Raider Attacks and Poor Villager AI

[goersmatthew]

Has anyone figured out a good way to rally your villagers or direct them to the right locations during raider attacks? I find once I've gotten to the copper/iron ages, I can't rally them quickly enough for the increased numbers of raiders. They either walk too slowly to the rally points, or for some reason, run away from the rally point once they arrive.

Also, I can't seem to get them to stay focused on the objective. I right click on a raider, they start walking that direction, but after 5-10 seconds, a few of them start to walk away.

What's more, sometimes they'll run towards raiders once they attack a fellow villager, and sometimes they don't and continue to walk slowly.

All these random AI responses to raider attacks really takes a toll. Sometimes I'll lose a fourth of my population, just because I can't get them to group together in time or attack in unison.

Any thoughts? Or is this just a developer thing they'll need to address?

[buds]

If the raid happens during planting or harvesting or a time when all your villagers are busy (high workload), those that are very far from defensive fighting positions will sprint and eventually run out of stamina.

If you have a very huge area of defensive fighting positions, some far away defenders could hardly reach there and sometimes will grab a second weapon from somewhere else.

Yes, those who were attacked by raptor wild animals will make other villagers react to it especially those that are. It on towers and platforms.

Making a smaller area of walled fortifications is the best strategy I’ve known so far as well as the most effective imo.

Losing 1/4 of population is bad in vanilla especially in hardcore.

Therefore you must the best possible constructions and placements for optimum survival when your settlement grows.

[Captain_Oblivious]

Originally posted by buds:

Losing 1/4 of population is bad in vanilla especially in hardcore.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jesus, I just lost 3 times that of my population in one raid in the bronze age! This wasn't on hard core either! RIP.

[NiceGuy]

Did you sound the alarm? If not and you are gathering people by hand they come to fight as they are (some without weapon) If you give these guys later the attack command they first go to find some weapon. Also if the alarm is not sounding some people seem to be "distracted" from fighting by other tasks 😁 The Alarm stops and prevents all civilian tasks from popping up.
As soon as the message pops up I pause/slow down the game speed and sound the alarm. Every weak/not fighting villager runs to hide inside a house and the fighting villagers run to get there weapons and gather at the corner where the raiders are approaching.
My village has 60 people and I'm in late copper age. Till now this worked fine for each and every attack since start of the game.
This also works great in early stages if predators come to close to the settlement.

[Hanszeehock]

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

Did you sound the alarm? If not and you are gathering people by hand they come to fight as they are (some without weapon) If you give these guys later the attack command they first go to find some weapon. Also if the alarm is not sounding some people seem to be "distracted" from fighting by other tasks 😁 The Alarm stops and prevents all civilian tasks from popping up.
As soon as the message pops up I pause/slow down the game speed and sound the alarm. Every weak/not fighting villager runs to hide inside a house and the fighting villagers run to get there weapons and gather at the corner where the raiders are approaching.
My village has 60 people and I'm in late copper age. Till now this worked fine for each and every attack since start of the game.
This also works great in early stages if predators come to close to the settlement.

Pretty much this. But make sure you have plenty of bows and slingshots. This is a Bronze age attack in Ancient Warriors today

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198091360107/screenshot/784114833974184523

[Captain_Oblivious]

Originally posted by NiceGuy:

Did you sound the alarm? If not and you are gathering people by hand they come to fight as they are (some without weapon) If you give these guys later the attack command they first go to find some weapon. Also if the alarm is not sounding some people seem to be "distracted" from fighting by other tasks 😁 The Alarm stops and prevents all civilian tasks from popping up.
As soon as the message pops up I pause/slow down the game speed and sound the alarm. Every weak/not fighting villager runs to hide inside a house and the fighting villagers run to get there weapons and gather at the corner where the raiders are approaching.
My village has 60 people and I'm in late copper age. Till now this worked fine for each and every attack since start of the game.
This also works great in early stages if predators come to close to the settlement.

Yep. Did all of those. Sounded the alarm, waited for people to gather, cleared out the un-engaged watch towers etc.

Folks were 100% armed, with a mixture of bows, axes & spears. Lots of copper, but some bronze too. Once I was sure they were ready, I moved the people up in one big mass to take on the raiders.
My people were utterly wrecked by just 8 bronze age raiders. Those 8 guys took out nearly 70 people, with only one loss.

I didn't have any problems with earlier raids. Some were of a similar size, but these raiders which wrecked me seemed impossibly tough.

I did notice in earlier raids that combat on different elevations reaaaally doesn't work at all. You'll just end up with mobs swinging away at each other, but doing no damage, if they're on different elevations. Very annoying.

[cdog]

I never use walls, but gates alone act as rally points. If you place 1 in each cardinal direction at the edge of your village your people will rally to the one closest to the raiders when you sound the alarm.

This works great as you get all your people in a mob to meet the raid and I usually don't even lose the gate. (This may not work in hardcore mode)

[buds]

In vanilla, you can’t grow much faster of your population if you don’t use towers and walls. You will end up just replenishing your losses due to raids. You can micro in normal difficulty but you will lose villagers. Whereas if you use towers and partially built walls, you might not lose a single villager at all.

A simple square walls and gates just work fine until you finish all milestones then you can restructure your settlement.

[cdog]

I usually only lose 2 or 3 people per raid (even at steel tech) which is easily replaced by births and migration. Sometimes I'm unlucky/ the raid comes at a bad time and I lose 10 or 15 people - bad news but not game over. I don't think walling in the village is worth the time and material, but the gates work excellent as rally points.

[Wvor]

i find raiders to be an effective population control mechanism built into the game. they do become relentless, and the numbers seem to increase with each wave, but reinforcing helps along with improved guard towers.. but still, they always walk in and take a few of the lower hanging fruits.

[wyrdplace]

I don't have much trouble (in vanilla) with a walled town, gates, towers, and wall platforms. By the time I got to stone walls, I built the walls double thick, so the raiders can't just bust through them anymore. They can still knock down reinforced gates (which honestly should be harder for them than it is), but the outer gates now lead into short passages, and then there's a second gate. It at least slows them down.

Generally, most of the raiders get picked off by archers as they surge around the gates, but it's inevitable that they break through one set of outer gates, and a few will make it inside. Those don't get far, however, before they're killed by the villagers inside.

It used to be much worse, once the raiders learned how to knock down fortifications. Then they surged in at several points.

The biggest problem I have is timing: tired farmers trudging to the open gates, while the raiders advance. Sometimes I can leave some gates open, while closing the gates on the side of the attack, but often some people get trapped outside. They're usually killed. If I manage things carefully, though, I can usually get through an attack with just a few villagers lost and a dog or two.

[Rhoklaw]

As of right now, walls are still utterly pointless. I pointed this out right after the game launched that this was an issue. Gates and towers are your only true defense against raiders. Granted, walls aren't exactly expensive in material cost, but they do take a long time to build and take up valuable villager energy and morale that could be spent else where.

Gates at key locations provide your BEST means of rallying ALL villagers to appropriate engagements as possible. As was stated, unarmed villagers will need to run to the nearest storage to grab a weapon before going to the gate.

With that being said, I have noticed raiders are much more difficult now to kill than they used to be at launch. If I didn't know better, I'd say raiders have way more health than your villagers do. Possibly because raiders are AI and don't start off a raid with 1/2 dead or possibly diseased / dying people.

My latest NORMAL mode game, I'm lucky if I get a 1:1 ratio of raider / villager kills. Despite having towers AND walls. Yes, I know I said walls are useless, but if your villagers are to the point of using steel tools and horse carts, making walls isn't such a drain on energy and morale.

[JagerStripe]

well my town only rallys at the grave yard everytime so i guess they just prefer to wait there to die. they do not attack at all anymore.

[tkraftson]

I'm using the beta branch with armor and having no problem with raiders. I have walls, gates, platforms, and guard towers. I get raided by about 20-25 raiders. Initially I close gates and then when raiders bunch up in front of one gate, I open that gate and let the villagers attack. They only lose 2-5 villagers and kill enough raiders that the rest run off with villagers pursuing them.

[Hanszeehock]

Originally posted by WFGA-JagerStripe:

well my town only rallys at the grave yard everytime so i guess they just prefer to wait there to die. they do not attack at all anymore.

You can manually order them to attack by selecting them then clicking on the raiders

[JagerStripe]

Originally posted by Hanszeehock:

Originally posted by WFGA-JagerStripe:

well my town only rallys at the grave yard everytime so i guess they just prefer to wait there to die. they do not attack at all anymore.

You can manually order them to attack by selecting them then clicking on the raiders

yes but it is on the other side of my town so most everything dies before they can make it to the fight. the whole raider situation seems broken, the town never rallys for me and mostly leave the weapons at home.