Bribeable humans may refuse an initial sum of money you throw at them, with 50% chance. Usually they say “It would take [some number of] zorkmids for me to abandon my duty!” which you can then provide if you wish.

Monsters that exist in groups are currently completely individualistic and try nothing more complex than charging towards the player and hitting in melee once they get there. This makes it easy for the player to cheese what would otherwise be tough battles, e.g. by standing in a doorway and killing them one by one, or by kiting them. There are some proposals for smarter AI:

• If a single monster in a group is next to the player, try to pull back until allies can get next to the player.
• Avoid doorways and narrow corridors; if you are in an open space, stay there unless you decide to move to another open space, and hang back from the doorway where the hero is, forcing them to enter the room in order to pass.
• Groups of intelligent monsters also try to stay out of the way of ranged fire if possible.
• If the current strategy is to defend a certain area, form ranks to block the player from reaching it.
• Pincer maneuvers; some monsters of a group will split up and try to get behind the hero or attack from another side. If the pincering group hasn’t gotten in position yet, the other group will fall back until they catch up.
• Wolf pack: the monster of the class with the highest level, or failing that the highest max HP, “leads” the pack, and all other members key in on this leader and follow it. This means if you get the leader to flee, the rest of the pack will flee as well.
• The Yendorian Army can form a phalanx, which is an ordered rectangle of soldiers. Will stick to wide open areas, try to stay out of the range of ranged attacks until they can swarm around you. Enemies forming a phalanx could receive to-hit and AC boosts.

A nonmagical ring called a “regimental ring”, which when worn makes soldiers peaceful (unspecified whether higher ranking officers should respect it or not). It possibly appears as rare loot in barracks or rarely generated in the inventory of high-ranking officers.

Give soldiers (only those, not the higher ranks) javelins as a ranged weapon occasionally, in order to increase the availability of javelins in the game.

When you cause a Yendorian Army monster to flee, nearby lower-ranking monsters may also flee. Possibly extend this to other ‘pack animals’ such as orcs or ants.

Some Yendorian Army monsters, particularly soldiers, are eligible to receive bows and crossbows as starting weapons.

A Yendorian Army monster will never hit another Yendorian Army monster with a ranged attack, to cut down on them killing each other, and also because they ought to have good enough skill and discipline to avoid friendly fire.

Soldiers and watchmen can be tamed by throwing gold at them. In order to make them tame, you must give them over a certain initial amount X, which will give 1 point of tameness, and giving them additional gold will increase tameness by 1 for every Y gold. Tameness steadily declines over time, removing Y gold from their inventory each time it drops by a point. Should tameness drop to zero, they become hostile. Chatting with them while tame will give you a clue about how tame they are: they will either talk about how they’re going to spend all their money, or wonder when the next payment is coming, or threaten you for more gold, depending on the amount of tameness. Normal magical taming methods do not work on them (as currently happens).

Ideas about nerfing the player’s ability to scare off a large group of Yendorian Army troops at once:

• Non-fleeing troops grudge fleeing ones (they’re deserters).
• Troops are immune to fleeing (possibly only immune to fleeing triggered by low HP, and still capable of fleeing from other causes) if they can see a higher-ranking military monster nearby.
• It’s harder to scare troops if there are others nearby (they have effectively a higher resistance).
• Troops recover faster from being scared if there are others nearby.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be only the Yendorian Army; the rule could be extended to all monsters being “supported” by other monsters of their same species, with some special cases for things like all orcs supporting each other.

Yendorian Army units surrounded by fellow army units have higher AC, to-hit, and damage.