How to efficiently group units on the battlefield?

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Hi! ~;) I have a couple of questions:
1) what's your style of grouping units on defence and offence?
2) Do you group say all infantry (light, heavy, skirmishers, archers, etc.) in 1 group or do you divide them?
3) If you group your army into seperate parts, how do you move them all so that they don't run and keep their formation?

Please post your ideas about unit grouping. Txs ~:cheers:

[Spartiate]

Hi Duke.

I tend to group heavy infantry in one line(my main line) in the center of my formation.I group light infantry/skirmishers slightly behind the front line and flanking it.I group archers and place them in a line behind the heavies and not too close to them and i normally have two groups of cavalry out on either flank but starting well behind the main line as i don't want the enemy to turn towards my flank too early.
This is my most common basic line up when using Infantry based armies with good heavy infantry.It varies when i use Barbarian Factions or HA Factions.
I have found that you can then group your GROUPS together and on the unit panel the original groups you created are still adjacent to each other making it easy to separate them again when you need/want to.The advantage of creating one huge group from your smaller groups is that it is so much easier to move them before the battle is joined while keeping the defensive formation you want e.g heavies protecting archers,skirmishers protecting heavies flanks,cavalry protecting skirmishers and archers creating a killing ground around your troops in effect protecting them all.

[a_ver_est]

I don't use groups to often. When I do it is to use the special ability of one kind of unit.

For example:

All barbarian infantry to use warcry
All hoplites to use phalanx
All HA to use cantabrian circle.

[...]

I don't use formations either, I do it by hand.

I think that groups are useful in RTS games but in TW you can use the pause and take your time to micromanage your guys.

[Deus ret.]

I like to divide my troops into strike teams, assigning a task to each for the upcoming battle. This may correspond with a "regular" battle order (see Spartiate's post) but it doesn't have to. The purpose and composition of those teams heavily depend on circumstances such as the enemy's line-up, the terrain etc. and I don't know if it's a really cool tactic but it adds structure to my approach to a battle as well as to in-battle conduct.

[Zenicetus]

I always use groups, and never use the stock formations. I'll select units of a type (archers, for example), then right button drag them into the formation I want, then apply the group command. Grouping is important for ranged units because I often need to tell them all to cease fire to avoid hitting friendly units, or move in or out of fire-at-will mode. Infantry is grouped and positioned the same way, usually with a hold position order. Whatever cavalry I have is usually put into two groups near the flanks.

I use the Alt key when moving the whole army, so they hold formation when moving (more or less). If they get a little off-angle when marching towards the enemy, I use the "," and "." keys to rotate the entire army formation (with all units/groups selected).

When things start to get disorganized halfway through a battle, and I need to re-form the line or deal with an enemy attempt to outflank, I'll ungroup the units I want, then re-select them, and do a right button drag to set them in a formation facing a new direction, or a different unit depth depending on the situation. Then I'll re-group them again. That happens a lot with seiges, where (for example) archers might approach in a horizontal line to increase the lateral spread of fire before the gates are taken, then I'll re-form them into more of a column for moving through the streets. So I do a lot of that ungrouping/select/right drag/regroup stuff to get the guys facing the right way, in the right formation.

BTW, I tried a suggestion I read here somewhere, of grouping your army into sections like left flank, middle line, right flank, regardless of unit type. I can see where maybe that might be an advantage if you're doing one of those echelon approaches to a phalanx, where you're planning on wrapping around the end. But I had trouble with not being able to quickly give commands to the different unit types within the group. Maybe I didn't spend enough time experimenting with it.

[pezhetairoi]

I use groups in conjuction with the stock formations, for example. I usually group all my cavalry but one or two units in one group to be my hammer-cum-panzer wing. This is especially useful for city battles when I just charge that one group through the gates and once enough of them get through they just sweep through anything that comes at them clear to the square. This is also useful during the field battles when it is the charge from these units that will sweep the enemy from the field at the end (or at the beginning, depending on circumstance).

As for infantry, my style varies according to demand. Ranged troops are definitely grouped on their own according to the missiles they fire. For minimal confusion I tend to create armies with only one or at most two kinds of missile troops to prevent fratricide. Shock infantry wise, if I play with a phalanx then I simply group the phalanx as one group. If I am phalanx-centric then I tend to make three groups, the central group to take the brunt of defensive and offensive attack, and two groups, one to either side, to flank. This enables me to subdivide centre, left and right for easy management.

If melee infantry are used, I tend to group my units in pairs or threes. On the macro scale these units can function in tandem as flanker groups-centre holding line etc, and on the micro scale they can work as two-unit tag teams, one unit menacing another unit's front while the other charges round the back, making the enemy turn around before the second unit hits the same unit. This is made even more devastating by the fact that both the AI and me have completely no concept of a coherent battle line, but tend to play Deep Battle style.

My groupings into left, middle and right do take into account unit type, through. I like homogenuous groups-if it's phalanx it's all phalanx. If it's melee it's all melee. And so on.

[Murmandamus]

I use them to maintain formation when maneuvering (I also do manual formations), for grouping archers when I want to control when they fire and for quick selection of flanking/skirmishing groups. When engaged, the majority of my army is usually ungrouped.