Why Infantry Unit Move speed In Wh3 Is so Slow

kaboos#4804

Ca commented on this in a post in this dev diary https://www.totalwar.com/blog/dev-diary-1-1-20220318/
"INFANTRY RESPONSIVENESS
Another noteworthy topic is how infantry units turn and respond on the battlefield. While changes have been made that should improve the rate of responsiveness to (roughly) match that in Total War: WARHAMMER II, we still have work to continue improving the AI behavior in combat. We’ll have more news about this in future updates that we’ll share with you later!"

Unwittingly I posted about this as a bug when this info was up, which is my bad.
I am sorry to the bug forum team, who already have their work cut out for them!

CA have not mentioned anything else about this, yet.
They have their work cut out with a lot of more important things than balance like game crashes, stability issues, graphics glitching, multiplayer functionality and frame drops!
Before I or anyone can ask for balance changes Its only fair that we wait until everyone can at least run and play the game.

THE TLDR: Acceleration and pathing changed compounding slowness.
Total war players have been pavloved into expecting instant response times for unit movement, by CAs previous games.
If you have taken a long break from any of CAs games or only play WH3 you wont have a frustration response for battles.

Here's my monkey brain mechanics diagnostic.

Why Response times are important.
There are research papers on this that scientifically investigate this, you can google if interested. Here I will make it short.
Unit order responsiveness has been something CA has never messed with for good reason!
Control response time is a really important game design feature set not just by the world around us but by our body and human psychology, most games focus on making button response time as fast as is possible.
Psychology studies show us that a instant feedback response is part of what makes games fun and addictive in the first place.
This is the first of CAs games where response time feels its been changed drastically.
Even in WH2 unit response is only a little slower than in shogun 2.


1.Acceleration.
Unit acceleration build up from its min to max seems nerfed across the board In TW3.
On Cav it creates a nice feeling to their momentum building up, which looks and feels awesome to play with.
Acceleration is also tied to how fast units rotation speed is, you can test it in battles by making a running infantry unit turn 45, 90 or 180 and compare that to a stationary unit performing those turns, its not faster by much but still is seeable.
However both speeds are still much slower than that created in Wh2.


2. Formation.
Formations aren't a static setting anymore, its been set as an ability some units have those without will break formation to fight.
I don't know if this is the case as its hard to test but If a unit counts as "in enemy contact" when one of its entities is still fighting the formation wont be set up till that entity in the unit is completely out of combat, which will affect the unit spacing of every entity moving away.
If allied entities bump into each other this will slow down both entities acceleration drastically, entity bump deceleration was a feature added by Cavalry update.
This featured mildly for WH2 units, but because the 0-100 acceleration speed is faster it has little to no observable affects on gameplay other than its intended effect for Cav units.
got deleted but added edit at request:
Wh2 Formations used two shapes tied together in the middle to make the units formation.
You can see this by swiveling an archer formation in wh2, half the unit starts shooting before the other has finished moving.
In wh3 the whole unit of archers must be in place before it shoots.
I am sure the "two blocks inside one unit" created more work. This kind of system is usually set up with geometry math's and requires a smart cookie so it can be hard-work to figure out, I wouldn't expect it to return anytime soon. There's also game design limitations to using two shapes so the change may have been intentionally done thinking the WH3 unit formations would have their backend systems in place at the time of release for a better system, I wouldn't worry though as this is common for every gaming company and not seeing it is a surprise.



3.WH2 Pathfinding unit turns.
Wh2 units made a bunch of tiny turns to reach a 180° facing. Lets call this pathing mechanic Steve.
When you order a unit to turn you can see the tail attached to a unit moving around the formation telling its entities where to path till the tail reaches the new facing. This is Steve at work!
Steve is more or less creating a turning circle for a infantry units entities, till the turn is completed.
Zoom in on entities in Wh2, you can see entities taking a tiny step toward Steve for every order Steve is making.
Those entities tiny steps rotated the unit and built up acceleration making infantry units turn faster as they turned, shortening the time taken for longer turns.
This acceleration build up from turns followed into the units movement and put infantry units at maximum move speed if it was a full 180°, this meant that the time to movement for 180° was ~ as quick as a 90° rotation before the units moved.
The combo of pathing and acceleration effects Steve implemented made unit rotation time roughly the same for all units and made time to a movement almost instant.
GOD BLESS STEVE!


4.WH3 pathfinding unit turns.
When units in Wh3 turn 180° the tail that previously moved around infantry units no longer shows those tiny plotted turns.
Assuming this has not been intentionally hidden, this pathing method isn't used in wh3 at the moment either way a units entities aren't stepping anymore.
Now that Steve is retired or on vacation this has a few mechanical implications.
For example lets order a units turn to a position that's 180°, 90° or 45° from the original face.
Turns no longer build acceleration, all turning is based on a units lowest acceleration move speed.
A slow unit like Kislev infantry feels unreactive to movement commands due to their low movement speed and a fast unit like Slaanesh infantry feels fun and reactive to move.
The time to a units movement will increase based on how high the turn its ordered to make is, making it feel like a unit isn't responding to your movement order, even though its doing so slowly.
If a units turning is stumbled they will stop turning and turn from the stumbled to position, so units in combat can have their movement turning commands interrupted any number of times.
If you want units to respond quicker in WH3 you have to manually create this turn yourself by spam clicking to a new position in the direction you want to turn.
In some instances I have seen the battle AI do this as it don't need Steve, but I think its calculating doing a 180° turn will be faster running through an enemy unit than doing a 180° like normal, and because its going forwards its not ordering entities to turn so they stay in combat.

5.This is also likely
Infantry units in WH2 had no acceleration. Steve pulled units into a slingshot maneuver to get around it. HA.
In any case all WH3 units have their own acceleration set and tied to the rotation speeds, giving units a ping delay on moving.
This also means everyone will have relearn move speed on all infantry units.

What do you think;
Should slow units feel and react slower to movement commands because they rotate slowly?
Should fast units feel and react faster to movement commands because they rotate quickly?
Should rotation time be and feel the same for both?
Should we bring back a Steve?

Thanks for your time!