Stand ground / pursue orders - combat

[KiwiNuken]

Going Medieval is being lots of fun for me. Please don't take that as a rant against it, it's not. Also, I understand it is under development, which means gameplay is constatly going to change due to additions/tweeks. I have to say, though, combat mechanics could use some attention.

Combat micro would be so much less frustrating if this simple stances as "Stand Ground" and "Pursue Target" could be issued to the settlers. Right now, melee settlers target (seemingly at random) enemies and leave the position you ordered them to stand into, making it really annoying to set up defensive positions.

Another weird and unexpected thing is that archers don't seem to be better protected from arrows coming from enemies below ground. It feels like enemy archers are able to hit just fine even if my archers are 2 floors above, behind windows or merlons.

[kahlen]

Windows and merlons only give partial cover so some arrows will hit them anyway. But as your archers are higher up the enemy archers will have a penalty as they are below you. But if the enemys are good at markmanship they will still hit your archers. This mechanism makes the fight more realistic and I like it that way.

But I agree on your first opinion, they have a tendency to move when you want then to stand their ground. Also I wish there was a mechanic that if their health drops under certain level they should try to find better cover. There is a "flee" mechanic but that only works on undrafted settlers.

[KiwiNuken]

I guess there could be some traits that would dictate how likely a settler is to obey the order to stand the ground under damage. Something like:

"coward" --> Anything more than 25% damage and the settler brakes ranks and seeks cover
"beserk" --> Same damage limit, but settler rages and charges enemies, but with huge bonus damage maybe (to offset the fact that it's probably going to die)
"valiant" --> Only runs if is about to die, something like 80-90% damage threshold
"zealous" --> if settler is a religious adept to the zealot level, then it will never flee battle, no matter what
"commander" --> will never flee and will increase the damage treshold of settlers in a generous radius by something like 15-25%
"merciful" --> will never pusue fleeing enemies
"bloodlust" --> if settler has this trait, will always pursue fleeing enemies while not ordered to stand ground

That would make combate tactically more interesting, IMO, and give a reason to micro it a little bit, but in a way that actually makes sense. Of course, enemies should have the same mechanics working for them. Dunno how hard it would be to change combat AI to work this way, though. But I believe combat will be made way more interesting, specially in late game, if the player can have more control over settlers' behaviour.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Wouldlegit be awesome if we could order them to crouch so they can take better advantage of the merlons too :3

[KiwiNuken]

Originally posted by Jambie Lionheart:

Wouldlegit be awesome if we could order them to crouch so they can take better advantage of the merlons too :3

Maybe only for settlers equiped with shortbow/lightcrossbow and with no heavy armor. Then again, I would rather have better control over their behaviour rather than have one more thing to micro.