Enemies doesn't attack as a group

[juanval]

Hello again. Today I decided to play the demo and battles are great with lot of drama and strategy. ;D
I see an issue: Sometimes, some enemies remain in the corners of the map and don’t attack until you discover them. This makes battles much easier.
For example: 8 enemies appear and other 4 remain quiet. I deal with the group of 8 and then I look for the other 4 scattered enemies. It would be realistic that the entire group of 12 enemies should attack at the same time.
I hope AI will take this into account in the future. Enemy’s party should attack as a group. What do you think?

Edit: I was playing the “Early game” scenario

[Rap]

What you describe is something the game inherited from its X-Com roots; in some scenarios enemies are just placed randomly all over the map, roaming until they see something to attack, or see their allies being attacked. Enemies have limited vision just as Battle Brothers do, and unlike for the player, their individual vision isn’t aggregated into vision for the whole group. This pushes gameplay slightly more towards careful advancement and exploration. On the other hand, in the “Defend the Hill” and “Line Battle” scenarios all enemies know of your position and will attack in concert, which puts an immediate focus on fighting it out.

Both feel slightly different to play, and we’ll probably have both in the final game, weighting more towards battles that play out like in the “Line Battle” scenario, with two armies directly opposing each other once they engage on the worldmap. Certain battle conditions, however, like attacking a bandit camp or arriving late to defend a town that is being raided, would have enemies more randomly placed around the map, without every single enemy being aware of your presence from the start. We’ll try to find a good balance for the final game.

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[juanval]

Anyway, a scattered enemy should hear the sound of battle and rush into it to help their companions. It’s not realistic to see an isolated bandit rushing into battle once he is discovered (in a map corner), against my 6-8 men when all their companions are killed.
In XCOM (and the lovely xenonauts), an isolated allien is dangerous because it can kill a soldier with a shot. In Battlebrothers, an isolated zombie is an easy target for our archers and doesn’t represent any danger.
It would be nice to see battles where all enemies go straight to to the fight.

It’s great to read your clear and big explanations. Not only a few words. ;D

[Rap]

Enemies don’t rush into battle once they’ve been discovered (they have, in fact, no idea whether they’ve been discovered or not) but once they themselves discover the player, are being attacked (which reveals the attacker to them, just as it does for the player), see their allies rushing into battle, or have vision to an ally which knows of a player position and shares that information. That is, assuming the enemy thinks that attacking is a good option given the tactical situation; a bandit wouldn’t rush to attack 6-8 men on his own, and even skeletons right now often prefer to retreat to a more defensible position or towards allies if the player has a clear numerical advantage that the skeleton knows about (again, limited vision!), or at the very least play more defensively (use shieldwall, spearwall, etc). Zombies don’t care for these kinds of considerations, though, which is one reason why they’re easy to outplay.

If I understand you right, you’d like enemies to rush towards the player from all across the map once a fight breaks, though, on the basis that they should hear the sound of battle no matter how far away they are?

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[juanval]

Rap wrote:

If I understand you right, you’d like enemies to rush towards the player from all across the map once a fight breaks, though, on the basis that they should hear the sound of battle no matter how far away they are?

In a terrain size where combat happens, anybody can hear the sound of battle. Sorry for my bad english. Perhaps instead of rush into battle I would mean approach to battle.

I think if enemies see allies going to battle, they can do 2 things, go to battle or flee, not remaining quiet gathering flowers ;D until my party, after dealing with the others, find the isolated enemy.
I ended “Line Battle” scenario right now for the first time, and I think this is the correct way for enemies to approach to battle. All enemies are close to my party, so none is wandering the map scattered. Is nice to see the inteligent AI, with skeleton archers firing arrows from the distance, the damn necromancer raising deads from the distance too, and all the melee enemies fighting. Nice work. With the correct AI, this game will be great.

[juanval]

I bring this topic again because in certain combats, enemies are dispersed and attack one by one. I could understand this behaviour in undead enemies, but in BB even human bandits do it. I had an interesting encounter against few poachers some raiders and ¡one bandit leader! When the combat started my group was at the south part of the map and enemies appeared from the shadows totally dispersed, attacking 1 or 2 vs my 12 soldiers. More than a combat it seemed a parade. It was suposed to be a great battle, but the initial disposition of enemies ruined the experience.

On the other hand, when battles start with enemies forming a wall at the right part of the screen, the experience is superb. AI of enemies in BB is one of the best I’ve experienced in combat games. And the combat of BB is epic.

Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers are the best games I played in 2016.

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