Units have the pathing intelligence of Pac-Man. They’re constantly bumping into each other and turning around like a Roomba.
It’s the worst pathing I’ve ever seen in an RTS game. It’s the primary reason why I immediately thought this game was unfairly sold too early when I first tried it a year ago. I figured they know and would have improved it by now but it’s just awful. I play through it but it’s really the #1 thing that annoys me these days is seeing the game just glitch out pathing. It makes a huge difference if half of your units are not executing their commands in a critical moment. It takes a lot of extra focus and APM in this game just to keep the units from locking up in these weird bumping loops.
Rams are particularly bad, even after the change to their hit range they have a lot of trouble just reaching the target if there’s a group of them. Usually a game would have the blocking unit move over to allow the next unit in formation to reach the target. But in this game units just attack as soon as they reach a target and have zero awareness that they are in a formation or blocking their comrades. When blocked, units just make basic 90 degree turns and sniff out an opening with their nose as if they were blind. They will take and follow multiple dead-end turns just because they’re the next closest option, eventually bumping into an opening by brute trial-and-error. In the worst situations, multiple units are ‘lost’ and doing these blind searches, blocking and bumping into each other like blind sheep. The open path should be visible to the units virtually from the moment I make the command or they get blocked.
Villager Pathing
Trader Pathing
Sofa Pathing (first 20 seconds)
Ram Pathing
Ram Pathing 2
I think it’s a big reason why cavalry is the go-to raiding unit. Their pathing seems slightly better than other units and they can crowd more tightly than other units despite their size. Particularly when throwing torches, melee units change their pathing behavior and can push each other around to all get in torch range, which is good but basically makes them OP compared to rams. I attached a bunch of clips and one shows that even cavalry are not immune to pathing issues tho.
It’s probably also a subconscious reason why people prefer to boom instead of gambling on rushing or battling when tiny glitches like these can change the outcome of a battle. When I engage in a fight that I thought I could win, and I end up losing more units than expected or have to retreat because of a pathing bug, that costs me time to rebuild the army and re-engage. It’s probably hours now that I’ve danced around the pathing in this game.
Can we also talk about how the red AI didn’t manage to shoot their rebauldequins despite setting them up several times.
I have had a match yesterday where my opponent placed a keep into the fight.
I wanted to intercept with Landsknecht, but they chose the longer route all around the structure instead of taking the shorter route.
Siege units having trouble with pathing is especially frustrating, because they take such a long time to reach their destination.
Well the red player was AI so I kind of expect them to glitch a bit, ### when the player’s units get stuck I know it’s an issue. But yea AI frequently will fail to utilize its units and just lose some foolishly. There’s also a separate bug involving siege that I’ve been trying to get footage of. I see mangonels and cannons occasionally have trouble setting up or firing. The ground beneath the unit gets all dust-cloudy like it’s setting up, but never does get set up to fire and just sits there kicking up dust even tho there’s nothing blocking its setup.
Thank you for the pathing feedback @Heftydogg! This, as well as AI behavior, is one of the ongoing issues that we are constantly working to improve. Specific feedback definitely helps.
I believe this one is already being worked on…no need for footage .
Well dude, some of these bugs have been here since launch, it starts to make me wonder if they know or just forgot. I look back through my reports and “This is something the team is looking into” “I’ll make sure the team takes a look” etc. are starting to look like canned responses. After your reply it’s just a void. What am I doing wrong here?
Look at my clip about trader pathing for example. It appears that the gap between adjacent buildings is 2 units wide. But the gap between a building and the map boundary appears to be only 1 unit wide, creating an alleyway for units to block each other in. This should be an obvious, easy fix and should have been caught >6 months ago when I reported that rams (2 units wide) can’t path between buildings and the map edge.
Can you please give a statement on what is the deal with the “known issues” list? Why is there not a proper documentation of the true amount of bugs that are being worked on? It’s great to see that a bug was actually documented on your side with the date so everyone can see how long it’s been sitting there and what’s known or not known.
Nothing at all; please keep reporting as you encounter issues.
Unfortunately it’s just not tenable for me to update every single thread every single time about every little step along the way. If I respond, know that the bug has been seen by our team. Unfortunately that has to be good enough because it’s not up to me. Once I see it, know that the bug is in our system, and then the powers that be stack rank it (for lack of a better word) against more serious issues and/or workload and/or various other considerations.
I also wish this were up to me, but it isn’t. I do what I can.
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