Often, when you select a unit and tell it to auto-explore, it does nothing and just sits there indefinitely. I don't know how to reproduce it, but it often happens. The only thing I can think of is that when the vision of the unit is less than, or fully within, the already-explored area, rather than seek the border of the already-explored region, it just sits there, assuming there is nothing to explore.

Honestly in my experience its rare enough that they do anything at all when I use the command, and even then if I check back with the scouts later I see them sitting somewhere most of the time. It was a bit of an issue in Endless Space too (though mostly around other faction colonies), but at least it told you when they stopped scouting.

Yeah... we have a bug like that in our bug database...



My guess is:

1) The current region is already explored for the AI (more than 90% tile visible) so it does nothing instead of choosing another region (I don't know why because I am sure to have code a fallback looking for region to explore around the known region.

2) You have more than one army exploring and both are going to the same region so the AI stop one of them and forgot to ask them to go somewhere else.



I know that I need to add some "patrol" behavior to occupy the "auto-expore" army when the world is fully discover. I also have to ask the army to explore the ocean which are, for now, considered as not a thing to explore by the AI.



So... to sum it up... yeah there is still some work to do on the auto-explore thing ^^



I keep you informed of any progress on this in the next few weeks...



Cheers!

flo.

ThorTillas wrote:


I also have to ask the army to explore the ocean which are, for now, considered as not a thing to explore by the AI.

Yeah thats one recent example I remember where my exploration army (already embarked) stopped doing anything after a while. I'd say its a good thing to have the explore AI avoid embarking if there is anything left to explore by foot, but conversely once embarked they should focus on scouting by ship as to not waste a lot of movement going back and forth.



But really, the biggest immediate change I'd like to see is the same behaviour as in Endless Space: If the AI stops moving the scout, exit the mode and tell the player.