ORIGINAL: RocketMan
Waypoints eliminate a lot of micromanagement. With waypoints, I can plot a units orders once, covering multiple turns, and then not have to worry about replotting them when I need them to make a turn.
The fella who introduced me to CM loves the game/system. He's spent thousands of hours playing solo and PBEM. Occasionally, I drop by his house and find him in the midst of a sometimes hours-long, plotting session. As he draws up his move, he periodically taps the appropriate hotkey and the fruit of all his labor is displayed, all those squiggly little lines running this way and that. The intricacy of it all would make John Madden blush.
Anyway, at some point, he goes ahead and runs the turn and views the results. A short while later, he'll go back to work plotting the next turn, whereupon, things tend to get kinda silly. You see, as he views the battlefield, he realizes that things have changed because of his opponents moves, AI or human, and combat results. Because the situation has been altered, he feels compelled to undo/replot at least ninety-percent of what remained of his previous orders.
I tease the guy mercilessly about what I've described above, BTW. I explain that there's really no point in plotting all those ultra-elaborate and detailed moves, only to see them rendered foul with the passing of the sixty-second clock. He has a master's degree in psychology, and appears to recognize the lunacy in it all. We've had more than one good laugh over the whole deal. After all these years, though, I know that after I leave he's gonna open up a fresh pack of cigarettes, knock-down a diet-coke, and do it all over again.
PoE (aka ivanmoe)
Government is the opiate of the masses.
