...At risk of being suggestiony, I think right now simply letting us change the priority system's weights so things like cleaning don't have to always be apparently lower priority than idling would be sufficient to alleviate most of the complaints I've heard about the current priority system...
My issue with this is that before, people were complaining that dwarves all rush out to pick socks. Then last version (or recently anyway, I forget) Toady made it so one dwarf would take a bin, go out and pick the bin full of clothes, then take it back. Granted, it doesn't work ideally, but he gave us the STORE_DIST_ settings in d_init to fiddle with to find an "optimal" balance. Yet as far as I know, little to no SCIENCE has been done on that.
Likewise, pathfinding being heavy gets a lot of attention, but the PATH_COST setting probably doesn't get enough. So yea, giving the community the tools to adjust game behaviour like pathing, item storing or job priorities isn't always a magic bullet that solves everything. I'm all for having less stuff be hardcoded and be in the raws instead, but not all the stuff that's already modifiable gets the attention it deserves, either.
Okay, so here's my question:
Regarding the new moving army feature, how does the large-scale pathfinding will work? Will the game consider the local terrain features too, or it will just ignore all obstacles (and distances) like merchants do in the current version?
I would like to know will it be possible to build 'The Great Dwarven Wall' with connecting walls between adjacent sites, and locking the fun outside the dwarven territory.
Thanks in advance!
Sorry if I asked a previously answered question.
Armies do not path through player made fortresses. Not yet at least. So you could build that "great wall" simply by repeatedly embarking and abandoning adjacent fortresses.
And to my knowledge local terrain features do not influence troop movements, because that would be too resource intensive. Local terrain features aren't loaded unless the player is there. That is why player made fortresses need special considerations and why armies avoid them for now.
EDIT: Large scale terrain should work though. Armies on an island would be unable to reach another island for example.
What about the opposite: building (or obsidian-casting) bridges to islands, either with 1 or multiple embarks? I suppose access is checked only at world-creation, if civs don't build roads after world-gen (or has there been news that they would in the next version, as part of bringing the post-worldgen world to life). And if armies continue to not path through player-made fortresses, I guess the point is moot. Building bridge-forts and retiring them would still be great for adventurers, of course.
The "simple" way of handling road-building etc. by the player would seem to me to be to check for paved roads when the "retire" command is given, then check which map edges they access, and fill in the world map based off that.