Quote Originally Posted by Rhuarc View Post
On the campaign map (and I was talking about unit selection lag, not the panning over the map lag), just selecting a stack of units gives you a lag, when all the program has to do is calculate and display the unit's range. Why? Probably because it also has to factor in 'no-go' zones like the coastline and enemy unit's zone of control in multiple locations within the unit's range.
This specific lag occurs regardless of the complexity of movement areas, and is demonstratively not a path calculation lag since you can select a unit, suffer the lag, then modify the map field to your heart's content and re-select the unit and not have it -- my speculation is that it is doing something very silly rebuilding the unit descriptions, capabilities, card pictures, etc, that it must do at least once, but usually only once, per turn/load for every campaign-level unit group it operates on. You don't see this lag in battles because it's building it all during the loading screen and then handing it over to the tactical battle subsystem.

CA has always had a somewhat weird relational data description scheme that never rightly made sense to me, but I assume it has some benefit towards producing a static set of values and decision trees for the realtime tactical engine from the highly variable unit stats in the campaign. Pop open the pack editor and you can look at how it defines and relates various entries. It reminds me somewhat of the "high speed" databases you see in realtime control systems, which are designed around getting an answer in a predictable amount of time more than being globally efficient.