Defensive Stance, Guard, and Follow: What's the difference?
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- čas přidán 21. 09. 2022
- Break down of exactly how defensive stance, guard, and follow work. Guard, especially, has me thinking I should probably use it more often, but not for the reason I expected.
0:52 Unit behaviour on defensive stance
2:20 Changing the units' LOS
2:55 Retreating from archers
3:35 Defensive stance practical examples
4:00 Siege and demo ships
5:20 Guard
8:01 Guard "increases attack speed"
9:30 Self-guarding scouts
11:15 Follow
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Game: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition - Hry
I will be honest, I only ever used Defensive Stance. I only played the campaigns and letting units on Agresive stance is not a good idea since all your army will randomly start following a random scout and its annoying.
same here - with campaigns often having enemy units wandering or streaming around the map, defensive makes it so much easier to not lose your whole army
I thought i was the only one who defaulted to Defensive stance because i hated units wandering off and dying
THIS! Defensive stance is especially useful if you cant afford your troops being baited. Campaigns often give you limited troops that you need to keep alive while doing something on the other side of the map. + sometimes your errant troops will trigger events you're not ready for, which does not really happen in RM/MP
As someone who only plays against AI, I use the defensive stance in most cases. But I think stand ground has its uses for ranged units or overeager cavalry. Aggressive stance is useful for cavalry attacks on workers. And my bombard cannons are set on "peaceful", cause the AI seems to trick my cannons into bombarding my own units!
But mostly defensive stance, yeah.
In campaign i use patrols with defensive at the beggining followed by passive siege units and finally my attacking army as aggressive, also put my siege as aggressive once the army is marching towards the enemy
Defensive stance is really useful if you're a really casual low APM player who doesn't like to micro units. nothing worse than leaving a bunch of units in an area and coming back to find they chased a single scout under an enemy castle and all died while you were doing something.
I've always set my units to defensive stance even back in the old days too. Never got into competitive play so hearing not many people used Defensive Stance was surprising.
@@jrmloh It was certainly the best option when we were just playing agaisn't the AI for fun. You don't want your army following a random unit around thr map without you noticing, I lost the count of how many armies disappeared back in the day.
@@novkorova2774 Especially remember Britons harassing me in Joan of Arc in original AoE 2 taking pot-shots at my troops inside my base and they'd get lured out till I set them to Defensive Stance.
@@jrmloh I had special problems with navies, or armies in maps with small islands. I knew I had a navy somewhere or 3 armies around the map, but suddenly I couldn't find them. Back then hearing the attack bell was not a problem.
Same as a noob playing Single Player it can be a lifesaver, I remember losing the first Aztec mission because a group of the obligatory 5 skrims, and 5 spears I'd always build first every mission 🤣, they chased an enemy eagle into its base and so unlocked a temple i couldn't defend.
At one point I even had the default choice be defensive, but that got annoying as it hampered battles as it made units less aggressive / made them stand idle more. But I still use Defensive stance pretty much all the time when I have idle troops so I am probably getting poorer unit behavior during battles without realizing it. But otherwise they'll keep running after that damn AI scout.
I find it surprising to hear someone say they don’t really use the defensive stance. Going from AOE1 to AOE2 I was so happy to see that stance added in. Nothing I hated more in AOE1 then to see that my unit either died from an archer because stand ground meant he just stood there and died or that he was halfway across the map because he started following some random passerby. I always put my units in defensive stance.
In my teen years I would always use defensive stance for the reasons you mentioned, and it is fantastic if you are playing campaigns in a very chill fashion. It is however very unsuitable for competitive play, where you quite frankly have to develop you macro awareness to get consistency. Force groups are a great tool to avoid units wandering too far, among other things.
Note : Defensive stance means your cavalry units will not move and slowly die to Arbalesters. I find this even harder to control than making sure my units do not wander too far. Aggressive stance means your units will truly engage and defend themselves, which I wouldnt trade away in the vast majority of situations.
Oh man I picked up AoE 1 DE the other day to check it out and . . . wew lad. They improved the game *substantially* with the sequel. The og is just so full of jank it’s not even funny.
@@renaudgauthier6985 Yeah, I never played much multiplayer versus other humans, since I'm pretty terrible at RTSs, lol. I mostly play the campaigns, skirmish vs AI, or on a team of humans vs AI.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Yeah, it's unfortunate. I would love it if AOE1 DE got more QoL updates to make the gameplay more on par with AOE2. I love the ancient era and really would like to enjoy AOE1 as much as I do 2.
I used to create units in default defensive stance, but it got really old watching my units not attack enemy units in line of sight and instead walk back to their starting position. These days, I do use it, but only when I have melee units in patrol to lock down a certain area when you're camping an area. As a general purpose stance, it is very frustrating. Ranged units are best off in stand ground.
After all these years SotL still finds topics for videos I didn't even know I wanted. What a legend!
I have a weirdly specific use for the follow command (besides following an enemy scout to their village): monk on monk when an enemy monk has picked up a relic and I need to research atonement without losing sight of him
I thought follow was for scouts, before auto-scout.
i think that guard getting the first attack is because of the internal code ordering of the commands. Something similar happens in Starcraft 1, where a unit given a Patrol command will shoot immediately but a unit given an attack command will delay slightly. it's not necessarily intentional behavior, it's more so that the game has to take time to process what type of command you gave the unit, and in SC the attack command is handled last, ergo the slight delay in locating targets. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar was happening in AoE2
i thought the same, especially considering the player 1 vs player 2 etc. matter. I guess that player 1 is always checked first
That has to be it, likely the switch/if statement in the code resolves faster. Though it's wild to me that race conditions like this aren't normalized to some degree. Clearly what should happen is that both units should die at the same time.
They should really just build a list of all attacks for a given update cycle, and then process them in random order. That would negate all these types of issues for just a very small performance hit.
@@jordivermeulen2519 something Starcraft does as well is implement a very small random deviation in attack timing. It rarely affects gameplay but does interact with situations like this.
@AlHasan Sameh it doesn't, it just randomises the outcome of these types of fights. 50% of the time player 1 would win, and 50% of the time player 2 would win.
A quick tip for everyone who likes defensive stance like me, in DE you can change it in the options menu to have defensive stance be the default for all your units. For someone like me who is pretty bad at keeping track of his military while making villagers and attending the ecconomy, it's a great tool to keep my units from being lured away and killed by accident.
I wish they put a global toggle in, that would be useful.
guard can be useful if you send villager to wall/stone wall some portion of the map because the guardian unit will attack any threats even if it is a wolf for example, can be used in BF or some long walking distances for villagers to avoid wild animals mainly
Also with guard it will follow the vill so protect it along the whole project
I always set a few units to guard trebs if I'm sending them any distance behind my main army.
Just make sure it's on aggressive stance. A starting scout won't attack a wolf when guarding a villager unless it's changed to aggressive first.
@@icecoldchilipreppers but defensive stance without guard works better for that. because you dont want that treb guarding force to chase after every enemy that passes nearby
@@jurgnobs1308 No If trebs are moving
I have a feeling Guard and Follow are relics of a much older AoE2, back before they nailed down what they wanted to really do. The commands didn't detract from anything, and they filled in the space, so they got left behind.
you're probably correct. attack move wasn't in aoe2 originally.
I get the feeling that part of the idea behind them was to add tools for the player to partly automate some of their units when they can't pay attention to everything at once. But in practice a player with even a semi decent level of multitasking skills and map awareness can probably still manage things better directly.
@@zaleost Certainly true now, but back in ye olden days, micro wasnt as insane as now, and internet connections were also much worse; mightve made more sense back then??
hard to tell
If Guard would work different depending on the stance, then that would be such a game changer.
Note how the Follow icon has an AOE 1 villager instead of AOE 2. Definitely lends credence to the idea of it being older.
In AoE2:DE you can set the default stance start in the options menu - personally I really like defensive stance (play only against the AI if that changes anything)
Really interesting results though - I learnt so much SotL!!
Supposedly could be better in PvP multiplayer. However I could also forgot to switch it back when :D so idk, i keep it on aggro - probably better when u did some push and wants to just spam units into the opponents base.
WAHATTTT there's a default selection!
"rarely used defensive stance"
Me who always set all units at defensive stance to prevent losing them in random chases.
Self guard was the meta in the old RPG scenarios. On ranged units it looked like a fire rate increase, but since you killed enemy units on a few shots it makes sense it was just the faster targeting triggering over and over again.
A good use-case for guard is when defending a single slower moving or stationary unit like a trebuchet. It keeps your units away from what it's shooting so they don't engage something like a castle, it allows them to attack quickly if something approaches that unit, and guard arranges your units in a pattern that is more protective by default.
Also your units won't rush off and attack buildings. An underrated feature for sure
Yes, but it does not behave well with defensive stance, which is a shame.
As someone who has played WAY more against the AI and in campaigns than I ever will online, I use defensive stance as my default for all units. It prevents units from chasing AI patrols into castle, and lets me decide when my units engage. I could understand that aggressive is best against other players though
i’ve been playing since 2006, and i always keep units on defensive stance if they’re not actively raiding. nothing i hate more than having my entire army spread out because they saw a single scout 10 minutes ago and then decided to follow it straight into the enemy castle
A major use case I discovered for defensive stance was in that period of time after you’ve scouted the map and you’re either booming or non scout rushing is to take my starter scout and leave him on defensive near one of the enemy side relics. Most of the time the AI or another player just send a monk to pick up these relics all by their lonesome and rarely actively scout the spot before hand because they’re also actively either booming or rushing. Leaving the defensive scout there then has a really high chance of killing that first monk they send to pick up their first or second relic and when either he dies or my scout does because they did send some back up after all, I get a good notification as to where my opponent’s eco is approximately. I’d say I end up with a free monk kill on auto pilot more than 50% of the time doing this though.
defensive stance is incredible, I use it a lot for melee units that I want to move and fight but not to leave a determined point, is very useful while scout rushing and making economy at the same time.
The real takeaway from this video is that the hara-kiri death animation I'd always thought Samurai had for some reason was a mirage all along.
IIRC, Nobunaga's death animation is seppuku
They probably changed it to be PC.
Seems like it was changed for DE
From memory, samurai dying while facing certain directions used to have this animation. They didn't bother recreating it for DE and just have the one animation.
@@MotecAzure correct. Attack and death animations used to be different on the same unit, usually infantry, depending on the side they faced in HD. Probably because they were 2D sprites. In DE i guess they did a 3D model and rendered it, so now there is the same animation regardless the direction .
In a sense, follow does avoid detection actually, because the unit wont attack the target, it wont trigger the sound alarm of your units being attacked so this does have some fringe use against human players.
Great vid Spirit, I enjoyed this one a lot 👍
I used the follow command against the AI to follow their scout with my scout to not worry about exploring the map, specially before the auto-scout command came up
That's brilliant.
200IQ play. Im doing this next time 😂
Also guard command can be useful for getting your army to surround a really important building like a wonder, monastery, or castle with king. It often physically prevents enemy units from getting close enough to do damage to it
Defensive stance while keeping strategical position in enemy base, for example keeping knights next to flank's crossbows, when they can destroy nearby buildings and still hold some ground and protect ally
Spirit of the Law has gone from including "Go Japs!" in all of his videos to using Samurai as cannon fodder.
Another thing about defensive stance, if you have a group of units in a formation on defensive stance and then a target comes in and they attack it then they return almost back to the starting location. If you then select the formation they are already in they would end up exactly like they were on the starting location. That worked even from HD.
that's useful, thanks
I used it yesterday to defend some hills before i could build towers and castles
Had no Idea. Thanks
@@GarkKahn you gotta "build a watch tower on that hill"
SOTL definitely needs to dive a bit deeper on this I think!
The "avoid detection" for follow is not attacking the unit, meaning you won't get the "Warning: You're being attacked" notification that alerts the enemy to your presence
The follow command is used by pros to lure deer because it gets priority to push, if you are near a TC full of vils you can use follow ( just don't take too long to command ) and the deer still go through, leaving it closer to the TC
Good to know
I know this might be mind blowing, but it use defensive stance for units you're using to defend your town and aggressive when you're attacking the enemy town.
😱😱😱
WHAT!? Whodathunkit!
What i learned from years of experience is that the main difference between both is
In case they found enemies a defending will scare them away while aggressive just goes berserker and can follow them to the other side of the map being easily open for ambushes
I keep most melee units on defensive and ranged units on stand ground while I'm massing, but change the melee units to aggressive when I'm going on the attack.
Rise of nations.
@@GarkKahn Aguante la academia
I actually use Defensive stance quite often when I play. Not only to protect villagers in early game but also to keep scouts or militia from running into TCs and to protect my siege when my enemy has a nearby castle so my units don't run into castle fire while I'm macroing economy since I don't have the APM to check both very quickly 11.
always love the informative vids. played the game for almost 20 years and still here and there you learn something you did not know.
Great video! I use defensive stance quite a lot. The only use that I have for the follow command is, when I play on a map with a lot of extra sheep like ghost lake for example. Extra sheep often spawn in groups of three and when I found two groups, then I tend to send the scout with them to my base, to make sure, that they can't easily be converted. I usually let the scout follow the first sheep, so that it stays somewhere in the middle of the flock.
The defensive stance really reminded me of how in World of Warcraft if you run far enough away from a creature it will just run away and ignore everything. Obviously not the same thing but it was interesting seeing a similar behaviour in completely different games.
That's a trick known as leashing, it's pretty common in most games. If you don't have it then enemies can wander too far away from where they're supposed to be and cause trouble. Imagine if you were looking to fight Hogger and couldn't do so because he'd chased a player to the other side of the map ☺️
@@hollylucianta6711 I love the information and the mental image of Hogger just on the loose like that lol.
This was way more informative than expected.
Back in the old days before auto explore was a thing, I used to command my starting scout to follow the enemy AI scout so I didnt have to think about it and the map would get explored. I'm not saying it was the best strategy but it was often good enough for AI battles.
200 IQ
well then opponenents scout runs home and it is bye bye scout
One thing i noticed when i use guarding with trebs is that the guarding units will have the line of sight of the treb so they will see much further. Imo it's quite useful when attacking for example with trebs+knights/paladins
I find defensive stance the most useful when patroling. With the spear on the woodline example: patrol on defensive near the length of the woodline to cover all villagers better without the spear running off too far
Hey Spirit, love the video! Can I make a video request? You made a Video several years ago about converted units keeping or losing (rarely even gaining) civ bonuses. Today there are many more civilizations and it would be interesting to see which ones get kept and which ones get lost/gained. For example Polish villagers healing and Bengali resistance to conversion etc. There are probably enough interactions to even do two videos on it! :)
I was looking for a video that explain this!!! Thanks spirit of the law for reading out mind s and making the video!!!!
thanks spirit, now I have one extra thing to remember before every 1x1 scout engagement
Follow sounds like the unit should follow the target while keeping it at max vision range, then it could be useful for scouts tracking enemy army while being undetected.
Thats how i remember it doing that.
Self-guard to win every scout fight!
I'm glad I *follow* this channel
Defensive stance is good for ram trains. Set an attack move across an enemy town, and defensive stance will keep the ram train in more or less a column that pushes through faster to more valuable targets vs spreading out.
The main use I've found for defensive stance is not getting baited, whether into castle fire or pulling large armies apart.
Guard used to have a place to get a slight edge in xbow wars when attack move was nerfed, but since everyone has adjusted and I don't see it anymore.
The only time I use follow is when I'm done scouting and I want to see where the enemy scout goes, or if I have a unit with a lot of sight and I want to track an army. Monks desperately need combat commands, because having monks follow an army takes a lot of the annoyance out of using them for healing, while follow keeps them out of harm's way.
Guarding is useful for units defending Monks who carry relics. It's not optimal for reasons you mentioned, but certainly is better than microing yourself.
I was happy to see the spearman protecting the lumbercamp trick, since i've been doing that and works out very well, Also defensive stance might come in handy when protecting siege or monks with pikemen or other melee units, but usually you still would wanna keep and eye on the units, since the defensive stance behaviour has it's limitations as seen on the video.
I've always used defensive stance. It lets me mass my units w/o having them run off like lemmings. They won't over aggro during assaults, making them wait until the artillery moves up and takes down the castles. The Cpu often does like to build 6 castles in their base, since units are trickling out. Aggressive stance will only lures them into the castle nests.
I've come to the conclusion that Spirit would make a really good QA tester.
This is the video I needed
Marvelous content
A spearman guarding a lumber camp e.g. in a defensive stance is a really good tip. Thanks! :)
One use case that hasen't been adressed yet is clearly the most usefull use of "defensive stanse" is for range mass of unit.
Use case : you sit on top of a hill with a group of archers ==> a group of ennemy archer come and the player select a front archer to attack ==>
1 Stand still ==> Only your front row of archer, in range, will fight back
2 Defensive stance ==> back lane of archer will do the 2 steps needed to get in range and actually fight back
This is very usefull if you're facing trickle units, if you have fewer range than the opponent or if you need to let them fight while doing some eco
Ya ya...I definitely haven't been using defensive stance on nearly everything for literal decades now...I'm cool and hip with you guys, I swear.
the main advantage of using follow to push deer is it makes it a LOT harder to slightly misclick and go past the deer, or to the side etc and send it the wrong way
I’ve actually set my default stance to defensive a long time ago. Thanks for making a video justifying it!😂
The fact that melee units on defensive stance will try to dodge projectiles helps when you want to post a few halbs around your walls and the AI sends skirmishers/archers, especially because they'll chase the halbs and get in their aggro range which automatically makes the halbs turn around and dive the ranged units. Who then fall back to avoid getting engaged in melee range and when they get out of the defensive perimeter, the halbs go back to their position and the archers try shooting them again.
It won't help much against huge masses of archers but it does keep them away for a very long time giving you enough time to either build or send the appropriate response.
Also, guarding/follow helps if you grab a sheep far away and you don't want it stolen. Ofc it can still get killed but it's much better than giving a free sheep to your opponent.
awesome stuff!!!!
As someone who's (like apparently a lot of commenters) only used defensive stance for most of history, the wonder with which it is dissected here left me with a feeling of mild amusement.
Still nice to see science. And I love the guard behavoir analysis. I did not know that. Neat. Not that it'd ever make a difference to me.
Hey Spirit, you should do a video on how the minimap compression algorithm works one day. Like what things take priority over others, how the game decides when to flash something as being attacked, and what real-world compression algorithms it mirrors.
I’ve used the guard command with some success when gathering relics on arena. Have a light cav, spear, or knight guard the monk to fend off opponent monk snipes while I focus on eco. Really nice when trying for relics near opo base.
hey Sotl, unrelated but I think analysing the hunting dogs (old aof tech removed from the game) in todays meta would be a good concept for a video
Guarding is good on black forest early walling when you send your scout with early walling vils and the leading vill comes across a wolf. The scout will auto attack the wolf when they attack and you can be in your base macroing without having to babysit any potential wolf attack which you don't know if it's coming or not
Very informative video but I love the youtube subtitles at 7:04 with "Hell of a Deer" instead of halberdier
This is veryyy interesting.
Im guessing the reason for guard stance on freshly produced siege and demos is to avoid them wandering off in case a scouts pokes by, seing how they are either meant to be 1 hit units or rather expensive, having them just wander off would be rather troublesome, wonder if petards and trebs do the same
The one situation I use guard for is when I have a monk bringing a relic back home and want my knights/scouts to follow along behind and whole way home. Does work pretty well in that situation.
Очень полезное видео. Побольше бы таких
Shocked that SOTL says he keeps his units on aggressive when his video about patrol explains why defensive is better
I constantly used guard features by spears to follow monks on arena. It catches random scouts, but sometimes they die from wolves
It's interesting to note that the Options have a setting that allow you to set your units' default stance as Defensive instead of Aggressive upon creation.
In multiplayer games, If I have a small army off somewhere I need to put to use but don't have time to micro, I have them guard an ally's unit engaged in battle and let just them do their thing. Especially if it's good for handling that unit's counter.
As a casual campaign player, Defensive Stance always has been my go to. 🙏🏽
There is something similar in broodwar where patrol is faster to attack. The explanation that I heard is the game code does the prosses first.
I use Defensive Stance as a way to keep tabs on relics on the map. I send a scout or a group of units to a relic on defensive stance, and when I hear the battle sound, I know my opponent is trying to capture that relic and I can react quicker to retrieving it myself.
As for follow, back in HD I used the Follow command with my scout to follow my enemy's scout. That way I didn't have to do my own exploring and could focus on my TC and economy.
(these tricks really only work when playing against the AI though...)
10:19 sometimes i feel that Spirit Of The Law works more for the game than the devs... this is clearly a bug
My best guess as to what it means by avoid detection is that because it doesn't attack the unit being followed if they are another player's said player then won't get a "unit under attack" notification so if they aren't watching the unit they wouldn't know you were trailing them, but even then, I doubt that in games with moderately skilled players you would see that as working or mattering very often.
Hey Spirit I hope you're doing well! Putting out very in depth and mathematical videos on AoE, I was curious about your top 5 videos on all of the categories of units (Archers, Infantry, etc.) and whether or not your ranking on each of those videos are still relevant or if you were thinking of creating a new top 5? I know since most of those videos were released at least 5 or so civs have come out since then and I'm sure there are some different civs that could/would make the list... Just some food for thought anyways happy Conquesting!!!
In team games, whenever my friend tells me to escort his knights with my crossbows or something like that, I use the follow command on the knights... Works out pretty well, I can place some farms and buildings without worrying his knights being alone against pikemen.
I never actually noticed if they attack or not, because I usually return to manual control of my units after a few seconds of economic focus!
I so love AOE2 as good as this channel .
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻❤️❤️❤️
I used to use the follow command as well as patrol as a kid to have a few villagers move about my base as if on errands.
Very important in 1v1's to make your city seem lived in.
7:05 "Protect myself at all times" Herb Dean Halberdier
I've been using defensive stance for 20 years honestly. Unexpected to hear it's barely used
I use folow command for monks (played campaigns only).
They can heal with that command if the main unit stops. Work well with range units
AoE4 needs all these commands badly. All it has atm is stand ground.
Aoe3 and aoe4 not having these basic combat features is what turned me off of those games over aoe2. It just felt so wrong to not be able to patrol my units that I just went back to aoe2.
@@BerserkGuy883 you can patrol in AOE4. i forget if AOE3 has patrol tbh lol.
@@smugshrug they must have added it at some point. I swear it wasn't there. Maybe I'm misremembering. Seems like I need to try aoe4 again!
@@BerserkGuy883 could be. i didn't notice it until recently. but units are still aggroed and can be dragged across the entire map if you aren't paying attention, lol.
As many have pointed out, defensive stance is incredible useful and convenient for average players since it allows you to control your army behaviour without looking at it constantly. I've played both single player and multiplayer quite a bit and defensive stance always worked well
I typically keep bombard cannons and mangonels on stand ground to help avoid them friendly firing on my melee units and switch their stance accordingly when on the offensive.
Defensive stance can be useful with patrol or attack move. They attack move to the target and then don't wander off
Nice to know...after two decades of playing :D
Defensive stance is much better for people who can't micro very well or keep track of all their units. For a lot of low elo players, sending an army into an enemy base and letting them fight whatever comes close is better than having them on aggressive and risk having them run all the way after a trade cart or running into castle fire etc. I personally like to have defensive stance and patrol.
The self-guard thing is absolutely huge: it means that early dark age scout fights can be won more consistently, pulling a fast one on the enemy player, this is specially impactful on high elo matches where losing your scout early on deprives you of very useful map info, makes it more difficult for you to defend vs archers + skirms or slows down your scout rush
I think the reason for defensive stance by mangonel, bombard, demo and probally ram is: so that they don't accidently kill your units too, when they follow around or: that they in generell don't leave your base when they found someone
Me having all of my army with Aggressive stance while sieging an enemy town. I took a couple seconds away from the battle to focus on some eco and technology research, when i come back to look at the frontline all my expensive siege weapons were left alone against enemy cavalry, while my entire army was following a single scout.
When using cavalry( infantry works as well but it is slower so not as much) to raid trade I position them in the middle of the trade, switch them to defensive stance and then Patrol to a few tiles along the trade route.
What happens:
The cavalry stays in this area. Pathing seems to be a bit better than simply leaving them on defensive stance there, as they are able to travel between point A and B. If the trade passes a few tiles away and they are simply left on defensive stance without patrol they might not even land a single hit on them while being fully engaged in chasing the unit to the last tile of their line of sight. With patrol they will run after a unit, and meet it somewhere along the radius of LOS they have in point A, the LOS to point B and the LOS in point B. This means they chase the passing units more effectively while not leaving the selected area at the same time.
I also get an impression they do a better job at destroying trade with patrol than without, but didn't do any tests :)
I guess this might be a small topic for a video.
2:30 it's quite interesting that the area used for his engagement doesn't shift even when his starting position shifts due to him not returning to exactly where he started
For as long as I could remember, I hated the fact that defensive units failed to return to their actual starting position. It drove me crazy, and I wouldn't use it as a result. Of course, I also assumed that the area they defended moved with them.
thx
👍
Self guarding also affects the retargeting rate of units. they target new units to attack much quicker, and this is easy to see with ranged units. In old RPG’s on voobly, this was the thing you should do to maximize kills when you had a singular OP ranged unit.
honestly, I tend to set all units to defensive stance and loved the aom feature to make this the default stance of all units created. i hate them running away.
I put a few units on defensive stance with my trebs/mangonels.
If I'm scout or men at arms rushing sometimes I'll do defensive by the wood or mill so they don't run into the tc while I'm jumping back to KY own economy.
The guard command might be useful to have units on stand ground and still attacking targets on their own. Eg when you send a large amount of SCs into an enemy woodline - you want to have them on stand ground to better block the vills but also want to have them attack several vills at once.
C&C games had a defensive attack move which was retreat. It was half speed moving backwards (with reverse gear only available for tanks) and they shot anything in their range but didn't stop for anything. It was kinda weird as tanks didn't have any weakspots so the front armor wasn't any better like in real life. AND if you just just normal moved away the tanks could still rotate their turret and shoot anyway
I use defensive stance for my melee units that are in my opponent's base to stop them from wandering under the enemy TC when I'm not looking, but still attacking anything that's nearby. For ranged units I use stand ground. Yeah, my use of defensive stance probably isn't optimal, but it helps mitigate my middling APM