Soldiers Stand Down!

When playing on hard mode. I found it very frustrating that my army would run out towards enemies when they had minimal to no health left. I don’t get why if they are low on health that they think running to attack enemies will help by dying quicker.

I would really like to have a stand down command. So that no matter what I can stop my army from running out and getting themselves killed. Or at least something to stop them when they have minimal health that they won’t run out to attack.

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Hey there @Bones287, this is very similar to this discussion from a few days ago:

Richard (@Brackhar) shared the following:

There is definitely a need to look into Heathling control more, and it’s been acknowledged. I’m curious if you’ve been able to use the hold location command to keep them from charging?

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@jomaxro
hmm, i think it is not quite the same problem. related though as one will lead to the next (suicide armies produced things to pickup in dangerous areas, causing reckless or stupid (or are they the same?) civilians to rush out to claim the items.

hold location will work. But they also have strange behavior at least a couple of a18 releases ago where they don’t react to enemies until they are actually attacked.

@Bones287
For the two related issues, the current workarounds are:

  • Suicide Soldiers: use hold location, or move them far away and hope that by the time they return, clerics would have patched them somewhat.

  • Suicide Haulers: either disable all hauling until the danger is dispatched by soldiers or expired (note that it will just disable hauling to stockpile. it prob will not prevent a non hailing job e.g. a new soldier trying to equip themselves), or lockdown your settlement preventing any pathing to outside (my preferred solution when things just get too stupid to be managed micro)

btw, current Hard Mode is frustratingly hard (frankly speaking, it is not a “hard” that is enjoyable yet). It is normal that you will end up dead if you go by the orthodox methods. You may need to look for the dirty methods (walling yourself in, micro-kiting etc), unless you want to recreate a grand list of casualties for story purposes…

@sphr, didn’t say it was the same, but similar. Both issues are related to limited control of Hearthlings at the moment.

Hi,
You can disable their job and the combat units will go into defensive mode and not attack unless attacked. Is that not working?
Thanks
-Yang

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@jomaxro, oh I have definitely been In that same situation were almost all my hearthlings were slaughtered because of items right in goblin camps and I didn’t realise early enough to disable hauling. But this is a more I know they won’t survive against the enemy but I want to keep them inside my wall castle and stop them from running out as they are the last line of defence. My only work around atm is to demote them to a worker so they will huddle around the flag. Then when the enemy gets sick of trying to break into my castle and disappears or finally walks away then I promote them back to a footmen.

Just wanted to see if it was a possibility for a logic to be built in that makes them not to return to battle until they had reached a certain amount of health.

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@yshan Ah! I did not know I could do that. I will have to try that out.

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