Locking Army/Navy movement once a percentage (e.g. 50%) of travel has been done

[colinljx]

I was reading the general forum earlier when I noticed a thread complaining about the AI, and I saw a Wiz's post that reminded me of some old ideas I came across a while back:

The best solution from the AI's perspective would likely not even be an AI solution but rather to 'lock' units into movement after a certain % travelled. That way the AI could reliably predict who is going to end up where.

This actually would work, and quite realistic too since communications back then were slow.

A straightforward way to do it would be to lock the movement after 50% has been traveled towards a province.

An enhancement on top of that would be to lock the army in the starting province for the remainder of the travel time, if the march order got canceled a few days after the march or a couple days before the 50%.

I remember seeing a heated discussion about this a long time ago. (could be from EU3 era even) The main discussion wasn't whether to lock or not but how big of a percentage to use for it, so what percentage would you feel comfortable with, 25%, 50%, or 75%?

Please note that "travel" here means traveling between bordering province only, not the overall, long distance travel plan.

 

[Karnak]

Yeah, AI-wise that'd be great and a good solution.

 

[CommunistCookie]

Sounds like a good idea.

 

[bbqftw]

Would make stackwiping AI armies a lot easier, especially with forced march. Not sure that is what you're going for.

 

[Wizzington]

Yep, we'll do this.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Yep, we'll do this.

Will this be featured in the El Dorado DLC?

 

[Wizzington]

Will this be featured in the El Dorado DLC?

No, a later patch.

 

[Me_]

Yep, we'll do this.

Just make sure to show it in a tooltip somewhere.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not sure doing this will close more exploits than it opens. It's not going to help the AI against experienced players though. Humans will bait AI and then trap it in locked movement w/o much issue.

 

[Freudia]

The unfortunate thing is that now I'm going to have to do basic calculations every time I go to move just to figure out the last possible day I can change my mind. I'm not sure if this change is even going to improve the game, honestly, unless the tooltip for moving is gonna be something like "Will arrive on x day. Has until y day to change his mind" or something.

 

[net.split]

Not sure if this will really make the AI better vs the player or not, but I'll certainly be glad to see some of the more ridiculous movement tricks going away. Not because they were game-breaking or anything, but just because they were annoying and very time-consuming. Dancing armies around a nation with 1-day-left cancels or move-on-last-possible-day-to-get-away mechanisms result in maddening wars that are particularly unsatisfying to play.

Honestly I'd prefer if movement was locked the moment you begin it, even if that has some nasty side-effects. Even with this change, the constant move-day1cancel-move-day1cancel ping-ponging will still be a thing.

Even better would be if there were discrete "paths" drawn connecting all provinces (and waterways I suppose), and every day of movement nudged the army along that path. Encountering another enemy army means running into them on the path. For ease of use, you can click to move after an enemy army instead of just moving to a province, and it would take the shortest path to them (continually as they move).

Maybe for EU5.

 

[nOxr]

If the percentage is exported to the defines, we could set it up according to our taste. For example:

MOVEMENT_LOCK_AI = 0.6
MOVEMENT_LOCK_PLAYER = 0.4

 

[marcsimus]

Yep, we'll do this.

<3
It'll be the best fix since game release.

 

[Oscaretti]

I completely agree with this idea. Any unit (both AI's and player's) shouldn't be able to turn back after certain point and stopping them should prevent them from moving for the same amount of days they spent moving into a province so far. It would be a major change but I think it would be for the better.

 

[BaZERGer]

I think rather than forcing them to complete the march to the province, you should be able to cancel the movement into a province, but doing so would require the troop to walk the distance already walked back to the province it came from.

 

[Karnak]

I think rather than forcing them to complete the march to the province, you should be able to cancel the movement into a province, but doing so would require the troop to walk the distance already walked back to the province it came from.

i agree. this is a better solution, and one i have also advocated. but the AI will be a helpless mewling child. they do not care for it.

 

[GChapman]

Wont solve any problems. I have the feeling it become even more easy to defend the AI.

 

[Krajzen]

Wont solve any problems. I have the feeling it become even more easy to defend the AI.

I am pretty sure it will solve at least one problem: 'when I click to move AI stops army and when I stop an army AI moves so we both dance around each other for God knows how long'

 

[mcmanusaur]

I agree with the others that this will have limited benefits (the player will utilize the same tactics, but that simply requires an extra step of calculation). Forgive me for throwing the whole Paradox game paradigm out of the window, but the only true long-term solution to this problem is to adopt the Total War campaign's movement system. Of course that will have huge, wide-ranging ramifications for gameplay and design, so it's not feasible for existing projects.

 

[GChapman]

I am pretty sure it will solve at least one problem: 'when I click to move AI stops army and when I stop an army AI moves so we both dance around each other for God knows how long'

I dont think so... That kind of dance will still happens. Instead on the day before, it will be at 50% of the travel time. The only thing that change is the time between declaring the war until carpet siege mode. This will some shorter. Nothing else change with this suggestion.

Only thing when it would change it the army movement after 0%, i.e. immedaitely. But this will result in lots of extra pauses for the player to not get any wrong click. That does not contribute to the game experience.