My workers won't stop marching to their death

Suggestions
1

TL;DR: A Footman died right by a boss, and now all my Workers keep marching over there to pick up his stuff and keep getting killed.

So I chose not to appease the Goblin raiders in my current game, and as a result a big goblin camp with a boss showed up on my map. I only had two Footmen, but I sent them both over there to kill the boss. Bad idea. One of my Footmen died, and after that point, literally every worker I had proceeded to walk over to his grave site and try to grab the armor he dropped. Now I have no workers. :frowning2:

What’s worse, I can’t recruit any new Footmen (so that I can actually kill the boss) because they always try to go grab the sword that’s on the ground rather than pick up a new one from my stockpile. It’s an infinite death machine.

Suggestion: I think there should be some way to deal with this kind of behavior. Some possible approaches:

  • Tweak the civilian AI so that it only loots items if there are no enemies nearby. (Easiest)
  • Let the player designate an area as “dangerous” so that civilians avoid it. (Most player control)
  • Flat out change the AI so that it never sends civilians into areas that are too close to enemies. (Most drastic)

Thoughts, anyone?

2 Likes
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I agree at least that

3

I’ve had this happen too. I’ve learned to not send anyone to deal with the goblins unless I have at least an archer and a cleric, lol. But I’ve had this happen when a golem killed my carpenter who was out gathering, same issue.

It’s also hilarious to watch the workers run away from baddies, decide to pick an item up, run away from baddies, try to return to the item…get stuck in a loop until the battle is over.

1 Like
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I had this idea of ownership being tied to where the item is dropped, so items dropped in a goblin camp would be considered lost and items dropped by a goblin thief next to the stockpile they came from wouldn’t need to be selected with the loot command.