Tips for minion management

[machineguy]

Alright devs, so far I'm really enjoying this game. But there is one thing. One thing I absolutely cannot understand right now. And that is minion management. It's such a mess, and it is such a pain in the♥♥♥♥♥ I've been holding back from posting this and have tried to get used to it, but it just seems much more difficult than it has to be.

Problem 1

I have a hard time keeping track of which minions are available to put into a warband, and on top of that you have new minions entering the dungeon all the time.

Suggestion
Perhaps in the area where you can see the activities/lvls/moods for a specific minion type, you could also see how many minions are in warband 1,2,3 etc that way I can go to the minions without a warband and add them to one.

Problem 2

Why does it feel like minions can only be used for offense and not defense?

Suggestion
You know what would be nice? If there was an easier way to have minions defending an area. Perhaps another kind of rally flag such as one that minions won't follow unless there are enemies in the vicinity of it or some kind of "guarding post". I could use a warband flag to have minions guard an area but they will refuse to fulfull their needs.

Anyway, I love the game so far. This is the only thing that really annoys me so far and I hope there will be some kind of solution.

[Biervampir [AUT]]

For your first problem, you can open the warbanner by prrssing the ">>" beside it.
That will show all your minions assigned to this warbanner.
But indeed, it isn't possible to show through the Units tab.

For your second Problem, there's no solution, afaik.
Sorry :/

[machineguy]

I want the opposite of showing minions in the warband. I want to show minions that aren't so I can assign them to one easily.

[Biervampir [AUT]]

Ahhh
sorry, missunderstood then.
Jep, that isn't possible right noe, without micomanagin.

Edit:
Out of interessted:
How do you have your minions assigned to the warbanners?

I mainly use the premade warbanners, and that's working pretty good for me.

[Woudo]

Sounds like you're trying to juggle a dozen different warbands and making the entire process more difficult for yourself. Beast Rally + Rally All is all you need in the majority of cases.

As for minions guarding an area, why would you want your minions jacking off doing absolutely nothing when they could be in the training room getting XP, researching or manufacturing? In what situation would you want to actively encourage what is essentially idle behaviour? Are you protecting workers digging out gold? Use beast rally. Are you protecting an entrance to your dungeon? Use traps,doors or replacement wall.

Need more information to the context of the situation. Give us an example of where you need minions to defend for an extended period of time and the other options cannot work.

[Korvek]

As I understand it, Remi wants to see one of the following three scenarios:

1 - A minion 'stands guard' and then rings a bell or something to summon other minions should he detect a 'threat'.
2 - Minions Prioritise patrolling an area, similar to the worker rally flag.
3 - A rally flag which does exactly the same as a normal flag but allows minions who are unhappy or angry to leave midway and satisfy their needs.

Regarding 1, whilst it sounds a nice idea, really just watching your dungeon and trying to find any breaches or surprise attacks is the solution. Were this implemented, your disorganised minions would just run into a concentrated enemy army, one by one, and simply be destroyed.

Regarding 2, I do not see why this cannot work, but I similarly do not see its use. Either place a defence or keep an eye on the area in question.

Regarding 3, this would largely destroy the purpose of the rally flag. Were minions to abandon the flag, a player would likely lose half of his army.

[machineguy]

After searching the forums, you can add units to your warband via the assign to warflag button and then clicking the unit type in the units tab. You can also do the same with remove from warband.

I wish this was more clear since I would've never thought of it. This helps a lot in managing my warbands efficiently.

[Avenger93]

Originally posted by Woudo:

Sounds like you're trying to juggle a dozen different warbands and making the entire process more difficult for yourself. Beast Rally + Rally All is all you need in the majority of cases.

As for minions guarding an area, why would you want your minions jacking off doing absolutely nothing when they could be in the training room getting XP, researching or manufacturing? In what situation would you want to actively encourage what is essentially idle behaviour? Are you protecting workers digging out gold? Use beast rally. Are you protecting an entrance to your dungeon? Use traps,doors or replacement wall.

Need more information to the context of the situation. Give us an example of where you need minions to defend for an extended period of time and the other options cannot work.

And what if we have a minion for whom the specific job they do is patroling? I remember when I first played this game getting the garrison thinking back to my DK 2 days and imagining what kind of new rework of the marksman dark elf is in this game, only to get this ... downright useless structure that looks like an eyesore and gives me ... a second variety of foundry minion, not as I expected a patroling minion I can design a patrol or route OR guard area for and when an enemy would violate that location, this minnion won't just give me a warning, but it woud also essentialy trigger an emergency raly of nearby minions at the location. With the whole beast system, I honestly expected this dude to be the beastmaster, taking those up to that point generaly useless outside combat beasts and giving them a maintenance role in the dungeon by using them to patrol the dungeon borders.

What would be wrong with that?

And just to clarify something on the garrison: it is useless outside spawning the bile-demon equivalanet augre. It's defensive bonus will mean jack squat when faced with critical enemy mass that will just mop out the denfeses as fast as it usualy does. Making walls tougher to breech ... maybe if you already deployes an augre wall or lucked out on rocky terrain, but otherwise it's neglijable. And yeah I guess technicaly iirc it CAN function like the old guardroom, assing minions to it and they will patrol the dungeon, the problem is: beasts get shanghaied by the beastmaster in the arena, and evey other minion already has a job you want them doing. The Dark Elf has 2 jobs: combat and patrol. I can think of one unit we have that is similar: beastmaster. It fights and it trains beasts. How about he also takes those beasts out to patrol with him hmm? And the garrison becomes his building (rename it kennel or something) and the augre can be spawned by something more apropriate to a foundry minion. And the arena ... the arena can stay a method of training for beasts/minions and maybe a condition for beastmaster to spawn.So he rotates duty, one guy trains, the second patrols, and they switch up.

[Korvek]

As stated before, I personally do not really see the point of a patrol/guard room. Unless you play against the AI, or a weak player, any concentrated force would just take out your minions one by one as they arrived. Put simply: If you have an army of 30 minions, and the enemy just has, say, five guards, those guards are going to be killed very quickly. If, then, another ten enemy minions trickle in, in a disorderly fashion, they shall just be wiped out. This would put the enemy down fifteen minions and make a battle almost impossible to win. With that said...an alarm construct would not be a bad idea.

I do like the idea of the augre acting as a guard though, simply because I do not think the game needs another minion working in the foundry. With that said though, if you pay attention to the minimap, you would know whenever there is an attack/dungeon breach.

I do have to say though that you can easily turn beast battles off, if you want your beasts to be ready for combat. Also, although I was awful at Dungeon Keeper 2...I always found the dark elf to be useless. I personally think that the augre is a much better minion. With that said, I do agree that the augre ought to be buffed or made more interesting. Similarly, I hardly ever use the garrison. I think that it probably is a decent room, I just never use defences in a defensive fashion, I throw them into a battle instead.

[Woudo]

You need to give a valid reason for why there should be patrols in the first place. "I miss Dark Elves" isn't a valid reason.

Originally posted by Avenger93:

- not as I expected a patroling minion I can design a patrol or route OR guard area for and when an enemy would violate that location

As Webber has already stated (twice), there is no benefit to having minions guard a location over using cannons. Minions can be baited away onto Neutral ground where it can be hard to recover them, and if an enemy sends in an attacking force, your minion will be unconscious before you can reinforce. They're also far more valuable than a cannon, and time spent doing nothing is time not spent producing crates, training or researching.

Originally posted by Avenger93:

- it woud also essentialy trigger an emergency raly of nearby minions at the location.

In DK1, you don't get told when somebody is knocking down your door. You'll get one message when your dungeon is initially breached, but any heroes that come along after that are quiet as mice. Also in DK1 is the Alarm trap. It makes a loud noise and casts Call-to-Arms when triggered. Sounds pretty useful right?

It only saw use as a setpiece trap for mapmakers to summon heroes from nearby rooms. To the player, it was completely useless.

Imagine how doubly worthless it would be in WFTO where you get given an alert whenever someone so much as thinks about attacking something.

Originally posted by Avenger93:

- I honestly expected this dude to be the beastmaster, taking those up to that point generaly useless outside combat beasts and giving them a maintenance role in the dungeon by using them to patrol the dungeon borders.

Have you actually played any skirmish matches? Do you have any idea how annoying it is when your valuable Occuli wander into the enemy dungeon and get themselves killed? When you have beasts stomping around in neutral territory and you're unable to recall them?

The absolute last thing I would want to do is intentionally have my beasts fighting and dying on neutral territory knowing they're constantly using up my minion recruitment timer.