Phalanx switching weapons

Yes, if they are fighting but not fighting, turning guard mode off will sometimes get them to engage. Another tactic is to raise the phalanx and then lower it immediately again. This gets the enemy to move past the imaginary point of spears, and the lowering catches them as they come in. Not always ideal if fighting elite infantry, though, ie, Praetorian/Urban Cohort, Sacred Band Infantry, etc, most phalanx units do not have the attack points to kill those units immediately like that. And does anybody else have a problem with Phalanx breaking phalanx and trying to chase the enemy (still with phalanx mode on, but not in phalanx) even though they are in guard mode? This usually happens against infantry, if I am fighting on the defensive.

Hello Vincent Butler, welcome to the .Org ~:wave: . The phalanx drift/shuffle issue (where a phalanx unit would refuse to engage the enemy, but instead start drifting sideways) was resolved in the v1.2 patch - either you forgot to patch the game, or you are experiencing something else. Could you provide more detail about the problem?

Ludens, were you asking me for more detail? If so, the problem was that my phalanx, while in phalanx mode, with guard mode turned on, would go to their swords and try to engage the enemy with swords, on their own,and at random. Not usually a huge deal, this is usually in a city, so I would have their position backed up with more phalanx. And it did not happen all the time, usually if they had been fighting for a while already, though I have had them do it immediately as well. This is not when the phalanx had already been broken. I will have to pay more attention to the situation in which they do it, nothing seems abnormal that I can recall, though it may be a while before I retry it, I am currently playing as Rome in EB.

That's something completely different from what this thread is about. But are we talking about individual soldiers or the entire unit?

The latter is wrong, but given the way you describe it, it's probably due to the buggy pathfinding in cities. As I recall it, phalangites will switch to swords when there's no enough room to deploy. But in cities, the pathfinding engine reckons that the streets are far narrower than they are in reality, so phalangites may draw their swords even when there seems enough space to manoeuvre.

If you wish to continue discussing it, I can turn this into a separate thread.

Go ahead and turn it into a separate thread, it would be interesting to see if other people have seen this. If it were while they were moving, I might blame the pathfinding. It is when they were standing on the defensive while fighting. I have had it happen in the open field as well, both when using a corner-of-the-map defense and in bridge defense. I don't remember if I have had it happen during a regular battle situation when using phalanx normally, I usually rout the enemy too quickly for it to happen. Like I said, usually it does not happen immediately. I have had it happen often enough to know it is not just a freak event.

I solve it by giving them "Halt" command, they lower their spears all of a sudden and kill many enemies instantly, which also causes the break of morale. It's still an annoying bug though.