I agree with adding a radius but also keeping the random wandering that is currently in the game. I fully agree with Joasoze the game needs to be dangerous and Unpredictable.

Monster behavior AI needs some serious love.

I had a post a while back about monsters decimating towns that was something like this:

When a monster attacks a town (and wins), it should make that town its new lair.  Depending on the population of the town, there'd be a number of turns that you could retrieve the town (with some damage, and a drastically reduced population) before the whole thing just poofed into a pile of rubble.  (A new monster would automatically spawn on its old lair).

The same mechanic could be used for outposts, but without the delay.  So if a monster destroy an outpost it sets up a new lair.

Using your idea, once a monster takes a town (And reduces it to rubble), it's radius of attack would center on that town.

Great ideas!  I like the idea of getting a chance to "retrieve" a city before it is savaged to death.

If you go into their turf (like a wildlands) they will swarm you.  In neutral territory, it depends on whether they think they can take you and their intelligence.  Beasts will just wander. You can set up a place next to a giant slag and it may never attack that city...or it might.  Set it up next to say an intelligent monster and you'll have more problems.

But you don't currently need to go into Wildlands to win the game, so it might be good to have the monsters a little more savage in neutral territory too.

Btw: aren't Umberdroths Beasts?  If all beasts go walkabout then no wonder units like Umberdroths can take you down really early in the game.

UnitStat_Intelligence I believe.  There are already lots of units with intelligence.

Warlock does this and it works very well. In that game they have two types of monster AI. The Monsters and the Independant (not AI players they are different) and they hate each other as much as they hate all players (both human and AI.)

Both will take towns like a player and produce units from that town (and have improvments) so it is awsome because it is more powerful than a normal lair. Which means you want to capture those towns or your going to have a problem.

That is why I didn't see it. I thought that was an old stat from .87 or something. Thanks  .

Here are some things I would suggest:

• Lairs have "Guardian stack" that never leaves the lair.  It can increase in size slowly based on the monster type.  The maximum stack size is based on the highest level unit in the stack.
• monster stacks have a "hunger level".  It increases gradually over time, but drops when they attack something.  The increase is based on game difficulty level.  The higher the hunger level, the more aggressive they get and the larger their patrol radius.  When the guardian stack's hunger level hits a point where their patrol radius is large enough to encompass something they feel like attacking, they spawn a patrol made up of mostly the lower level monsters from the guardian stack and go looking for something to attack.  The guardian stack hunger level is reset to 0 after spawning a patrol.  Hunger level has a minimum of 0. 
  
• The closer you get to a lair, the greater the possability that you will be within their patrol radius.  It all depends on how hungry they are.  The guardian stack does not attack anyone, but it may spawn everything it has as a patrol in cases like Dragons or Golems.
  
• patrols wander within their patrol radius and attack whatever they think they can handle.  That includes other monster groups.  This way, monsters gain levels and may get stronger.
• Patrols do not respect borders or ZoC.  (What, are they painted on the ground in monster repellant?)  If they are hungry, they will attack what they can.
  
• When a patrol's hunger level drops or they are badly injured, they return to their lair to heal.  They merge back into the guardian stack.  The patrol's hunger level is averaged in to the guardian stack's.
• If a patrol loses its lair, it searches for a new place to establish a lair.  It looks for a place not within the borders or patrol radius of any empire or other monster and in the terriain type that it prefers.  Their hunger level is reset while they set up shop.
• If the guardian stack's hunger level reaches a maximum, it may abandon its lair and the entire stack becomes a patrol looking for a new lair.  Hunger level is reduced to retain some aggression but not instigate a rash of rampaging monsters.
  

I think this gives the monsters a consistent motive and reason for what they do.  It makes them a living part of the wild world while balancing their aggression instead of rampaging endlessly or doing nothing.  Lairs will, on average, increase in size and difficulty over time.

Notice that other "monsters" have a higher intelligence.  There must be some minimum level before they will aggressively go attack people.   Try setting it to 5 or 6.

Maybe it's a boolean function, as in they have intelligence (and act a certain way) or don't (and act another way.)

all this modding stuff... In the end I really hope they upgrade the aggressiveness of monsters around they're lairs, when the monsters see a city and they have 10 times the strength of anything near the city, they should go have a snack.

Dex have an interesting idea too!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej