User blog:LOTRMod/Opinion Time

With the new 'neutral' faction relations, suppose that you have hired units of faction A, and have negative alignment with faction B, where A and B are neutral.

If you see some memebers of faction B, they will attack you automatically, since you have negative alignment with them. But they won't attack your units, nor vice versa, since the factions are neutral.

You could of course use the sword to command your units to attack the enemy faction B.

But: should the hired units of faction A just attack faction B automatically instead?

I am of the opinion yes, because:
 * -this would be more helpful in terms of defending the hired units' leader (you) - which is kind of the whole point of hired units;
 * and because the hired units would just attack your enemies anyway, in retaliation, once the enemies attack you, so they may as well pre-empt the attack;
 * and because it's much more effective for the units to seek out targets by themselves than for you to use the sword to set all your units on an enemy, one at a time.