I don’t want to fill out a standard bug report for this yet because I’m not 100% on whether this is an actual bug, but can the developers please make some sort of change to stop military units from chasing trade carts when there are other enemy military units around? Or can any automatic attack from one of your units on a trade cart automatically default to Defensive mode, so the unit will return to where they were after a certain point instead of following it across the entire map?
I can’t overstate how maddening this is for me, and it’s really the only major criticism I have left after all of DE’s other changes. In a big game where there are a lot of battles going on and your attention has to be divided so many different ways, I really want to be able to leave part of my army attacking at will for a minute or so without worrying that they will all start chasing enemy trade carts away from the battle. This has screwed me over before in multiplayer and AI matches alike. It’s really hard to coordinate a battle if my cavalry keeps getting distracted by trade carts. The last game I played I had to keep redirecting a dozen or more cav that kept grouping up on a single cart. I’ve lost track of units that ended up chasing carts halfway across the map (and somehow didn’t get killed). If they end up killing the cart and there is nothing around, you end up with units scattered around the map, doing nothing. It really drives me nuts.
A few reasonable solutions:
- If a group of units is in the area and an enemy trade cart passes by, only have one unit chase after it
- If units are in the area and an enemy trade cart passes by, have units initiate chase but only in defensive mode, so they return to where they were or go after someone else if they move too far away
- Have units ignore trade carts if other enemy military units or villagers are in the area
Maybe even a combination of those would be better.
I don’t really think a saved game file is necessary because this always happens no matter what. Just start a game, initiate a battle in an area where enemy trade carts are moving by, and they’ll eventually chase after them forever, leaving the battle.