[Note: The "spam filter" gave me alot of crap when trying to write a title for this thread so I settled with this one -_-]
Title says it all. The current system it very inconsistent and generally doesn't make any sense. The way the current system works, the movement cost of a certain terrain is only taken into account when you're moving across the tile, i.e., the origin and destination tiles have no affect. This means that you can skip going across a problematic tile by simply traveling to a different type of terrain and going around it, and since you aren't going across any tiles when moving 1 space, you can *completely* circumvent the system and travel anywhere in only 1 turn by simply traveling 1 tile at a time! It doesn't make any sense to ignore the movement rules because of a limitation in the current system. Heck, the game actually uses the first trick when calculating the shortest path. I don't know about all of you, but it looks like we need a new system.
A new system might be complicated though... If you're moving from mountains to plains, should it cost 1 point or 3 points? There's several ways this could work out. I mean, "where" exactly is the unit? Is it in the center of the tile or on the edge it entered the tile from? If it's in the center, the movement costs of both terrains will have to be taken into account, since it's moving through both mountains and plains before it gets to the center of the plains! If it's on the edge it came from... Well, that would be unnecessarily complicated. So, if we imagine the unit to have a real location in the tile, the first system would be the obvious choice. But what if we can abstract the location of the unit? We could simply say that since the unit is moving into plains, it would cost 1 point, or say that since the unit is moving from mountains, it should cost 3 points. So we're left with 3 choices:
1, The "realistic" way: You could imagine the unit is in the center of the tile and would be traveling halfway through the mountains and halfway through the plains to travel to the center of the plains... So, it would only cost half to move through each tile. 1.5 + 0.5 = 2.0, so it would cost 2 points no matter which way you're going! However, if you're traveling from mountains to forest (1.5 + 1.0 = 2.5) it would cost 2.5 points. Not all movement will cost whole turns.
2, Abstract way #1: The movement cost is taken from the movement cost of the tile you're moving into. Moving into a different type of terrain or moving the unit one tile at a time will not affect the system.
3, Abstract way #2: The movement cost is taken from the movement cost of the tile you're moving from. Moving into a different type of terrain or moving the unit one tile at a time will not affect the system.
4, The lazy way: Leave the system as it is :(
So what do you all think? Is a change really necessary? Would it be hard to implement? Would it change gameplay too much? If there aren't any problems with changing it, what system should be used? If I could get an opinion from one of the developer(s?) I'd really appreciate it :)