[avoid] clarification

[Spannerbag]

Hi,
Here's a grab of the bottom right part of the map of a scenario I'm playtesting:

In the south west area of forest I randomly scatter side 7's units with this [avoid] clause:

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    side=7
    no_leader=yes
    controller=ai
    recruit=
    [ai]
      aggression=0.9
      caution=0.1
      [avoid]
        terrain=W*^*
      [/avoid]
    [/ai]

This avoid clause is intended to force these units to stay in that lower right quadrant.
Yet one side 7 unit crossed the water and headed north (I can't see exactly what happened because these units have the [ambush] ability).
Before I start digging further, am I doing anything stupid here?
This side doesn't use any [micro_ai]s tho' a lot of others do.

I've used avoid terrain before, but only without wildcards as far as I can recall.

As the terrain to avoid is only 1 hex deep I'm wondering if the ai only looks at start and end hexes when considering whether to avoid somewhere and these units can cross the avoided terrain in one move (i.e. they start and end in allowed terrain even tho' they traverse terrain they should avoid)?
Any thoughts/comments greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
--Spannerbag

[Ravana]

Correct, avoid is only about stopping there.

[white_haired_uncle]

(I can't see exactly what happened because these units have the [ambush] ability).

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wesnoth --log-info=ai/ca/move_to_targets

Would probably show you exactly what's going on, though if they are moving to attack you might need ai/attack. You could see both with

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wesnoth --log-info=ai/ca/move_to_targets,ai/attack

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wesnoth --logdomains

or

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wesnoth --logdomains ai/

will show all the nice things you can log. --log-debug= would give you a lot more (too much?) detail

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wesnoth --log-info=ai/*

will show you everything ai

Oh, and in recent versions you can add --no-log-to-file if you want the messages to go to the console and not a file.

[Spannerbag]

Correct, avoid is only about stopping there.

Thanks for the explanantion, very helpful.
A quick unit could traverse 7 forest hexes in one move, so one way, I guess, to prevent them crossing water is:

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     [avoid]
        terrain=W*^*
        radius=3
      [/avoid]

As this makes a "barrier" 7 hexes wide?

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated.

Cheers!
-- Spannerbag

[Spannerbag]

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wesnoth --log-info=ai/ca/move_to_targets

Would probably show you exactly what's going on...

Thanks for all the advice, hopefully I won't need to dig that deep in this case but good to know if I do.

Your time and trouble are much appreciated.

Cheer!
-- Spannerbag