how do i fix FACING problems QUICKLY?

if i need to change the FACING of a unit, what are the tricks for doing this quickly and without needless cumbrance?

it always takes me FOREVER to do this properly because it's hard for me to SEE which way is FORWARD since each man is so small and even when he IS facing forward, i can't make that visual distinction.

i really hope there is some sort of trick for fixing the facing. preferably something that lets you be able to SEE your units closer and/or in a magnified way. even if i am zoomed-in on a unit i still can not see it well enough to fix the facing quickly.

note: i woulda made this topic in the MP forum since i consider this to be an advanced tactic and one necessary to have mastered for MP games yet i can not start topics there even tho i can post there and many of my topics already got moved there. so if any of you Mods wanna move this there too, i'd appreciate that.

Facing one's units isn't really too hard. Alt + right click changes this (although I'm guessing you knew that.)
As for working out which way they are facing, hold down alt and hold down the right mouse button. Now Put the cursor a little in front of the unit. If they aren't facing that way, you'll see a ghost of the unit that looks different to their current facing.

I find that helps me alot. :) I hope that kind of helps you out

yeah i know how to do that but that's not where my problem lies

the problem is i can not SEE which why is FORWARD because my infantry men are too SMALL. it's not so hard to change the facing of Cavalry units because the horses' butts are quite distinguishable from their front sides.

but with infantry units their there is not much visual distinction between their front/back sides so even with the Ghost in my screen i often still can not SEE which way to the Ghost needs to FACE :(

Roll mouse wheel to zoom in and out. But I find this a surprising problem - do you have a small monitor, like 15?

monitor is 17 inches and i play in 1024x768

i suppose that if i changed my resolution to 640x480 then that would make it easier to see but i'm hoping for a better solution than that

having to scroll the camera wheel every time may be my only viable solution, but that process is VERY time-consuming and cumbersome so i was hopeing there's a better way. ie: something that zooms the camera in AUTOMATICALLY. double-clicking on a unit will not do this.

this problem is compounded by the fact that as you are moving the Ghost, then your ACTUAL UNIT is still visible and those pixels block the Ghost's pixels, often making a reasonable visual distinction impossible to make :(

The flag of the unit is always in the middle of the front rank of the unit. This might be difficult to see if the unit is only in 2 ranks, but it's an easy way to quickly see which way the unit is facing.

Cheers, Duke John

Also if you have one rank that is shorter than the others, this should be the one in the back.

It can be quite hard to tell if the men in a unit are facing forward or backwards because of the way the sprites flip around when viewing them from different angles. I use three different ways to get a unit to face front which are all faster than inspecting the unit visually. I either redraw the unit, move it slightly in the direction I want it to face or rotate it with ALT right mouse button. You can't go by the flag bearer because he isn't always in the center of the front rank.

Facing can be a problem. I cant count the number of times I've set up a nice defense (just right) only to realize that I've got several groups of spearmen with their backs to the oncoming enemy.

doubleclicking on the unit chit gives you an over the shoulder view. That solves your problem.

Perhaps this is a problem more relavant to MTW. I've not played that, but I have played STW a lot, and I've not had any trouble at all seeing which way my units are facing.

Sounds like an annoying problem http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cg...cons/angry.gif

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (WorkNeglecter @ April 20 2004,10:18)]doubleclicking on the unit chit gives you an over the shoulder view. That solves your problem.

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I'm surprised no one mentioned that earlier.

For me its simply a matter of not paying attention when setting up. I spend more time sorting my lines where I want them but sometimes click and drag the wrong way depending on my perspective.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by [b

Zitat[/b] ]monitor is 17 inches and i play in 1024x768

i suppose that if i changed my resolution to 640x480 then that would make it easier to see but i'm hoping for a better solution than that

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640x480 doesnt help. The oposite is the case.

Its not like in AOK, where resoltution change was like zooming.

In MTW, everything on the screen will allways be the same size, independant from the resolution.

In 640x480 you will just see a bunch of colorfull pixels crawling around. ;)

So higher you chose the resolution, so more clear you will see the units, so more far away from your camera you can see details like facing.

I play 1280x1024. And thats the limit of my Monitor (a 19 one). Otherwise I would even go 1600x1200. I tested that out of curiousity, it looks the same like 1280x1024, simply because my monitor skips the pixels wich are too much.....

Moving to Jousting Field.