Route stiffness in index map?

I’m trying to prettify my index map a bit, but the documentation isn’t helping much. It describes the “route-stiffness” setting as determining how the map connections bend, but not matter what I do they won’t connect unless they’re right next to each other and pointing towards each other.

Essentially, I want my map to look like this:
(FG = Front Gate, SG = Side Gate, T = Tower)

__|__|__
SG|T_|__
__|FG|__

I’d like a curved line to connect SG and FG, but instead SG has a straight line sticking south and FG has a straight line sticking west, and they don’t meet each other.

Here’s my code describing my rooms and index map:

The Tower is north of the Front Gate.
South of the Side Gate is west of the Front Gate.
Index map with the Side Gate mapped west of the Tower.

I thought leaving out the last line would do something, but all it did was shift SG down one square like you’d expect and leave everything else exactly the same (including the broken connections).

This brings me to “route-stiffness”. I thought changing that would help, but no matter what I set it to (I’ve tried 250 and 0), nothing changes.

So two questions, really. What is the point of route-stiffness? And is there even a way to go about what I’m trying to do?

I think the route-stiffness only affects the shape of the curves when rendering an EPS map. It doesn’t affect room placement on the grid.

Well I guess that explains it. Thanks!