skirmish

[peacedude]

sorry for another noobie question but i cant seem to turn the skirmish button off i click on it, press s, i checked in the options section of the main menu and there isnt any kind of lock on deal.
how do i turn it off?!!

[mikkele]

You don't turn it off, you select one of the other modes instead (Hold Position or Engage At Will).

[BAD]

I am not sure about this but, I think you have to select one of the stances to turn the skirmish one off. ie either "Hold Formation" or "Engage at Will" . This will turn off the Skirmish stance.

[peacedude]

oooooooooooooohhhh i get it
man why didnt i realize it earlier haha
thanks alot dudes!

[ajaxfetish]

As far as I can tell, the only worthwhile use of the skirmish mode is the annoyance factor as the AI uses it to run away from you little by little forever and drag on a battle to the bitter, boring end. I never use it for any of my troops.

By the way, is there a way to change the default for my archers so I don't have to manually take them all off skirmish at the beginning of every battle?

[bretwalda]

Despite that I use skirmish mode less and less I certainly feel that it has a very usefull part in tactics. S mode is indispensable for Horse Archer type troops. Also they are kind of safety measures when I send them to the back of the enemy: they will run away from anything that approaches them and harass constantly.

The reason why you think that S is not needed could be that you do not use horse archers... Because with javellin troops it is clearly unusable and more often than not this is the case with foot archers, as well...





As far as I can tell, the only worthwhile use of the skirmish mode is the annoyance factor as the AI uses it to run away from you little by little forever and drag on a battle to the bitter, boring end. I never use it for any of my troops.

By the way, is there a way to change the default for my archers so I don't have to manually take them all off skirmish at the beginning of every battle?

[Procrustes]

will select all your missile troops - you can then set them all off skirmish by pushing the button only once.

I use skirmish quite a bit. No good for javelins, but with archers it is handy if they start the battle in front of your infantry (they will skirmish backwards if the enemy lines up and advances, killing along the way.) If the enemy charges your archers you can just let your skirmishers retreat while you charge your infantry into their flanks - then the archers stop retreating and continue to pelt the pinned enemy. The only trick is to make sure that the archers are targetting troops at the front of the enemy line - if the troops they are targetting start to retreat the skirmishers will follow them to stay in range, possibly ignoring a more immediate threat.

EDIT - sorry - that's supposed to be CONTROL-M - I didn't realize it doesn't show up on the screen the way I keyed it.

[ajaxfetish]

Even with horse archers (which I admittedly don't use very much) they hardly seem to get off a decent volley before they turn and run, and often they don't run fast or far enough to get away anyway.

[BAD]

Playing as the Turks at the moment I have to say I normally have three horse archers (Turcoman Horse) in my starting lineup. Which I use to try and split the other army up by being annoying and drawing off key units (which are normally slower ;) ), normally their heavy cavalry or a few sord units that look like they could do some damage. Takes some micro but it's handy, where's them out no end aswell, especially in the desert.

Also if they are valoured up (Made in Tripoli and with Master Horse Breeder +2 V ~D ) if I can isolate a unit I even try smashing it from front and rear (when out of ammo) and routing it before someone can arrive to help them out. Also because they are very fast they are great for chasing routers and they also recover their stamina bars throughout the battle too. :charge:

[ichi]

Skirmish is like everything else - it has advantages and disadvantages.

I too use a lot of cav archers, and depending on the situation either place them on Skirmish (when I don't want to micromanage) or Engage-at-Will when I can focus on them.

Since I always deploy MP style (archer/pavs in front) I like Skirmish for my archers 'cause they're fast enough to retreat behind my infantry, but I prefer Hold Formation for my pavs (which are usually armoured and valored up). I use my cav or inf to come forward to protect the pavs rather than have them run behid my fighters.

Naptha Throwers and Javelins don't work well on Skirmish because they retreat before the enemy gets close enough to hit with their weapons. I prefer Hold Formation for these guys because if they are on Engage-at-Will the entire unit will start fighting melee once any part of the unit comes in contact with the enemy. On HF it seems like the guys who aren't melee fighting still shoot.

Here's one of my favorite screenies - some Turcos (set to Skirmish) have surrounded a Byz Kataphraktoi unit, and proceeded to shoot them up. The Kats are to slow to catch the Turcos, and I can focus on the main battle.

http://www.totalwar.org/patrons/story/ichiturcokats.jpg

ichi :bow: