What if to make them lifelike; to some extent like a living village… Reason to have at least some bit of realism, but not completely.
I think you missed what I meant. Unsure… I am not disagreeing or agreeing with this, as I am 50-50 on it.
If all just ran to banner, then why have the courage stat? There would be no apparent fear, just point A to B if enemy spotted. What I am saying is that it shouldn’t happen all the time absolute that they would go directly to banner. Have some use of the stat. Granted I personally don’t like when they run into corners and just stay there; I would assume they would still want to get away and not sit there being hit upon.
People normally when scared will do lots of different things in Life. I have seen it happen. They don’t always run to safety when scared. Only those with a clear head will do that every single time, usually; but that is going a bit too far into realism.
What I would like to see is an affect of the military units being nearby to instill a bit more courage to those around so they will not just stay put cowering. Although I haven’t seen them stay put in one place to be beat on often; it usually only happens when they get stuck on terrain or cornered with hardly anywhere to run.
One thing I do agree with is they shouldn’t head into corner to get themselves stuck.
Right now there is no military presence in the game, at least not in the sense I am thinking on a mechanical level. After all the hearthlings don’t seem to be affected much by military presence; not matter how much the score or power is. One thing they do have is enemy intimidation which is essentially military presence of the enemies influence to their enemies. So the other way around. The tougher the enemy dependent upon hearthling courage with no other factor to determine how scared they would be.
Maybe it should be a 1 or 2 stat that would only cower, while the rest will just run with sense.
All I am saying is it should still happen, but not with those with a good courage level. Someone panicked will usually act in the moment of first thing to mind; which in this case is just to get away from the enemy. If the safety is quite a long ways away; ie the banner, that wouldn’t make much sense; especially if the military is already taking care of the threat.
Guess my hearthlings I have been getting are above 1 & 2 mostly, but the enemies are getting stronger so only the ones at 3 seem to be frightful at the moment.
I am not saying I disagree with the OP, just that I do not fully agree. 