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[flieroflight]

This is a simple suggestion that is designed to aid control of military units in situations.
basically, it is a preference that your dwarfs follow when given combat orders or when active but without any given order

examples-
stick together- causes your dwarfs to stay within 3 tiles of each other when moving
split up- causes each dwarf to attack a different enemy.
Kill the strong- orders dwarfs to attack most dangerous enemys first
kill the weak- the opposite of the above
Help people out- Attack enemys already in combat with a fellow dwarf.
Kill the ranged- orders dwarfs to attack ranged units
Kill the fighters- Opposite of above

It would probably be ordered into Formation and tactics
Formation is ones that affect how it moves- staying together, splitting up..
Tactics are setting preferred enemies.

[IT 000]

stick together- causes your dwarfs to stay within 3 tiles of each other when moving

So when the archers arrive your dwarves won't attack them because they are farther away then three tiles.

split up- causes each dwarf to attack a different enemy.

I prefer our current AI of attack nearest. It allows dwarves to gang up on enemies.

Kill the strong- orders dwarfs to attack most dangerous enemys first

How do you determine danger level? If your in a siege, they're all gabbos, if a FB shows up he's the only enemy. Furthermore your dwarves will ignore all other units until said strong unit is dead. They will get pelted with arrows or stabbed with swords until then.

kill the weak- the opposite of the above

Same as above.

Help people out- Attack enemys already in combat with a fellow dwarf.

Most of the time Dwarves are outnumbered and have little time to spare to defend a fellow dwarf. I don't see how this would help.

Kill the ranged- orders dwarfs to attack ranged units

Ranged units are in the back, dwarves would kamakazi through the melee, oftentimes getting killed themselves. Furthermore, because of the lack of variety, ambushes are oftentimes all ranged or all melee. Furthermore, Dwarves would refuse to target fighters.

Kill the fighters- Opposite of above

Same as above

Don't think I'm being callous here, I've played an old OS 9 game called Cythera which had the same tactics. And the same problems. It was just easier to set all your followers to  'Attack Nearest' to prevent problems.

[LionSilverWolf]

stick together- causes your dwarfs to stay within 3 tiles of each other when moving

So when the archers arrive your dwarves won't attack them because they are farther away then three tiles.

That wasn't what was said at all. The suggestion is to have your dorfs stay nearby instead of running all over the map after enemies.

split up- causes each dwarf to attack a different enemy.

I prefer our current AI of attack nearest. It allows dwarves to gang up on enemies.

Sometimes enemies are so weak in comparison there's no point in them ganging up.

Kill the strong- orders dwarfs to attack most dangerous enemys first

How do you determine danger level? If your in a siege, they're all gabbos, if a FB shows up he's the only enemy. Furthermore your dwarves will ignore all other units until said strong unit is dead. They will get pelted with arrows or stabbed with swords until then.

Clearly there would be some sort of mechanism in place that would determine a general CR for enemies. That goes hand-in-hand with this sort of suggestion.

kill the weak- the opposite of the above

Same as above.

Ditto.

Help people out- Attack enemys already in combat with a fellow dwarf.

Most of the time Dwarves are outnumbered and have little time to spare to defend a fellow dwarf. I don't see how this would help.

It would help by getting a dorf that's chasing a retreating enemy to save the life of one that's being mauled.

Kill the ranged- orders dwarfs to attack ranged units

Ranged units are in the back, dwarves would kamakazi through the melee, oftentimes getting killed themselves. Furthermore, because of the lack of variety, ambushes are oftentimes all ranged or all melee. Furthermore, Dwarves would refuse to target fighters.

Or if you have ranged dorfs it would get them to take out their counterparts.

Kill the fighters- Opposite of above

Same as above

Again, you could have your ranged dorfs target the melee dorfs alone, or get your melee dorfs to ignore the ranged ones.

Don't think I'm being callous here, I've played an old OS 9 game called Cythera which had the same tactics. And the same problems. It was just easier to set all your followers to  'Attack Nearest' to prevent problems.

Tactics are only as good as the people using them and offering players more control and variety is a frakking good idea. Especially considering the aim of the game is realism and 'attack nearest' is not always realistic.

[NW_Kohaku]

Even if you don't agree with the specific tactics that Flierofflight posted, SOMETHING should exist to make combat more than a simple test of who has the best armor and experience levels.

Right now, for all the much-vaunted advancements of the combat system, combat still just comes down to having better equipment and more experience points than the other side, exactly like the most basic of RPGs.  Sure, it's more random and over-the-top than most, but as long as the only thing you can do is tape down the "ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!" button until everything is dead, how are we playing a game any more advanced than Final Fantasy 1?

When there's special attacks in Adventurer Mode, that will potentially make some difference (unless there's some special attacks that are just obviously better than others, in which case we'll get people taking spiked chains and doing nothing but trip attacks all the time again), but then we still won't get those in Fortress Mode. 

We need SOMETHING to do in combat in Fortress Mode, or else the combat model is largely wasted.  I know I don't even bother looking at combat anymore, since there's no reason to - I can't interact with it in any way, so why bother?  I'll just wait until the combat is over, and assess the damage.  In the meantime, I'm going to do something much more interesting - like sorting out a sock-industry hiccup caused by a temporary shortage of thread. 

Something as basic as a "don't charge into combat" (even if it means letting the dwarves get peppered by arrows) and having the ability to order them into maneuvers around the enemy, rather than just charging blindly into whatever fight they are going into, would make a huge amount of difference in simply making the player involved AT ALL in combat. 

Having one dwarf distract an enemy and fight defensively while another goes for the kill makes perfect sense against a megabeast.

Giving some dwarves the ability to cover comrades while they go in for the attack is both historically accurate and something that gives the player a reason to even bother looking at who is aggressive and who needs protection.

For that matter, giving players an ability to force a wounded dwarf to retreat gives players a reason to actually watch what injuries a dwarf is sustaining, rather than just coming back five minutes after the brawl is over to see how many coffins are going to be filled.

These shouldn't be generic tactics, copy-pasted from some other game, but there should be something for the player to do to make the player care about combat at all.

[IT 000]

That wasn't what was said at all. The suggestion is to have your dorfs stay nearby instead of running all over the map after enemies.

Really he said 'stay within 3 tiles of each other when moving', this means when they are moving they stay withing 3 tiles of each other.

Sometimes enemies are so weak in comparison there's no point in them ganging up.

In DF combat? I had an iron whip from a goblin lasher go straight through my adamantine clad soldier.

And if you told someone that carp was the most deadly creature in the game they would laugh at you. DF is full of surprises.

Clearly there would be some sort of mechanism in place that would determine a general CR for enemies. That goes hand-in-hand with this sort of suggestion.

But how though? Any modder knows that there is no attack power in weapons, if you based if off of skill, a legendary hammerdwarf is still worse then a competent swordsdwarf, if you base it off of the value of weapons you'll find that people are ignoring the legendary hammergob because his fellow gob is hauling around a steal long sword.

It would help by getting a dorf that's chasing a retreating enemy to save the life of one that's being mauled.

What if you were outnumbered though, which happens in so many situations. The AI goes wonky donkeys.

Let's say you have three dwarves against four goblins. Dwarf A and B are fighting Goblins 1 and 2. Dwarf C is fighting Goblins 3 and 4.

Because of the AI dwarves A and B detect that dwarf C is outnumbered and both of them stop fighting 1 and 2 andcharge to his rescue.

Goblin 1, 2, 3, and 4 are now all huddled around Dwarves A, B, and C. Dwarves get killed.

Even in combat your dwarves would be as smart as piano wire. Dwarves would stop attacking whoever their attacking and run over to help another dwarf. In the process getting killed themselves by the person that's chasing after them. They would prefer to go around a pond to help a dwarf then stand and fight the goblin they are currently facing. The AI would not work.

Or if you have ranged dorfs it would get them to take out their counterparts.

Once again, ignoring the melee group that storms right through the front line to kill your archers.

Again, to quote myself "Furthermore, because of the lack of variety, ambushes are oftentimes all ranged or all melee." making the AI useless except in a very unlikely situation.

Tactics are only as good as the people using them and offering players more control and variety is a frakking good idea. Especially considering the aim of the game is realism and 'attack nearest' is not always realistic.

There are tactics in the game, and offering the players more control is a very good frakking idea, and I support such an idea. But the tactics have to be good tactics. You are giving AI more credit then it's worth, it's called artificial intelligence for a reason. Plus you fail to take how much coding it would take to make such a system. Even in other games with better AI you still come across the problem of NPC's running into walls and failing to go around.

How is 'attack nearest' not realistic? Attack the first person you see. Seems realistic to me.

[Korgus]

There could be a way of setting up custom formations as well, that'd be useful.

[Sunday]

Could be wrong, but I think that combat is going to be further revamped for the army stuff, in the (hopefully not too far) future. IIRC Toady has already talked a bit about adding editable formations, though I'm not sure when. . .it might have been during the 40d days.

Anyway, there is the (hitherto unused) "military tactics" skill. I do think it would be nice if there was more to its use than just a "+1 to combat to all squadmates," but that doesn't really sound like something Toady would do, so I'm optimistic.

There is a tiny bit more than just "equipment+experience"—at least a given animal's facing side has been determined (so you can attack from the side, or behind, or whatever). However, the AI doesn't actually use those determinations, which means they add very little currently, unless you, the player, make an explicit goal of exploiting it (ambush from behind with marksdwarves, frex, which is kind of a pain to set up).