Yeah probably being not a competitive player but a campaign maker makes me more interested in other aspects and I can’t see the issue as much as you.
You don’t even need to be a PvPer to see the weirdness. I saw it most clearly during Ismail campaign when I had huge groups of war elephants. You see these large units doubling back on themselves as you order them around constantly. It’s like kneading dough, units just fold back on themselves over and over.
Also saw it with large groups of Monapsa just turning into this rotating mass of horses.
PilgrimHYR’s linked video you can see the skirmishers being ordered to move away from a mangonel. They turn to form up, but then again and then again. Players will reissue commands to adjust units moment by moment. I’m sure in the past if you ordered units to move they would not need to keep reforming ranks.
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Yeah maybe because of that DLC ( Return of Rome ) which started the whole mess to begin with
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This regrouping thing is the worst. Should prioritize shortest path over sticking with group or at least let the player decide that. Right click: Prioritize shortest path, Alt+Right click: Prioritize regrouping.
True. The units blocking each other indefinitely and glitching through narrow passes should be fixed.
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Right on, you are on to something here.
I figured if they just make it where unit formation or regrouping is an ACTIVE thing, where we players have to hit a hotkey to make our units regroup, it would solve a lot of this stupid AI pathing and shuffling, U turn issue.
Let’s see what they choose to do.
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Now that’s an interesting suggestion or a toggle in the menu in gameplay.
It would be better if formation is somewhat ahead a little when toggling formation as an active status.
Inactive stage would be somewhat let units run loose to the destination and then activate formation to let them know where to stand.
Total War series, although a little controversial in development, has solved this issues like eons ago. Most of their units run on a little time of no formation state before grouping up for formation.
Looking at AOE2, it’s seriously weird that it’s the game with its absurd pathfinding and formation where a single ram has to do U turn, or trebuchets being wild. 
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I have another idea. Just enable military units to have no formation like villagers. To do that you click any formation button twice (each button is now a toggle).
This would help massively in breaking walls, reaching targets as fast as possible.
@Felizon89 what do you think? 
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I like this idea too, no new button or hotkey and easy to remember.
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If they make regrouping/unit formation an active mechanic where we have to hit the hotkey to active it. This will solve a lot of pathing grief.
Now for those who white knight for this pathing to be broken because they think it will mess up the game’s unit balance, that’s another story. There are many ways to solve imbalances. Let’s say they think xbow in a large group is too strong vs knights. Then create a default bonus for knights to deal extra damage vs archer lines, add armor, make them move fast, etc etc, Just be creative and implement these balances gradually.
But breaking the game mechanic just because you think the units are imbalanced is utterly stupid.
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Good point here. Maybe that time zone where units can move freely before going into formation again is what they can work on.
I will talk with the team about your suggestions.
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Thank you for taking the time to read through this and pass on the suggestions others have made. I might of been a little harsh with my original post but I really do care for this game.
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Ideas:
- simply find the shortest path to the eventual position in formation after the move.
- If trying to restore formation while on the move, at least prohibit temporary movements away from the clicked position, unless necessary to reach the clicked position. For complex paths, apply the same logic to a sequence of waypoints instead.
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The latest pathfinding update has been fairly disastrous, and very discouraging to see after the devs promised they were going to focus on getting the bugs in the game ironed out after letting them build up for years. We also still have yet to see any fix for some other basic game bugs like no attack notifications from gaia units, or the fact that the lobby system is still completely broken (searching, filtering, crashing on load if someone leaves, and more).
It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when so much of the DLC content was excellent. Can we not get that same quality in our day to day experience?
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yeah, not pathfinding exactly, but the new dlc/update introduced a new bug where about 1% of the time, you move a group of units and some of them just get stuck, and no matter how many times you try to move those units as a group they won’t move. You HAVE to move them 1 by 1 for them to get unstuck.
—EDIT START—
Apparently this has been going on for a while. It hadn’t happened to me until the dlc, but it would seem I was among the more fortunate.
—EDIT END—
On very small levels, vills on a wood line, trade carts on a trade route, you compare HD to DE, and DE has much better pathing. Collection rate tests show that pretty convincingly. But then you try moving an army and five of them just won’t move, and when you command them to 180, sometimes they’ll just keep going straight for a while before they can figure out how to turn.
I’ve been pretty fortunate up to this point to not have too many problems, but yeah this update seems to have made it worse.
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I’m personally more concerned about the recent performance issues.
This video has clearly illustrate how bad pathing is now. I really find the shuffling unit especially atrocious. Take a look
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This video really helps highlight a lot of what people are trying to describe with words. A picture is worth a thousand words a video, lets say it helps our case of us not being crazy.
We just have to wait patiently until the next patch to see if any or all of these issues can be resolved. I really hope they can.
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