How to make moving units on this map?

About game mechanics so far (to make it more clear):

Rebels (red/orange/yellow) can spawn in provinces based on various conditions or just plain random events (so there is no restriction where, can pop up theroetically anywhere anytime). Rebels are computer controled.

Each province has "control" variable, it can be controled by the government (player) or by rebels (computer), in various degree of control (like 75%:25%). Rebels staying in a province will slowly (or fast) take the control of it and possibly cause the spawning of even more rebel units; they can also try to move to neighbouring province.

When rebels take control over the capital province it's game over for the player (but even just mere controling regular provinces can have grave consequences).

The player has police (blue) and army (green) units [the question of the topic is how to move these around]. Generally, police can take on yellow rebels (easily) and orange rebels (with difficulty) while only army can take on red rebel units. Also, police has an ability to slow down spawning of rebel units in a province they are stationed in.

Army & Police units also affect rebels behaviour, for example yellow rebels will never try to move to a province where there is any police unit present (unless there is more red rebels than police+army units total). Any rebel will try to avoid army units (red rebels will be less likely to care).

Example idea how to move units (post yours):

I have an idea for police. You have for example 20 police units, these are not deployed anywhere (pool of units). You can deploy them anytime anywhere (restrictions below), these just "appear", you can also recall them anytime. The trick is you have to pay for each deployed police unit (every turn), so you don't want to have these deployed unless needed.

Restrictions:

Police can be deployed anywhere (no route/path to your capital needed, nothing like that, you "teleport" them there) as long as:

- there are no red / orange units present in a province (unless you have at least one army unit per such rebel - they are considered blocked then)

- you can deploy only in provinces that are at least 50% under your control

- you can deploy up to 5 police units per turn maybe?

For army I think these should be deployed in military bases of some sort only, this teleportation think does not fit them so well I suppose... And then somwhow move around maybe? Not sure

Changed the picture of the map on the first post (to show actual rebels and police&army).

BTW, I also look for feedback on the map itself (representation of units). Especially a way to indicate how many units are in each province. I was playing with stacking them (these grows big fast :D) or making "dots" above the unit to indicate the numbers. I'm not sure I'm fond of either...

For unit movement, you could try to divide your map into invisible equal sized regions. Then give each unit a speed and those two together would determine how fast a unit would go from its current location to its destination. It would probably be more realistic than moving all the way in one go, especially because your provinces vary quite a bit in size.

Police can probably pop up out of nowhere, since you can consider them as recruited from the people loyal to the regime, so they're already there.

You could also consider lines of communication. It would probably be more difficult to get messages through a rebel-controlled region than through a loyal one. Ports and airports could also affect how fast communication is, probably influence movement as well.

For the amount of units, you could stack them until there are three or four and then just add a small number, for example in a circle or rectangle overlapping with one of the corners.

One remark, the map feels a bit small to me, compared to the size and amount of units in it. If you start adding more landmarks (towns, airports, ...), it would probably become full very quickly. I'm not sure what can be done about it, but the image is quite small so maybe it could be as simple as making the game for a higher screen resolution.

From a tangible side of things (depending on peripherals of course), a click and drag with snap to locations (cities, towns, areas of interest) as well as moving to open ground (to stage units) could work. This could carry over to touch screen using the zoom in gesture (putting one finger on the unit, sliding the other finger to the desired location). By choosing this gesture you can also explore a variety of LODs of your map, when you select your unit and give it a location to move to the map could zoom into a new LOD with the view zoomed in on the unit, their destination, the route (roads, railroad, powerlines, etc) they are taking and perhaps with ETA (#of turns if its turned based, seconds if its real time). The damage the rebels do is important, since its stopping these actions that necetates the player to move units so deciding on threats and levels of threats will bring other moving mechanics to the forefront of your design.

Drag'em :)

Why do you think click to move is not the best method? It seems like the most straightforward.

Some additional information: The game is turn based and for PC. The combat (and position of units) is PER PROVINCE (a unit either is in a province or not), so there is not much room to move around.

One remark, the map feels a bit small to me, compared to the size and amount of units in it. If you start adding more landmarks (towns, airports, ...), it would probably become full very quickly. I'm not sure what can be done about it, but the image is quite small so maybe it could be as simple as making the game for a higher screen resolution.

Well, it's fully resizable (the screenshot is for 1024x768 - so obviously it will be bigger in most cases), I guess I could make the units smaller, thanks.

As for other landmarks, there will be none, that's the maximum (for "other" details you would be switching map mode - economy, militay, infrastructure, support & happiness, etc)

You could also consider lines of communication. It would probably be more difficult to get messages through a rebel-controlled region than through a loyal one. Ports and airports could also affect how fast communication is, probably influence movement as well.

But with this map size? There are 9 provinces total (max distance 3). Would any pathfinding mechanic (communication lines, etc) make any sense here?

and perhaps with ETA (#of turns if its turned based, seconds if its real time)

Again, with this size of the map, ETA would not make much sense I suppose...

you can also explore a variety of LODs of your map

Yeah, mouse scroll (zoom "button") can be used. Ideas how to use it exactly (what details should be shown this way - and most importantly, if this would not be troublesome/annoying in the long run)?

Why do you think click to move is not the best method? It seems like the most straightforward.

Mostly due to the size of the map (number of provinces). I feel the traditional method (a unit is in a province, you select a destination - wait till it arrives) would not be that great (especially since in 90% cases it will arrive to the destination in exactly 1 turn).

But with this map size? There are 9 provinces total (max distance 3). Would any pathfinding mechanic (communication lines, etc) make any sense here?

I'm not an expert on this, but probably not. Especially with the limited number of provinces, it would only apply in a few cases (provinces that don't share a border).

But with this map size? There are 9 provinces total (max distance 3). Would any pathfinding mechanic (communication lines, etc) make any sense here?

I'm not an expert on this, but probably not. Especially with the limited number of provinces, it would only apply in a few cases (provinces that don't share a border).

Yeah... I was afraid it would not work as well. The question is, how to find some mechanic for unit placement/movement for such small map?

When I look at the map I get a feeling it probably should be more like player "allocating units", sort of prioritizing provinces instead of moving units.

I don't know, maybe like the player can teleport any unit anywhere (but there is a limit to 3 transfers/deployments per turn) white the computer trys to move one province at a time. The player would want to first make a cordon of police in provinces surrounding rebels (to prevent/obstacle/slow down of their spread to other provinces) and then send army inside highly rebelious proivinces to get rid of the enemy units.

Units with numbers to indicate number of units in a stack. I guess I could also make a stack slightly bigger depending on number of units.

Or maybe something like this? Predefined 3x rebel and 4x government zones (per province) where units appear/can be placed? It would require a bit bigger provinces but that's not a big problem.

EDIT: Just a thought, if there are 4 governmment slots, maybe do not make stacks of units but one unit per slot, in such case the number on the unit would be its strength (so you have police 1,1,1,2,2,3,4 and decide which one to put - where 1 could be plentiful yet not so useful since they occupy one slot, just like 4 while being 4 times less powerful).