Found out something regarding the footmen, completely by accident. In my town, I needed some things cleaned up, so I turned their “Job” off in the management screen. This has caused them to only run around hauling things, and do the idle animation when they’re not.
Well I also found that it’s made them more useful in defense too. No longer are they walking around my fields at the other end of town, but instead are now staying in the same areas as the majority of my hearthlings. When an enemy comes along, they still run to attack them, but being they’re with the group, they micro manage themselves better. Now this isn’t a cure all, and there are times they’re still across town when I need them, but that being said, I can still rally them to a location.
Either way, it’s something I noticed, that I’m sure will be changed in the future, but might be a foot note now about how they act as to how footmen controls / patrols change in the future.
That is an interesting find, I agree. I assumed if you turned their job off they wouldn’t patrol at all or would refuse to attack in defense. I’ll have to try it out.
I have ‘patrol routes’ on my personal wishlist for footmen. I’ve not bothered to try and see if it’s a part of their future ideas or goals for them yet but it’s a feature I’ve seen in other similar city building games and would be very useful over the random slow-walk patrol they do now which may or may not have them moving in areas you need them.
IMHO, I think footmen are just on their lists of things to finish, especially with their direction for Alpha 15. Because besides patrol points, their whole algorithm for moving is sluggish and bogged down.
For the first games that wasnt any prob because you cant make big Cities and there was no Containers so itit was normal to add this to the storage and fields xD
