Scenario Design

Army Properties and Behavior Settings

(Updated 09-22-2002)

The units or armies that you have placed on your map do not all have to behave the same way. You may want specific units to be guarding a mine, or a stack to stay on a hex and wait for a hero to come along to hire them. To do these things, you have to change the behavior of your unit(s) through the army properties window.

Select the army stack you wish to alter and then right click to bring up the pop-up menu. Then select edit to access the army properties window.

In this window, you change the owner of the unit(s) by selecting Player. The Direction radio buttons allow you to change the facing of the unit. This is not strategically important.

You can see 8 different settings under Behavior in the pulldown menu.

AUTO
The unit stack is affected by what is set in the Independent AI settings on the map settings tab.

• Off - all units garrison
• Easy or Normal - units garrison, scout, or patrol (random)
• Aggressive - units garrison, scout, patrol, raiders, berserkers (random)

More of this in AI Behavior Settings and How They Affect The Game.

PATROL
Army stack stays in range as it moves around the area taking structures. However, this army stack may be hired.

GUARD
Army stack sits on hex until killed. The party cannot be hired.

GUARD AREA
A stack in guard will attack any stack that comes into range of the hex it is standing on. After destroying the intruder, it would return to its original hex.

SCOUT
The army stack may move out of range and attack cities and armies. They may also capture mines and other structures. This setting is ideal if one wants the enemy AI to explore. They may be hired by the player if the race alignment is favorable.

REFUGE
The army stack sits on the hex until a player comes along and hires it. The stack joins the player's side for free if hired.

RAID
The stack goes out of Range. It will attack armies and raze structures belonging to the opposition when it has a good chance of winning the fight. The stack cannot be hired. Be wary that a powerful raiding party can go around razing everything to the ground.

BESERK
Goes out of Range. Attacks no matter what the odds.

*Range is the movement ability of the stack in one turn plus visual range.

You'll notice that unit portrait has a number indicated. That is the ID number which is useful when you want to script an event involving this particular unit.

To add units to this stack, you will have exit this menu. (Press OK or cancel) and then choose units from your units tab and click on this unit stack to add to it.

Note:

With a CPU-only player you can set the AI for its stacks the same way as with Independents, with exception to the stack with its Wizard. - Molog, thread here.

For more related to this topic:
Read - AI Behavior of Event Spawned Units