The Tavern

[This will probably also help for Yred.]

Like "Recall", but in reverse, and targeted. Or if it is easier to implement: you can "shun" some orc temporarily and it won't be recalled.

Reasons:

1. Recall can be rather stupid sometimes and doesn't give you the army you want.
2. Sometimes weaker orcs join you but you don't really need them.

To get the army they want, the player needs to use stairs, tell their followers to wait, go down and use recall. Except that point (a) strikes again, so you get to do the same thing over and over.

Ideally I would want Orc followers to be managed by an inventory screen from which they are dismissed/recalled but I worry that without serious restrictions it would be too exploitable ("orc about to die? recall him" sort of thing)

An interface that lets me set the order in which my follower orcs arrive when recalled would be sufficient, right?

Why create an interface when we already know (roughly) what decisions the player would make using it? Instead, make Beogh's Recall prioritize targets based on HD.

It already does, it's just bad at it, and it doesn't differentiate between kinds of orcs, which is what I care the most about. I don't want casters, I want warriors, even if they're lower level, because I want to train them up to be warlords, because warlords with spears are better and less finicky than the caster orcs.

There should be Orc Warlords with spells. Fragile casters don't work as permanent allies, nobody prefers them over Orc Warlords

...in which case this calls for a revision to the Recall ability, or targeted Dismiss, rather than the introduction of a UI that allows everyone to make the same choices.

But maybe right now I feel I am pretty strong and I want weak orcs to get the killing blow to level up.

It doesn't matter if they get the killing blow

Caster allies are fine in early game. At least I use them, so it's not true that everyone makes the same choices.

I am not clearly opposed to "orc warlords plus spells" but that is a more radical step with implications for game balance which I have not investigated. All I'm calling for here is a band-aid, not surgery.

I think it does not matter. Orc warlords are better early game too and it is still optimal to train more orc warlords for late game.

Early-game, priests and wizards are better than vanilla orcs and probably warriors. They're also common so when they die, whatever.

The high-tier casters are in principle useful allies (their summons and damage are pretty okay) except:

* They're pretty uncommon and it's difficult to level base-tier orcs up to them, especially later in the game, so you don't want them to die
* They have poor defenses so they die real easily
* Ally AI is such that they try very hard to get themselves killed

I don't know what the best solution would be, honestly. Maybe make higher-tier caster orcs? Maybe change ally AI so that allied casters try to keep out of range of enemies?

Adding a "dismiss" feature just feels kind of like giving up.

So just spitbllin here, but the big thing seems to be how much caster Orcs suck when you start to get rolling so its better to get warrior Orcs, maybe it would be better to buff the casters with more health and instead of summons, blink, and other party unfriendly spells you give them things like holy smite, like priests, or heasls and buffs that effect the war band. You could lower the rate of caster orcs to compensate for any unbalancing caused and make their power based on your invocation and piety and or cap the power. Mainly let them be more survivable and give them more party friendly spells.