Pathing and formations

Getting there from here

Pathing was another aspect that the designers put a lot of work into. First off, if you mix several types of troops together and move them, they will automatically move at the speed of the slowest unit in the group. No more worrying that your slow guys are getting left behind! Also, your military units can now be grouped into formations. One thing that Ensemble's Fischer stressed was that this feature is robust enough to be handled automatically by the computer. People who hate micromanagement don't have to be caught up in all the fuss, while those who do like micromanaging can go nuts with the variety of formations available.

Quaint little port

Smart formations

Normally I wouldn't get excited about formations, because in some RTS games they don't seem to serve much of a purpose. However, there were a couple of things about the formation system in AOK that were cool. Take for example, recognition of ranged versus melee attackers (hand to hand). The computer is smart enough to put melee fighters up in front of your ranged units automatically, when you put your force in ranks. Another cool formation that Ian demonstrated was the box formation. Selecting a group of knights and a couple of monks, Fischer put them in box formation, and the knights set themselves up in protective formation around the vulnerable monks.

A German keep perhaps?

Hitting the first guy

Also added is a more intelligent melee system. In many older RTS games, sending a group of melee units up against another usually ended up in a lot of dancing around before any actual blows were exchanged. This happened a lot in Warcraft 2 for example, with ogres running about trying to reach a specific enemy unit in the center of the fray. To prevent that, AOK units will intelligently attack the first unit they run into.