perf: weight-aware A* heuristic + tamed road repulsion (route-preserving speed fix)

A* was searching almost the whole island for every road. Godot's stock
estimate-to-goal is plain straight-line distance, which assumes every step
costs 1 — but a step through mountains costs up to 401 and a step near an
existing road cost 10,001. With the estimate that far below reality, A* cannot
rule anything out, so it degenerates toward Dijkstra.

Two changes, both aimed at that:

1. RoadPathGrid overrides the estimate to scale it by HEURISTIC_WEIGHT (3.0),
   i.e. weighted A*. Paths may be up to 3x costlier than the theoretical best
   in exchange for exploring far less. This does NOT push roads over mountains:
   a ridge costs hundreds of times more than going around, which a 3x bias
   nowhere near pays for.

2. ROAD_REPULSION_PENALTY replaces the hardcoded +10000 with 250. The old value
   made ground near a road effectively infinite, and it compounded — each road
   drawn made the next search slower. 250 still strongly discourages roads from
   running alongside each other.

Terrain weights are untouched: the mountain curve (1 + elevation^3 * 400),
beach and wasteland costs are exactly as before, so mountains remain expensive
and roads still avoid them. Routing, tiers, smoothing and grid resolution are
also unchanged.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Tools/Scripts/MapGenerator.cs

@@ -625,7 +625,9 @@ public partial class MapGenerator : TextureRect
 		GD.Print($"[A*] Starting Logistics Pathfinding for {MapSize}x{MapSize} world...");
 		_highwayPaths.Clear(); _branchPaths.Clear(); _ruggedPaths.Clear(); _trailPaths.Clear();
 
-		AStarGrid2D astar = new AStarGrid2D();
+		// RoadPathGrid is a stock AStarGrid2D with a scaled-up distance estimate, so the
+		// search stops flood-filling the island for every road. See the class for why.
+		AStarGrid2D astar = new RoadPathGrid();
 		astar.Region = new Rect2I(0, 0, MapSize, MapSize);
 		astar.CellSize = new Vector2I(1, 1);
 		astar.DiagonalMode = AStarGrid2D.DiagonalModeEnum.OnlyIfNoObstacles;
@@ -836,6 +838,23 @@ public partial class MapGenerator : TextureRect
         }
     }
 	
+	/// <summary>
+	/// How much extra a step costs near an already-drawn road. This is what stops new
+	/// roads from lying on top of old ones — it is SEPARATION, not terrain avoidance,
+	/// so it is unrelated to the mountain/beach/wasteland weights.
+	///
+	/// It used to be 10,000, which was far past "discourage" — a normal step costs 1,
+	/// so it made the ground near a road effectively infinite. That wrecked the search:
+	/// every later road had to weigh routes costing tens of thousands, which is exactly
+	/// the situation A* handles by giving up on being clever and searching everything.
+	/// Worse, it compounded — each road drawn made the next one slower.
+	///
+	/// 250 still means "strongly prefer not to run alongside an existing road" (250x a
+	/// normal step) without dwarfing the search. Raise it if parallel roads crowd
+	/// together; lower it if roads take silly detours to avoid each other.
+	/// </summary>
+	private const float ROAD_REPULSION_PENALTY = 250f;
+
 	private void PenalizePath(AStarGrid2D astar, Vector2[] path, int radius)
 	{
 		int step = Mathf.Max(1, radius / 2);
@@ -847,8 +866,7 @@ public partial class MapGenerator : TextureRect
 					int ny = Mathf.Clamp((int)p.Y + dy, 0, MapSize - 1);
 					var cell = new Vector2I(nx, ny);
 					if (!astar.IsPointSolid(cell)) {
-                        // The true Iron Curtain
+						astar.SetPointWeightScale(cell, astar.GetPointWeightScale(cell) + ROAD_REPULSION_PENALTY);
-						astar.SetPointWeightScale(cell, astar.GetPointWeightScale(cell) + 10000f);
 					}
 				}
 			}
@@ -950,6 +968,44 @@ public partial class MapGenerator : TextureRect
 }
 
 // Place this at the very bottom of the file!
+/// <summary>
+/// The road pathfinder's grid, with one change from stock: a scaled-up estimate.
+///
+/// WHY THIS EXISTS. A* explores outward from the start until the cheapest route it
+/// has found is provably the best. It decides how far to keep looking by comparing
+/// what a route has cost so far against an ESTIMATE of what remains. Godot's stock
+/// estimate is plain straight-line distance — it assumes every step costs 1.
+///
+/// Our steps don't cost 1. A step through mountains costs up to 401, and a step near
+/// an existing road used to cost 10,001. So the estimate was wildly optimistic about
+/// the remaining journey, and A* responded the only way it can: by refusing to rule
+/// anything out and searching almost the whole island for every single road.
+///
+/// Multiplying the estimate makes the search commit to a direction sooner. It's a
+/// well-known trade ("weighted A*"): paths are allowed to be up to HEURISTIC_WEIGHT
+/// times more expensive than the theoretical best, in exchange for exploring far less.
+/// We want believable roads, not provably-optimal ones, so that's a good trade.
+///
+/// It does NOT make roads climb mountains. Crossing a ridge costs hundreds of times
+/// more than walking around it — a 3x bias nowhere near pays for that.
+/// </summary>
+public partial class RoadPathGrid : AStarGrid2D
+{
+	/// <summary>
+	/// How strongly the search commits toward the goal.
+	///   1.0 = stock behaviour: guaranteed-shortest, explores enormously.
+	///   3.0 = default: still routes sensibly around terrain, explores far less.
+	///   higher = faster still, but paths get progressively less considered.
+	/// Raise it if generation is still slow; lower it if roads start looking careless.
+	/// </summary>
+	public const float HEURISTIC_WEIGHT = 3.0f;
+
+	public override float _EstimateCost(Vector2I fromId, Vector2I toId)
+	{
+		return fromId.DistanceTo(toId) * HEURISTIC_WEIGHT;
+	}
+}
+
 public partial class MapDrawProxy : Control
 {
     public MapGenerator Source;