What if you could borrow one of the wagon guys, load it with supplies, and take a troop of soldiers from their barracks and setup a camp far from the town. This base camp would then be used to mount patrols to hopefully intercept raiders / enemy before they got to the settlement. I’m thinking this could make it realistic to have soldiers out of their barracks for a long period of time and allow patrolling. This could also be used for reconnaissance. So, ya also ability to set patrol routes for soldiers.
And, to repeat an idea from an earlier post. The ability to split barracks soldiers into smaller units and independently command those units.
So I thought I’d give a little more detail on one possible implementation of patrols. Starting with a definition of “patrolling”: a waypoint defined automated route of travel, possibly repeating / retracing the route. The settlement would have its own distance from which soldiers could patrol. Any patrol routes set farther than this distance from the town edge require establishing a base camp. The base camp uses one of the wagon shop wagons, or perhaps there is a Barracks upgrade for this base camp? Maybe its another building one builds like the temporary shelter that would have its own radius of patrol-able land?
Maybe a simpler implementation would be to have an upgrade to the hunters that give them a scouting/tracking ability. Send them out to keep track of incoming raiders, while they “free range” hunt outside your village. Allow them to hunt bear and wolves, and find their dens.
I was looking at this as a way to give advance notice. Instead of waiting until they show up just outside a gate, have someone actively scouting for them much farther out.
I gave up on the exploration flag, and Watchtowers. Towers always need two people because one, and sometimes both, are “shelter stocking” right when an attack happens, so I turn off the towers and keep track of the years attacks happen, during winter of the third year I turn them back on, the guards find weapons and go to the towers and (usually) stay there for 6 months, raids mostly come in months 4 or 5. If lots of raids come from the same place I replace the towers with a fenced or walled barracks and 6 in the garrison, much more effective, again turning them off or just leaving two behind to deal with predators. Game I’m currently playing has raids from three directions, my barracks have up to 8 garrisoned but I have to steal workers to fill them and then release them as soon as the raids are over.