Do you use advanced formations?

[Marko Polo]

I've never played Shogun and this is my second experience of RTS genre of gaming. First one was Celtic Kings a month ago.. As a big time TBS game fan (Civ 1,2 & 3 etc) I'm doing quite good at stategic map but those real time battles are more difficult..

I've learned some stuff reading these forums though but I still have one question:

What's the best way to organise your initial army before battle? Is it a good idea to use those advanced formations like

1. row archers
2. foot soldiers
3. cavalry

and other like that? Or is it better to place them manually unit by unit?

Thanks in advance!

[malkuth]

When attacking it is. When defending you will soon come up with your own defensive Formations. (Defense is the only side that can set up units one by one).

[pdoan8]

When attacking, you can't set up your army but you can use the preset formations before starting the battle. The icon for preset formation is on top of the left most unit icon.

When defending, you can set up your army by arranging each unit the way you like.

You can practice for the battle in the custom battle mode. To be easy, give you troops a little better upgrades or a couple more units.

I started STW with a balance formation for both defense and offense. I guess it's just my nature since like things to be symmetrical or even or ... balance. Here is my first formation that I used (in STW):

***D*D*D*D***
**D*M*M*M*D**
**A*A*G*A*A**
***C*****C***

D = Defensive troops like spearmen, Feud Sergeant.
M = Missile troops like archers, crossbow.
A = Attacking or offensive or H2H combat troops like Feud/Chiv MAA.
C = Cavalry (heavy or light).
G = General (Commander).

As I gain more experiences, the formation changes depending on the situation like offense, defense, enemy troop types, my troop types, terrain.

[Marko Polo]

Thanks Malkuth and Pdoan8 for answering my question. I'm afraid though that I didn't wrote clearly enough what meant. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/redface.gif

What I wanted to know is this: do you select several units, choose a "advanced formation" from the menu (there is a formations button which reveals all these advanced formations) and then draw that formation to the battle field?

This is also question of grouping units.. whether group them (like arhers in one group or not) and like.

[Jaret]

Grouping units makes much sense when it comes to moving them ... moving them one by one is quite stressfull.

On offensives I usualy groupe my whole army ... take them to the Place I want them and then start sorting them and grouping them in the right order.

[Rnold]

you got to keep a close eye on ctrl a + moving though. if you have slow inf and fast cav, your cav may be taken by suprise. even worse: your army will face the wrong way or the enemy will make a flanking move, taking your army disorganised.