Smarten Up!

We have a lot of dumb monsters in Clan Lord.  I acknowledge that we do have some very clever ones too, but the majority of them are dumber than a brick.  I've been giving a little thought on making our dumb monsters a little smarter.

There are three basic monster combat AIs in Clan Lord:

• Straight Attack, like bolok cougars.  These monsters hone straight in on players.
• Circle Attack, like ferals.  These monsters disengage and try to flank players.
• Flee, like starbucks.  These monsters avoid players, but defend themselves if they become cornered.

I had the idea of incorporating tactics into some of these AIs.  Some tactical concepts are:

• Guardians: monsters would guard a specific area, like an exit, and chase away intruders
• Retreat: monsters would fall back when injured and regroup at a location
• Patient: monsters that would conserve balance and not swing out unless it thought that it could kill a player
• Gang-up: also known as the surround-and-pound, multiple monsters would focus on one specific player
• Flanking: a group of monsters would circle around and try to cut off the player's escape route

It would be cool if monsters could work together, like having the Guardian monsters distract the players long enough so that a group of Flanking monsters could move around into position.  This sure looks great on paper!  I hope that we will soon see smarter monsters that present tactical challenges to players rather than just dumb monsters running around in circles.