rahamy said:
Guys,
Wouldn't distance be realitive to the paths you have availible to get there? As the crow flies things are pretty close, but if you have to march around a mountain to get there...
Also, it may be shorter in hexes to go from point A to point B, but if you take a main Road, then it might be quicker to go to A, C then B due to movement point costs...
Yes, this is true if calculating movement, but I'm looking at it from the point of the very large maps, where I'd just like to know the hex count from A to B. It's more of an academic exercise, but sometimes those can be fun as well. From the first of the links I have listed above, you can see that certainly it's a non-trivial calculation to get the exact distance. I had thought that after all this time someone would have come up with a clever utility to implement a complex algorithm or perhaps even solve it with a brute force method.
In a somewhat related area, I'm also remembering an old Strategy & Tactics magazine article that discussed in a sidebar the rules of thumb used by officers of the Civil War era to quickly calculate how much time would be needed to move x number of troops of a certain type (infantry, cavalry) over distance y, with adjustment for roughness of terrain and weather and ground conditions.
For some of the ACW campaign maps, there are some seriously large distances to be crossed. So I'm thinking to myself that I ought to be able to come up with some rules of thumb guides for myself. For instance, I have three infantry brigades I want to move from their current location to a certain hex far away. Now, I could count hexes and calculate movement points, but I'd rather put myself more in the boots of a civil war commander. I would say "three brigades, not on the road yet, x amount of time to get them going, then so many miles per hour, then so much time to come back off the road and go into battle formation". With fourteen hexes per mile, I can use my quick rule of thumb, along with my hex distance calculator to say how far away the destination is, then glance at the map (because to study it at great length would give me more info than would be available to a real ACW officer) and note whether there are obvious roads to get there or whether I have to "fudge factor" in some detours.
I'm reading Coddington's "The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study In Command" right now and this is what has gotten me thinking about this. Your typical commander, if asked how long to get his unit from x to y, wouldn't start pulling out detailed maps and measuring distances and "counting hexes"
. His superior would expect him to know if he had to travel x number of miles it would take him y number of hours to break camp, get on the road, get there, and then either go into battle formation or go into camp. I'm just trying to develop a sort of knowledge base so that I can provide the same quick answer to my superior in the game (who is also me
)
