Soldier Behaviours and Patrol Routes

So I know that the Dev’s are a bit too busy to be dropping by these forums very often so I’ll throw this out to the community! How likely do you think it is to set patrol routines for your soldiers protecting your kingdom? At the start, it’s good to have fighters standing around or hunting nearby I suppose but once your kingdom starts growing into more than one city and things start getting large, to clump soldiers in areas would be a waste of resources.

Instead, if you could plan patrol routes so that a group of soldiers could follow a designated loop around the city to work as both a policing force as well as a raid alarm. Fewer soldiers could cover more area and untie valuable people who could be used for other trades if everything was planned properly.

I know this can be modded in but for those of us with 0 programming skills, how likely do you think this feature will be implemented for release? Has their been any talk of paradigms?

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I’m pretty certain the devs have confirmed that this will be in, and it makes sense that it would be. So yer, assume it’s in!

Also paradigms of what exactly? Could you elaborate a bit more?

military tactics (assigning guard units, grouping units, patrols, etc) are very heavy RTS elements… i would definitely love to see some of these features…

I want to have some sort of trigger control systems in place so I don’t have to micro every little aspect of combat. If a wall or gate goes down, I want to be able to have a preset command list so that it just happens. Also priority targets, It would be great if my archers automatically opened fire on casters that are within range rather than just attacking the nearest enemy. It would be super important for siege weapons, a single mounted soldier could thwart all of your catapults by constantly moving around to avoid fire (I’m of the school of thought that siege weapons should be area of effect rather than auto-hitting their targets with the AI guessing where the target will be)
I’d like to be able to tell my soldiers to push out on a fallen gate so that some carpenters can build a new gate to hold the integrity of the wall, etc.

Ah thanks so much! Glad to hear that!

I was thinking paradigms of AI; having a menu with buttons for patrol route, defend, escort. Clicking one would automatically change your mouse to define a patrol route and speed (faster would tire them out quicker), defend would have them defend a building and automatically change shifts between day/night crew (as one slept and the other stood guard) or escort (where you would highlight a person or caravan to escort and the soldiers would not chase enemies but remain near to guard).

@Kudro yes exactly what I mean! We should micro manage orders, planning and equipment but they should be able to have their own battle/defend strategies (attack magic user, attack spread, attack same target, etc). We should also be able to micro if we need to, in order to interrupt someone and have them do something very specific.

I was thinking maybe they could be a Captain the guards report to. And if their is any kind of danger at night maybe they could send up a flare (flaming arrow) into the air to warn the town danger is coming. Then your town’s people can get ready for the incoming attack. By ringing a bell or blowing a horn and closing the game and garbing weapons or hiding in their homes for safety.

These ideas would help so well in case of titan attacks (if the weakest guys rush Cthulhu, :smile:, they won’t be there for long ) Also this would make it soooooo much easier.

I -like- the idea of patrol routes, especially if there is going to be fog of war. Some sign of enemy movement such as tracks the AI Can recognize as well would be good.

For example, a mounted patrol group goes outside the city gates and does their circuit; finding goblin tracks. They can then automatically follow the goblin tracks or make a ping on the map and wait for instructions or make a ping on the map and carry on, allowing the player discretion in sending out a larger force or the patrol to investigate or ignoring them entirely.

Tracks would disappear after a certain time of course.

I don’t know if this is outside the scope of the mapping for the town/city though?

i believe we will be seeing a fog of war… yup, here’s the quote:

Will you be able to see the whole of the map at once and everything
that happens on it or will you be forced to like send
villagers/soldiers to investigate certain parts of the map (fog of
war)?

“We are planning on fog of war.”

i really like this approach to drawing the player outside their defenses (and encouraging exploration)…

I think there should definitely be patrol zones in the zones list so that you can assign where the footmen and future soldiers can go instead of them just going around stockpiles and farms. I’ve had trouble of them following a stockpile near my mine when goblins came at my gates from the complete other side

this is planned and you could just make stockpiles that can’t store anything and just make them patrol that also heres the previous thread for it Soldier Behaviours and Patrol Routes so @SteveAdamo could you please move this

Okay thanks @Gridnick for telling me i just have had a lot of problems with it

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Im not sure if it’ll work my suggestion as i don’t have the game cowers in the corner for a while, so i can’t be sure if it works

I does and it doesnt. The do patrol stockpiles but they patrol all of them! So if you put one way in a mine then your guys will walk all the way into the mine as well. A tool to tell my guys where to patrol would be amazing! Until then you really have to plan where you put your stockpiles!

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Now that we’re marching towards Alpha 9, I would really like to bring this topic up again. Currently the guards are patrolling any stockpile or farm. So if the Alpha 9 raids start to occur, my guards could be anywhere.

I usually dig out a big square around my village and leave one tile open as the passage way. I could use walls too of course. So the only place I need my guards to be is at the passage way. I would love to set a patrol area there!

You can do that with the Party Attack order, but of course they’ll stand there forever and not sleep or eat, so you’ll need to manage that.

Also, who is to say that the Alpha9 raids wont bash down walls or carry ladders for pits etc…