Multiplayer Grouping tactics

[_Hector_]

the question many players, just starting ask: How can one move his soldiers in groups without scattering them in different direction? For instance, your moving and suddenly your force to change directions while troops are moving...what the best method one can use to accomplish this in a organized formation....

Hector

[Gregoshi]

Grrrrr, you'd think I could remember how to do that, but I always forget. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

[Brutal DLX]

If you are issuing the move command to a grouped unit, they will usually stick together, if, while on the move you click somewhere else, they may scatter. To prevent this, there are several ways. You can order them to stop first, and then click again, or you can always move them while holding the Alt key while clicking (this will preserve the order and facign of the unit), and finally you can draw your unit formation at the spot where you want them while they are already on the move.

[Puzz3D]

The thing to do is assign your groups with shft ctrl # keys during the deployment phase. Once the battle starts, you can rotate your entire army about its geometric center of gravity without loosing the formation by grouping all units with ctrl A followed by G into a single group and holding the ALT key while you right click and move the cursor to a point out in front of the army in the direction you want it to face. This only works for spots on the map where the cursor is showing yellow. You see a ghost image of the units rotating while you are doing this. If you don't group the whole army, each unit or each group rotates about its own center to face the cursor and you get a big mess. After that rotation order is issued, you can ALT left click on a spot on the map to move the army's center to a new position without loosing the final facing of the rotate command. You do not have to wait for the army to finish its rotation before issuing the move order. If you didn't issue a rotate command, the final facing will be whatever the initial facing was just before you gave the move order. You might want to ungroup your army before issuing a move order because all units will only march at the speed of the slowest unit when moving as a single group. You could recreate your smaller groups using the ctrl # key assignments you made during deploy while the army is moving to the new location. I don't actually do that and simply remake the groups with the icons, but it takes longer and I sometimes accidentally click between icons and mess up my position necessitating a redraw of the group.

You cannot interchange the order of the rotate and move commands. You'll get a gigantic mess if you issue a move followed by a rotate command. I believe you can issue a new move order for the army without loosing the final formation and facing once at least one unit has arrived at its final destination, but I'm not sure of that especially if a rotate order was part of the move. The prudent thing to do is to move in several small steps rather than one large step so as not to move too close to the enemy since it's disadvantageous to move away from the enemy with your back turned. Also note that units tend to run when rotating which fatigues them at a faster rate than when walking, so whole army rotate commands should be used conservatively.

Another trick when making groups in mtw/vi is to position your units left to right on the map in the same order as the left to right position of the unit icons and then create the group. This allows you to select units from the icons and know their relative location without having to move the camera to bring the unit into view. It can be a very useful technique when fighting in trees or bringing the right spear or cav unit up to meet a cav charge on your ranged units if those units don't happen to be in your field of view. You can also create your left side groups before your right side groups because that makes the grouped icons appear in the proper left/right relationship that those groups have on the battlefield which can save time in selecting the right cav group if they are positioned far out on the wings.