Some ideas

[Viliam]

Also, for the group selecting and movement, different units will be slowed by the different types of terrain, water, or impassable mountains, so does the group move at the speed of the slowest?

Either this, or your fastest units get to the goal first, then they are killed by the enemy, and then your slowest units arrive to avenge them.

[Skizzaltix]

The "chase until dead" one seems interesting, but think of how the enemy could take advantage of it--"Oh, he's going to chase my bat until dead... So I'll just move it over this lake here, and pop those two submerged skeleton archers out once his horseman is neck deep in the mud!"
Not to say that's a bad, thing, of course

[roadkill]

How many people play games of such size that these orders would have a real effect?

Just exactly how large is the map you tend to play on?

It would be interesting to see if people play maps large enough for these to have effect, it would also be interesting to see if these orders would make it so people play larger maps more often.

At the moment I play small (1vs1) maps most often, usually sticking to the default selection and even from them, picking the maps which I can guage are the most balanced by comments in the strategy forum, I often desire a balanced game, please note I only ever play against the wife.

We however for fun do the occasional "for fun" game using a large 40 x 40 random map, because sometimes its nice to fight over scenic terrain (not the erratic/ugly maps that balanced maps are out of necessity).

Sometimes if we have alot of time & nothing to do the next day (so we can sleep) we enjoy a 56 x 56 random map with 2 Ai's to spice things up.

However even these sizes of map become a chore, larger maps than these are out-of-the-question (we have done them though but we snored, the chances of finishing a game on a larger map goes down considerably). The main reason it feels like hard work is not because of the amount of combat, combat is fun, but the lack of automisation in getting units to the battlefield in an effective way. Long range auto-move works, but its not effective, it can't keep fighting forces together and hence you can't plan your organisation or tactics (read making squads in my above post) without a great deal of time consuming micro-managment.

Which means we can't finish large maps (I estimate 50x50+ for us, YMMV) without getting so sick of micro-management that we lose the will to win & just try to hurry the game and succum to the charms of auto-move. When we do that however the game becomes very "loose" and isn't "tight/close/intense" anymore and then it starts to be less fun and eventually we just quit (We are competitive people and without intense competition we lose the fun of wesnoth).

Also, for the group selecting and movement, different units will be slowed by the different types of terrain, water, or impassable mountains, so does the group move at the speed of the slowest?

Keeping it nice and simple, the units will simply move as if you selected them one at a time and clicked a distant tile to move to (so no they would not move at the speed of the slowest).

However instead of clicking your 20 units, scrolling to where you want them to move to and clicking the destination tile (20x clicks on units, 20x clicks on the destination hex, 20x scrolling the screen to the location, 20x scrolling the screen back to your units (or pressing n)). You could just drag a box round them (or hold ctrl or shift and select them) and scroll the screen once & click the destination once.

This wouldn't stop them all arriving piece-meal, so it would only be good for reinforcing a distant front-line (or any other task that the enemy wouldn't have a chance to kill them one-at-a-time until they can all group togather at the desination point).

[roadkill]

Sry double post but wanted to break the wall of text for easy reading

Either this, or your fastest units get to the goal first, then they are killed by the enemy, and then your slowest units arrive to avenge them.

This is what the follow command would be used for. It would allow you to send small squads out into unchartered territory without getting separated, you would of course set follow on your slowest unit.

This would only be useful in REALLY big games, with a timer. A game where you need to push up an unobserved flank but cannot take the time away from "the big battle" to move multiple squads to explore it.

The "chase until dead" one seems interesting, but think of how the enemy could take advantage of it--"Oh, he's going to chase my bat until dead... So I'll just move it over this lake here, and pop those two submerged skeleton archers out once his horseman is neck deep in the mud!"
Not to say that's a bad, thing, of course

Yeh I realised this before I typed it,but if my enemy wants to take the time to do that, he can be my guest. (Even if he just makes the bat run away and my horsie follows it to his doom, the income saved from not losing villages for not much thinking time invested is probably worth it. Also you don't have to forget about the horse).

Also the guard function, possibly using a modified sentry AI script that returns to where it started when it gets too far away, would deal with the problem. Of course this in turn could be abused by an opponent coming just into range, fighting a bit and then moving away, to heal while your dumb AI unit lets it.

The trick here is your opponent will have to waste time to find out if the unit is on guard or chase until dead, and in a timed game where you'd be using these functions hopefully he doesn't have the time to waste.

However the most important thing to realise here is that at anytime a human player could take control of these units, and so you'd still have to treat every unit you see with the respect that it will be controlled by a human next turn (and therefore make the smartest move).

If we enhanced the way players could gather information about the battlefield and made it faster (by either making the minimap fill the screen when you press "m" or incorporating a strategic zoom like Supcom or TASpring,)you wouldn't have to waste as much time checking if your horseman was being led astray. (The minimap on large maps isn't very useful at the moment because its unclear by being simply too small).

Also these functions wouldn't just be good for timed games, they would also be useful for wesnoth players who just want to be a bit lazy, enhancing the experience for all.

In non-timed games on big maps turn time is likely to allways be a problem (too long). So timed turns are a good way to go, but if you need to order lots of units individually in a turn the game becomes less about strategy and more about who can point and click the fastest.

Wesnoth is not an rts where it is argued that you are a good player if you can point and click fast (I strongly fall into the other rts crowd with the opinion that rts should be about strategy, but ho-hum). But Turn-based strategy is ALL about strategy and no-one here (I expect) is going to tell me that you are a better wesnoth player if you can point and click fast.

Paradoxically this means (if we want big games) that these advanced, time saving, stereotypically rts, functions are more important for wesnoth because they will give the advantage to the tacticians and not the fast clickers (which is what TBS is all about).

And the best bit about these functions is they are all simple, and very KISS to use, but they allow the game to be played in a different(larger) way than before!

who knows maybe in 1.9.x!
(if I can ever program by then).

[Simons Mith]

Auto-move suggestions like these are a bit of a half-way house. What would be nice, particularly in combination with a better AI, is to be able to let the AI control some of your less-important units. 'Move these units to this area'; 'Have these two scouts capture all villages in this area, avoiding combat'. 'Go in this direction, capturing vilages, and signal when you see an enemy unit.' Scriptable behaviour, in other words. While that could get very, very complicated, I suspect there are some basic simple actions that would tend to get reused over and over. Just being able to do them would be a potential timesaver, and with increasing sophistication unit scripting could become a fascinating addition to the game.

[Skizzaltix]

I recall that Acritter and I used to play a lot of hotseat games on Battle World... How big was that map? 60x60? Bigger?
We had some problems with turn time, but it was never that bad. Then again, we tended to talk about the game while we played, so I imagine the long turns of manually moving dudes went by a little faster

I'm not sure I agree with you on the "automated functions will help strategists" notion, though--I would think that a true expert would want to plan each individual move out so that he/she could have each unit on advantageous terrain the turn combat began
Then again, I am not a believer in timed games--That could make a difference (If you're bored, that's what the chat feature is for).

I think the temporary AI control idea is a good one--But it would only be necessary on very, very large maps (Like Battle World). I don't know of any still in mainline

[Limabean]

I think the temporary AI control idea is a good one--But it would only be necessary on very, very large maps (Like Battle World). I don't know of any still in mainline

So we make some big maps good enough for mainline!
I essentially egree with roadkill so I won't spend the time repeating what he said. Now the big question: Is there anyone who knows how and is interested in programming these changes? I'd be happy to make maps or help in some other way; I just want to see it done.

[roadkill]

TBH I'd be happy with just the group select and move.

I think that it would be the easiest to implement too.

But there is no point trying to hurry it up if you can't do the programming yourself ^^'.