone Reef was also ignored. (So it was taking a path with more movement cost instead of just using diagonals to sail around.)

--> If this was fixed then the damage problem would not be an issue anymore. (As all ocean terrain features causing damage also always have higher movement cost.)

[devolution79]

@dirlewagen what is your setting for USE_CLASSIC_MOVEMENT_SYSTEM ?

[devolution79]

I suppose that player paths should never cross damaging terrains, even when taking a shortcut across such terrains might seem beneficial. For instance, despite a reef having a movement cost of 2, which could theoretically offer a shorter path in certain situations, it's generally advisable to avoid it.

[dirlewagen]

@dirlewagen what is your setting for USE_CLASSIC_MOVEMENT_SYSTEM ?

@devolution79

USE_CLASSIC_MOVEMENT_SYSTEM 1

[raystuttgart]

@devolution79 Careful with the "never". :)

If a "reef" or storm allows a shortcut through a bottleneck saving e.g. 2 or more turns, then a little damage may be the much less problematic choice.

In general I would say the damage should however be weighted as heavily as 1 or 2 additional turns. (e.g. something like +10 movement point cost.)

[raystuttgart]

But as I stated already: Most likely the problem will automatically be fixed - or at least strongly mitigated - by having the Pathfinding properly consider the movement costs of the Terrain Features. (As this is also currently ignored by the Pathfinding as it seems.)

Question: Maybe this is just the case on Water though? As I never noticed Pathfinding ignoring movement costs on land. (But I also hardly ever use any automatisation ... so not sure of this.)

[MrZorG33]

USE_CLASSIC_MOVEMENT_SYSTEM 1

I use the NMS, not the classic one, and have not noticed any problems with reefs (possibly due to the fact that I rarely use ships like the Sloop). but sometimes ships cross tiles with Storm. however, this is due to the fact that this way they shorten the path by 1 or 2 turns. This fits into the logic that Ray described.

[devolution79]

I propose the following solution to this little dilemma:

• If the endplot is NOT a plot with turn damage, always route around ut regardless if it is a shortcut or not. This way players will never end up auto-routing through storms / reefs.
• If the endplot is plot with turn damage, we do allow the path. In other words, players will never end up having their ship damaged UNLESS they explicitly want to do so.

[devolution79]

But as I stated already: Most likely the problem will automatically be fixed - or at least strongly mitigated - by having the Pathfinding properly consider the movement costs of the Terrain Features. (As this is also currently ignored by the Pathfinding as it seems.)

Question: Maybe this is just the case on Water though? As I never noticed Pathfinding ignoring movement costs on land. (But I also hardly ever use any automatisation ... so not sure of this.)

I checked yesterday and terrain movement costs seemed correct to me. The sloop did insist correctly on the shortcut through the reef due to the mobiility promotion (-1 movement for the reef in this case). If we implement my proposal above then the path will never be through the reef unless it is the last plot of the path (i.e the player intentionally wanted to enter it for some reason)

[MrZorG33]

@devolution79 , does this also fix the problem I described at the end of this ticket(https://github.com/We-the-People-civ4col-mod/Mod/issues/779#issuecomment-1620011972)? I don’t understand why the ticket was closed, since the problem is still relevant.

[devolution79]

I did experiment with various ways to deal with this issue inside the pf logic but none of them really worked out since we can't control the UI pathfinder. So as an alternative, I've figured that we could repurpose the ignore danger flag that can be set for transports (most commonly used for wagons). Assuming that the flag is off by default, we'd have the pathfinder refuse paths that would result in turn damage. This is a sensible default since a player will very rarely want to incur turn damage anyhow. This also solves the problem that many have experienced in which an accidental move is executed that results in unintentional damage his/her ship. With this change you'd have to explicitly "opt-in" to dangerous paths,

[MrZorG33]

I'm a little confused. If you propose to use a flag, like ground transport, then why does it say at the end "With this change you'd have to explicitly "opt-in" to dangerous paths"? Or did the translator mistranslate again?

[devolution79]

I've implemented the following: There are now 2 new command buttons: "Allow dangerous path" and "disallow dangerous path". Default is the latter and will not allow a path that would cause turn damage:

After clicking the "allow dangerous path" button:

[devolution79]

[devolution79]

This should make it far more difficult to accidentally suffer damage!

[devolution79]

Note that the command buttons use placeholder graphics. I really need someone to help out with proper button gfx!

[devolution79]

Merged into develop!