Patrol/Attack Move Modifications

The Patrol and Attack Move commands are useful, but can also be a little… frustrating, for me. And I believe I am not the only one.

Several times I use the command to send my units to an enemy’s base, but it’s very easy for the archers to stay behind, attacking some useless lumbercamp on the middle of the way, while the cavalry reach the enemy’s base, but half of them stay attacking houses and farms while the other half are doing what they are supposed to do… attacking the enemy’s units and villagers. This often happens when I have to manage my base while sending the army for an attack.

I think it would be more usefull if the units didn’t automatic attack the buildings (except Town Centers, Castles/Kreposts and Towers/Donjons), and only target others enemy’s units. This way, you could send your units directly to the enemy’s base and don’t worry about them to get lost on the way attacking useless buildings, or even when they are inside the enemy’s base, you wouldn’t have to worry about then attacking houses and farms instead of others units, while you have to quickly manage your base/economy. And, for the units to attack any other building, you have to manually command them.

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When your units are in the enemy base they only attack buildings if there are no more units in their search radius.
Should they attack nothing instead of buildings?
And also imo if you dont pay attention to your army its just your fault if they attack random buildings.
To me your proposal sounds a little cheesy.
Nothing personal though :slight_smile:

I think the mechanic should be unit dependent. So if you do it with any unit except siege, they should focus on enemy units and villagers and ignore buildings (unless you specifically click on the buildings). Siege units will just kill everything including buildings. I do think farms should be ignored no matter what though.

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Indeed, more attention (and ability) by the player solve this problem, but when you have multiple fronts of attacks, it’s harder to controll everything. This is to make the gameplay more… comfortable, and make the units more independent from you.

The most annoying case is when inside the enemy’s base, the smaller search radius of melee units make then attack buildings instead of ranged units. And to solve that, you have to manually pick each of then and command every one to attack the target you want, while, if they ignore buildings, you could select then all and set then to patroll then to the points where the ranged units are. Even if the ranged units are scattered throughout the base.

Good point about siege. They should still target buildings (except farms, as you said).

I read the OP idea that they would move to where you click the Attack Move to… Then when they get there they behave normally… like attacking buildings.

imo this means that you send them to Attack Move through an opponents base, they kill any units on the way. When they arrive they are all in the same area/group and no more units so they start attacking buildings.

For patrol… yes they would ignore buildings and only keep patrolling until they see a unit to attack.

Tbh it doesn’t seem that bad, maybe it could be good for only 1 to work like this. So maybe attack move attacks units + buildings in path… but Patrol only units - forever. Kinda makes more sense with patrol thematically. Like patroling the streets of an enemy town you’ve just conquered, making sure there’s no1 out past curfew or scheming some resistance.

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I like the idea of Attack Move and Patroll having diferent behaviors. Attack Move hit everything and Patroll only units, makes sense.