dkfans
Creatures in guard room don't respond to call to arms
iirc this issue was there in the original game also. Whether you cast call to arms next to the guard room or drop creatures but into a guard room next to an already cast cta flag, creatures just keep guarding.
Don't ask me why, but this does not look like a bug but actually by design.
Very possible. But does the design choice have any utility? Cancelling CTA would have guarding creatures return to the guard room anyway.
If you wanted some creatures immune to CTA for some reason, sure, but I can't think of any benefit such an intricate amount of micro management could provide.
I think most of the design of dungeon keeper should be viewed as though you do not have a hand of evil. Suppose you are playing a map, you cannot pick up units to defend ever, and you face multiple hero invasions,....
What you would do, is put up alarm traps at key places that will attract your regular working creatures to fight. But that does not mean you would want to have the units you have standing guard near your heart or library to vacate their guard post.
In practice, you do have a hand, and as such people never use guard posts for what they are actually for and never use alarm traps or hold audience or barracks. So no, very little benefit.
Even in the no hand scenario you can't populate the guard posts with units you want so only units with the guard job (orcs and warlocks) would find themselves there. Both would only guard if they're finished with research or training.
Say you have a map where heroes attack from the edge of your territory and at the same time another party drops right in on your heart. The better strategy would always be to focus 100% of your strength on the heart group while allowing the heroes on the exterior further in. In that scenario I would always find myself building a lair around the heart (if creatures are lvl 10) or training and library (if they are not) as this would allow creatures without the guard job to join the battle. CTA would also behave more predictably, encouraging you to avoid using guard rooms.
I keep trying to think of restrictions or conditions in this scenario that would force you to use a guard room but so far they don't make for very fun levels due to the sheer amount of restrictions required to make a guard room necessary.
I too believe it's by design and it makes senses to me, if you tell them to guard an area you would want them to stick on the area even if you CTA. 🤔
@walt253
Here's the thing though. If the guard attacks an enemy creature and is in range of CTA, he won't return to the guard room - he'll rush to the CTA. If he went back to the guard room, okay, there's some potential use to a room that makes creatures immune to CTA. But this is neither here nor there and the inconsistency makes a guard room always a bad choice compared to a lair tile or something else that will keep creatures in place with more consistency.
You can always use a low power CTA to control whether or not the lair 'guard' joins the fray.