Tower Prioritize Certain Enemies

[Radicool]

I'm making a tower defence map and I want certain towers to prioritize certain units before others. To help paint a picture. Imagine there being a hundred weak units and a boss unit amongst them. When my towers decides who to attack, I want it to attack the boss.

I've looked at unit priority as outlined in this thread (Unit Stats - "Priority"), but this seems to do nothing. I set the boss to a high priority like 20 and weak units as 1 but my tower seems to simply attack whichever unit is closest.

Could I be missing something? Has anyone confirmed that priority works?

 

[LordDz]

Priority affects which unit will be show as the selected unit when selecting multiple units, it doesn't affect the attack order.
You could try and set the low trash units to be workers, I think the AI of the units prioritze units over workers when attacking.

If that doesn't work, you'd have to trigger it.

 

[HappyTauren]

Pick every boss type unit
Order every tower in maximum tower range to attack him

This means that units that can't attack him will just continue attacking other targets, and units that can, will attack the boss.

 

[Radicool]

You could try and set the low trash units to be workers, I think the AI of the units prioritze units over workers when attacking.

This is working. I noticed towers will even cease attacking a unit when a non worker comes in range.

Pick every boss type unit
Order every tower in maximum tower range to attack him

I initially thought of doing this. It would allow more control over the aforementioned strategy, but might take more processing resources.

I'll weigh up the 2 different approaches. Thanks guys.

 

[HappyTauren]

One problem with units with a "worker" classification is that they don't automatically acquire targets, they flee instead, and if set to not flee, they might not even attack, so unless you have triggers specifically telling worker-classed units to attack, you shouldn't set attacking units to be workers.

You either have to trigger worker-classed units attacking, or towers attacking. But either approach will work.

 

[LordDz]

Well he is making a tower defense map, not that many units that attack in them. Unless for blocking, but line tower defense just had an invulnerable guy run through it once in a while, killing shit if he didn't get out.
So having worker as a classification works. Keep it simple!

 

[HappyTauren]

^Yup, I guess that's a good point. In that case, disabling "can flee" and making unit the worker will work.

BTW it is also possible to add the worker classification through triggering (as non boss units enter the map), and can easily be done for all non boss units, so that's a plus to that solution as well.