Stalwarts and Soldiers

Being a smitemaster is a lonely profession, as Gunthro and Beethro know well. But over the course of their adventures they do encounter some allies. However, sometimes their bravado can get out of hand and they are prone to rush into battle without thinking.

Here we discuss the Stalwarts of Tueno and the soldiers of Rasarus.

Detailed Behavior Analysis
The one main difference between Stalwarts and Soldiers, is that soldiers can wade in shallow water, while Stalwarts can't. Each turn, the stalwart/soldier works out who its target is, by using a pathmapping algorithm and picking the nearest target. This algorithm is smarter than a brain's since it knows it can walk over scrolls and arrows that are pointed the right way, and can't walk through allies (other stalwarts, decoys etc) or swords.

If there are no accesible targets, the stalwart stands still

If the stalwart's sword is adjacent to the target, it will try to kill it, preferring to turn its sword, rather than move its body, if given the
choice

If the stalwart is two tiles from the enemy, it will turn its sword to aim in its direction. This is a common cause for stalwart mortality since, if their
enemy is around a corner, or on the other side of a wall, this puts the sword in the wrong orientation for its next move.

If the target is further away than this, the stalwart will work out where it needs to move next to start moving towards it (following the current
pathmap. However, stalwarts always like to have their sword pointed within 45 degrees of the direction they are travelling, so will turn
their sword before moving (if this direction is directly behind him, he will turn anticlockwise)

This last rule has two exceptions:
- If the target's horizontal distance is more than twice its vertical, the stalwart will try to point its sword
  horizontally, and vice versa
- If the stalwart cannot turn its sword in the direction in wants before moving (e.g. bombs on either side), it will go ahead and move

Stalwart movement has a few more quirks however. Stalwarts will only look at pathmaps that are available with their current sword orientation. They are also clever enough to realise that they don't want their sword to come into contact with their allies (which includes mimics, decoys and the player) or bombs.

Together, these two rules can result in a stalwart rejecting a particular path since, at some point along it, its current sword orientation would strike one of these elements. In this case, the stalwart will go for an alternative route, but, since it is likely to change sword orientation in doing so, this can
sometimes result in an infinite loop, or at least some unintuitive behavior.

Stalwarts/soldiers are frozen by Aumtlich beams. Their response to this is to start rotating clockwise to block the beam. This behavior takes priority over all other behaviors, such that the stalwart may accidentally strike a bomb or ally in the process of turning.