RTW: Erratic unit movement in battle

I've just started playing my first RTW campaign, and I'm still in the bewildered idiot phase. Maybe one day I'll be able to remember which set of javelin-armed Roman infantry is which.

In the battle map, my light javelin-armed infantry (Hastati?) have misbehaved a couple of times. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this? The first time, they were attacking down a road in a small village. After a couple of missile volleys they got stuck on "reloading" and the run/walk button was flashing on an off constantly. The next couple of times, they just didn't seem to want to use missile weapons on enemies in range. They've always had about half their ammo left when this happens.

It might just be that I was clicking too much and not giving them enough time to follow orders, but even being patient didn't seem to work.

I've seen some similar stuff, mostly during seiges, where units get into a state - maybe it's when their formation is too wide for their eventual location or something... I did notice some strange behaviour from my calvalry when chasing some routing infantry - instead of attacking, they sort of ran up to them and then veered off at the last minute - kinda funny to watch, but annoying when you want to inflict maximum casualties to teach those hairy barbarians a lesson in manners! :charge:

I've had a lot of pathfinding problems in towns and cities; the units have a tendency to hug walls and buildings and there seem to be a lot of invisible chokepoints. Of course, entering the town square seems to be a guaranteed way to break up any formation. If you're moving your troops in streets, it's best to have them in a column rather than a line. And when you do order them to move be patient, they'll appear to scatter when you first order them, but they'll eventually reconstitute into their formation. Another issue is entering gates, when I have troops that are positioned just outside the gates and try to get them to run through, they'll surge backwards and then run through them, anyone know if I'm not setting them up right beforhand?

As for the Hastati, if you want them to throw their javelins, put them on guard mode and fire at will, they'll unload all of their pilla at the nearest enemy. If they get stuck trying to throw, try pressing and holding Alt while clicking on the enemy unit, that will override their primary attack (the javelin) and force them into hand-to-hand combat.

Sometimes I have problems getting units to run. This usually occurs when then are in groups.

City battles are where I have problems with pathfindings. It is really annoying trying to get people to march to the proper place. Often they turn around and run in the other direction. Sometimes they just seem to wander. If I double click and run them over it seems to work better though. The pathfinding is one of the things I really want them to fix in the patch. That and tweaking the AI and unit speeds/killing speeds.

City battles always create pathfinding problems. Also there seems to be a delay in how long it takes for your orders for a unit to move to actually *get* to your unit, and they take a few seconds to get their butts moving.. Ill teach them to not follow my orders slow!

ya city battles are a small problem....anyone had a prob where you tell units that are IN the city to move to somewhere else and they walk out the gates instead away from where i want them to go? its weird but except for those eensy teensy bitty probs ROME IS AWESOME!!!! :charge: ~:cheers: :balloon2:

Oh yeah overall the game is awesome. There just needs to be some tweeks made to the engine, AI, and some balancing issues fixed. Luckily the balancing issues can be fixed with a number of ways, such as:

1) Changing unit killing time to reduce kill rate
2) Changing unit's stats
3) Changing the terrain modifier for speed

Most of these have been tried at the TW Center and work pretty well. I've been using the kill rate and speed modifier mods, and they slow things down nicely.

What I would like though is a return of the lock gate option from MTW. That should be good for defending a town.

My theory is that the concept of "groups" in RTW is quite a bit different from that of MTW. There is a high chance that it could be a bug, but it might also be a feature. The 'grouped' units in RTW have a strong tendency to try to retain its initial formation and unit positions, and thus more often than not it seems the units try to maintain the general formation while it is on the move.

The problem usually manifests when there are multiple units in groups which have different special abilities or movement speeds, and when the group is assigned to move over long distances. For instance, a group of Phalanx wielding infantry mixed with normal infantry does not respond to "run" command very well. As much, a group of missile cavalry mixed with normal cavalry sometimes fails to respond to attack inputs, because the missile cavalry may have "skirmish" mode on.

Therefore, the best method so far, is to make quick use of the "G" key and group only upon need. If the "group" command in MTW was more or less static, in RTW it is flexible. You want to keep grouping and disbanding units during battle according to the situation. Usually the static line playing the role of the "anvil" is preferred to be grouped, while the units playing the "hammer" role may be grouped initially, but quickly dispersed according to situation.

Well the main problem I've had with grouping was evident during my attempt at winning the Tutenborg forest battle. I had a group of three Roman infantry units (non archer/non cav) who I was trying to move and they would not move. I had to ungroup them and group them again to make them move. Or select them individually. Moving them as a group was useless.

first off rome is awesome, the last few nites ive been up untill about 6am with "just one more turn" going through my mind but i have encountered some of these bugs too, most notably the scatty unit behaviour, first time was when i was playing greeks in multyplayer my spartan general on my flank refused to move from his spot in the phalanx line, his unit was unengaged on the flank so ithought id do the typical phalanx tactic of rolling up the enemies flanks, however when i tried to issue my gen with orders he absolutley refused to obey, he just stood immobile, was very frustrating. also the grouped unit running thing has happened to me when ive had only units if the exact same type grouped together.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ptah

The 'grouped' units in RTW have a strong tendency to try to retain its initial formation and unit positions, and thus more often than not it seems the units try to maintain the general formation while it is on the move.

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That sounds plausible. In my last battle I almost lost the center of my front line when two grouped units of velites just stood around ignoring my orders. In the end they started moving again once I'd ungrouped them and reissued orders.

I've had more experience with city battles since I started this thread, too, and have had more problems. I wasn't very happy with the unit of archers who insisted on walking down a broad avenue in single file hugging the east wall.

Minor annoyances aside, it's still a great game.

One of my favorites so far ...
4 units of archers with 2 phalanxes in front take up a postion just outside the town center square and open up on the enemy phalanxes.
This should be a turkey shoot.
But then I notice all of my archer unit numbers are in red ... and dropping quickly.
Lovely.
My phalanxes in front are not getting hit and neither are the enemy's.
I went from roughly 400 archers in those units to less than 200 in the blink of an eye.