A simple improvement

[Gandalf Parker]

It would add quite a layer to the turn processing. Every province would have to be checked (1500 provinces) and then processed if need be.

[PDF]

Gandalf Parker said:
It would add quite a layer to the turn processing. Every province would have to be checked (1500 provinces) and then processed if need be.

Why that ? Only provinces producing something plus having "route" orders would have to be processed. Only with Ermor LA you'll have *many*. And only you play 1500+ provinces maps
But I was not talking (like the original poster) of auto-moving the troops, just having "route to" orders working as long as commanders exist to ferry the troops.

[Loren]

Gandalf Parker said:
It would add quite a layer to the turn processing. Every province would have to be checked (1500 provinces) and then processed if need be.

It would add almost nothing to the turn processing. (Note: I've been making my living programming for half my life now.)

1) Checking even 1500 provinces would be a triviality on modern processors.

2) There's no reason to check them in the first place. The check would be made when new units are created or when units executed new-unit orders.

It does, however, affect the storage format. You need to add a flag to every province saying where to move to and you need to add a flag to units saying that they are executing new-unit orders.

[Gandalf Parker]

The game doesnt do things that way. It doesnt keep track of things. You can see in the logs that it checks each province for many things that would fall into the category of "if" checks. And those checks do take measureable time. Adding another would be felt.

Im not saying its an idea killer. Just that it would be part of the "con" side of it.

[PhilD]

Gandalf Parker said:
The game doesnt do things that way. It doesnt keep track of things. You can see in the logs that it checks each province for many things that would fall into the category of "if" checks. And those checks do take measureable time. Adding another would be felt.

No way. If the game programming is done half correctly, this would take no more time than processing an equal number of orders - exactly as much as it would take if each nation's player had issued the order, province by province, except they wouldn't have to bother doing it.

Giving more options, ways for players to automate their order-giving (like letting them issue multiple turn movement orders, and so on), would not make turn processing significantly more complex. It's more work to code in, sure, but that's another matter.

[Gandalf Parker]

Like I said, it sounds like a good idea.
But looking at the logs you can see that it processes thru all of the provinces multiple times for many different things. I suspect its the result of adding such routines to a game that wasnt originally meant to take things like that into account.

Its still a good idea but dont be surprised if it processes thru all the provinces to do it.

[Arralen]

It's late, I'm tired and have little notion to go into details - with the current game engine, there's no way to tell troops to "go somewhere" on their own.

Routing is triggered by battles (and during battles - check the turn sequence order) and is not available during unit freespawn or building.
Furthermore, routing is random - routing units spread into neighbouring provinces. If that was easily changable, we might already have "fire and retreat" orders for light cav which have it move back into the starting province without scattering.

We don't have waypoints for a similar cause - no way to store the destination and steps in between over several turns.

Keep in mind - the game engine is basically the one from DomPPP - and when they started to make that game, no-one thought about complex movement army orders and 1500 provinces ...

And if someone wonders if this will change in Dom4, or if there will be a Dom4 ... the devs would have to throw away nearly all the code done in the last years and start from scratch ... therefore chances are very slim.

[Gandalf Parker]

t's late, I'm tired and have little notion to go into details

But you do it very well.