Very interesting discussion! I too get very frustrated, when entering an enemy fortress/encampment, and my units just spread like ravagers as they attack farms and houses- rather than the 20 cavalry charging them.
One idea is to even have a little button for each unit (like the formation button), which allows you to select how that unit acts. For instance, having your cavalry set to Building Priority and having your archers set to Unit Priority.
As such, the attack move can be more flexible, and even be used when scouting early game, to decide how your specific unit should weigh threats. In some cases, you may want that unit to attack the building over the army.
I would say that some comments seem to miss the point: itās not about units not prioritizing other units when using attack move (they already do!), itās about until when.
Currently they prioritize units until they donāt have any in their vision, then they start attacking any building within vision. They do this on their way to the attack move selected area.
I would prefer them to prioritize units until they reach the destination point, and then start attacking buildings, starting by defensive ones.
Some siege only intended against buildings could just do the same but prioritizing buildings.
hi a simple tuning is enough when a person does attack moves if enemy troops are there, the player troops should attack them the enemy troops not the buildings.
I would also like to point out a second behaviour related to Attack Move that itās very annoying:
If a unit starts attacking a building during an Attack Move (i.e. an archer attacking a building because there are not units in itās range), currently it stays with that target until the building itās destroyed or a new order itās issued. Even if new enemy units appear and start attacking our unit.
I would argue that any player would expect that, as this building has been targeted automatically and not purposely by the player, the unit should change the target to the enemy units that have now entered itās radar.
I think that finding archers auto-attacking a house while spears are attacking them itās a sad view that happens too often with lower skill players, but also to everyone else.
I tinki it should work in simpicity as mentioned here:
But I would like to see addition to that if you attack move click to unit, it would attack move to that position prioritising only that unit type. This would make it nicer to control unit types to target specific unit types.
Current right click will force the melee group to spin around trying to target the exact unit when most of the times you just want to target the type, whereas ranged group will just shoot one target and afterwards continue with the closest enemy.
This or then completely new command that would satisfy the need.
I like how SC2 does it. Your units aggro to new threats, with an auto-priority system which AoE4 perhaps shouldnāt do.
aggro
Archers have 5 range. Say you have two small groups of archers slightly spread apart by 2-3 range. Doing different things, attacking a building or something. In SC2, if one group of your army starts fighting enemies, then other nearby friendly units āaggroā on them as well. But the aggro range is small (2-3 range).
auto-priority
Another thing SC2 does is it automatically chooses not the best unit to attack, but a reasonable unit. For instance, Thors shoot both ground and air. It starts shooting ground units closest, but if an air unit appears, it changes attack to that unit for whatever reason. Another example would be a Void Ray (an air unit that shoots both air & ground). It shoots whatever is nearby, but if it has to choose between 2 types of units and one unit is not a threat (cannot shoot air), it will change priority to the high threat unit that could kill it (shoots air units).
A scenario in AoE4 would be your spearmen A-moves a building. Then a melee enemy unit runs and stands hold position 2 range from you that you cannot hit. AoE could have 3-4 options how the AI could react:
Keep hitting the building until destroyed if explicit command was given
Aggro onto nearby units 2 range away automatically
Aggro onto nearby units 2 range away ONLY if they attacked you
SC2 would do option #2 on A-move. But would do option #1 if you focus fired it (right-clicked).
SC2 would behave in #2, which would then trigger #3. When #2 triggers, it might only aggro 50% of your clump of army since it has a radius threshold, then #3 would trigger and now 80% of your army is aggroād and leaving 20% behind too far away still hitting building.
Now to think of it, I think [Ctrl + Righ Click] would make sense to target all of the enemy type since ctrl + click is tied to select all in other cases too.
At this time I have no information on the who/what/where and when this is being/going to be worked on. Sorry for the unhelpful response, but thatās what I got.