Right now, if a unit is in any kind of attack state, INCLUDING and MOST IMPORTANTLY a target-attack command (ie. a rightclick on an enemy unit), and the units get even slightly pathblocked, they will default to attacking whatever they can in the immediate area. And I really do mean the SLIGHTEST degree of being pathblocked. For example, just being struck and snared by a Hoplite that a unit has to skirt around slightly is enough for a Cavalry unit to just give up on its clearly defined tasking by the player to go the rest of the distance to the Toxotes and attack them instead.
Despite the idea that this prevents units from getting “stuck” and killed without doing anything, this mostly leads to units being unable to be microed onto the targets the need to be microed onto in a reliable way (ie. heroes on myth units and cavalry on archers, two elements of the game that have consistently been out of balance since launch). It’s entirely a net negative.
The current solution is to spam the attack target command, constantly interrupting your own units and their repeated attempts to stop and attack the closest thing instead of obeying. When you know this fact, you will spend a lot of your time in engagements playing a very peculiar game of spamming the same attack-target command repeatedly to get the “correct” behavior out of your units. This doesn’t make any sense as a thing to have, from any perspective.
The current behavior also removes effective shift-clicking attack-target commands. In legacy AOM, mass archers were very strong, had higher base DPS, and fewer multipliers against them. Even so, shift-clicking micro groups of 3 Cavalry to focus target 3 archers in a row was extremely effective, especially when done across multiple groups of 3 Raiding Cavalry. This micro is just not possible, as Cavalry will give up and waste their damage on just a handful of 45% hack armor infantry units that get maneuvered into the front and the archers into the back with a single formation maneuver. Meanwhile, the cavalry user is forced to furiously try to really micromanage their cavalry on their critical task in their high risk gambit of committing themselves to take out the archers.
This behavior just has to go. If players want units to simply start attacking whatever they can, they can use attack move. Right now, there’s a micro-game that isn’t intuitive and the vast majority of players simply do not know it exists and it has significant balance consequences. Too much is being sacrificed for the single concept that a “stuck” unit that won’t attack is a feel-bad unit. While that concept can be true, having Hippeus “stubbornly” refuse to continue pathing to the Chariot Archers and instead repeatedly stopping to attack the Elephant that’s somewhat in its path feels a lot worse. This just isn’t a healthy trade-off.
That design focus that it’s always better that a unit is always at least doing something also comes across poorly when there’s so many other game elements that don’t follow it. I was just watching Boit’s stream in a team-game and a shockwave used on Hippeus appeared to just make the Hippeus give up on attacking anything, even while being under attack, longer than the stun duration of Shockwave. I know it’s worth spamming attack-move or a move command to “shock” my units back into action as quickly and reliably as possible, but that’s not the way the game organically plays. Units don’t seem to want to come out of some stuns or knockbacks automatically and appear to wait much longer than they should, if not indefinitely. I’m not sure how we can justify having units give up on their target-attack commands so readily to attack something else, and then be so inactive if they’re in any other condition.
Please please please please just change this behavior. Not partway, not just a little bit, but completely respect the attack-target (ie. rightclick on an enemy unit) command. Responsive consistent unit control in the hands of all players is just so much more important than trying to assist some players some of the time.
