Fix to TacAI Decoys

[halfzware]

I got involved in a chat yesterday about dom2 in the irc room. The subject of decoys came up - someone suggested a post about it, so here it is.

Decoys are an abuse of the tac targetting ai. Setting a screen of 1 unit squads seriously reduces the ability for archers and mages to cause the amount of damage they should, as well as seriously delaying melee units (this effect is much more pronounced in the small scale combat regularly seen in early multiplayer fights/blitz games - where the 3-4 turns of protection from archers and mages can have a profound effect).

My suggestion to a fix for this is pretty simple (but would probably be too large a change for patch -- maybe dom3 though):

All unit types have a minimum unit size. For example, militia have a minimum unit size of 5. If militia are placed in squads smaller than 5, they'll rout automatically. Of course more powerful units should have smaller minimum sizes.

But setting a minimum size would force you to at the very least invest some cost when employing decoys - while at the same time giving ranged weapons a better chance of routing or killing those decoys effectively (a mage casting falling fire on a group of 5 has a much greater chance of hitting a couple of them - and therefore routing them).

Anyway - this might not be the perfect solution - for some things it might not be thematic to enforce minimum sizes (vinemen spring to mind) - but you can make a case that most weaker summons need to be used in groups for mages to properly control them (weak undead for instance).

Maybe some food for thought at least.