Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
I couldn't find a thread that mentioned this, (pretty damn sure there must be though!)
Picture a breached wall of the mightly city of Rome to the left of the gatehouse, sapped by peoni infantry, the assualt through the breach headed by sacred band infantry whilst another sacred band infantry unit enters through the gate.
The wall breachers come through with little fighting and turn to reinforce the gate assualt thats not doing so well, followed by a cavalry unit (long shield i think that with at least 5 experience) they march towards the gate.
Now the gate assualt is in a quagmire because of principles coming down from the walls and my phalanx can't change direction in the confined area. So I tell my cav charge at the enemy units rear.
Guess what happens, of about 50 men in the cav unit that made it through the wall about 30 survive the charge through the rear of my own phalanx. Not that i told them to go through it, the city routeing did that all on its own (the infantry was not on the road beyond the walls so there was a fair sized gap between it and a building). Absolutely mauled by rear ending a phalanx - if that had been an enemy unit i would have been only slightly less pi**ed off as the cav should have wiped them out!
Even with the massive slaughter of my own men by my own men the 30 cav charge on and turn the battle over the 100% damaged gatehouse but there are still units coming down from the walls. About half of one unit is down and i try attacking it, the cav doesn't budge and the infantry start wandering off somewhere.
From the start i had sapped 2 walls, spies had breached the gates and onagers had taken out the gatehouse and the towers on either side. Even though the defenders numbered near equally i had more units because i had about half in cavalry. This well planned assault was soon a shambles that lost me an incredable amount of men through city movement and friendly fire.
A) I lost many cavalry when it should have been the phalanx that took the hits as the horses ran into the back of them.
B) City routeing caused more deaths.
C) Not being able to attack units half way off the walls creates not only a game problem but a tactical one, you want to attack them when they are split.
All in all it felt like i had been sexually abused by a large roman and left with a slanderous minion trait - and we all hate those. I was attacking Rome and my victory feels tainted. Patch anyone?
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
A. You had deaths of you own men when running them into the back of one of your own Phalanx units. is that what you are saying?? I would not have thought it possible but someone else reported a similar thing some time ago... I was under the impression that units where incapable for making melee attacks on friendly units and the only FF came from missile fire...
B. Don't know what you mean by this...
C. Yeah unit location is an issue at present, personally I just ignore units that halfway up or down towers until theey have formed up, but I have not been in your position yet of fight enemy units coming down from the towers (I normally use Siege Towers in assaults so start by controlling the walls)...
What happens if you move you unit to where the enemy troops are gathering rather than instructing them to attack, do they fight anyway or just ignore the enemy??
I have noticed that when you instruct a unit to attack another that attack appears to be focused on a nonimated individual in the targeted unit and lead by a nominated individual in the attacking unit with everyone else in the units just maintaining formation and fighting the nearest enemy. This is readily apparant when chasing down routers who have become dispersed... And in a city where the path find is a little dodgy around the walls already if those two individuals can not get to each other then the rest of their units just hang around waiting...
Another example is missile troops, often in fishing off an enemy in a siege assault you have the last of his troops cornered in the square, so I march in the missile troops and set them up on one edge to finish them off (or at least weaking the last defenders)... I have had the unit stood there with Fire at Will on but doing nothing and then I notice one bloke for the unit is still half a block away and is casually strolling up to join his mates (does not matter if you toggle run, he is still strolling) and only when he gets there do they start shooting... :furious3:
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
Yeah, that was me - I lost my Carthaginian faction leader by ordering him to attack the enemy, but in doing so he ran through the back of one of my unengaged phalanx units - he did a stunt leap over the top of them and got skewered by the front rank. I initially thought it was a bug, but received enough replies to convince me this was an undocumented realistic feature... Either way, my advice is to take the phalanx out of phalanx formation before running any cavalry through the back of them - it makes sense if you think about it. Since doing this, I've not lost any more cav through bizarre showjumping incidents...
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zatoichi
Since doing this, I've not lost any more cav through bizarre showjumping incidents...
ROFL.... Quote of the day!!!! ~D
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
I had that happen to me, and it's definitely from the phalanx unit, because there was nothing else that could cause it. I had a couple of units of mercenary hoplites in the army in question, and was working on a city assault. It had reached the stage where the enemy had pretty much pulled back to the square, but a lot of his remnants were routing to the square, rallying, then coming back at me again only to rout again before contact. I decided to kill off one of the bigger ones and ordered a unit of cav to charge them. They ran through the back of the hoplite unit, and suffered about 30% casualties doing so. It seems just contact with the point of the pikes when the unit is in phalanx formation causes horses to die.
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zatoichi
Yeah, that was me - I lost my Carthaginian faction leader by ordering him to attack the enemy, but in doing so he ran through the back of one of my unengaged phalanx units - he did a stunt leap over the top of them and got skewered by the front rank. I initially thought it was a bug, but received enough replies to convince me this was an undocumented realistic feature... Either way, my advice is to take the phalanx out of phalanx formation before running any cavalry through the back of them - it makes sense if you think about it. Since doing this, I've not lost any more cav through bizarre showjumping incidents...
Yeah, i thought about the event afterward and assumed that if i had taken the unit out of its formation the cav may have survived the quite spectacular incident ~:)
I think that the in the main people experience this problem only in city combat as the space is narrow and on a field of battle away from the city cavalry manouvers are not such a problem that you need to throw your cav through your front lines. Also if in a large open field battle and sending cav through an already engaged battle line and missle troops were firing you may not attribute the deaths of men and horse to your own side.
By the city routeing causing more deaths I meant that when i double clicked on the enemy unit there was ample space to proceed around the phalanx. Normally you have a column of troops walking out of the breach with lots of room next to the walls but in this instance I had put the phalanx next to the wall and not on the road. And usually the unit would follow a path away from the walls - this time that was not the case.
Bloody annoying, if funny to watch ~:)
Re: Phalanx Friendly Fire?!?!
It seems to be limited to horses running/charging, as I've not seen it in infantry. I noticed the horses do the combat leap animation, so it's like they've come into contact with the enemy - but you know, if you were to try and leap over a forest of 15 foot sharp pointy sticks, the results would generally be fatal (interestingly enough though, none of the infantry died from having 10 dead horses falling on them).
Anyway, I'm now quite the expert at the phalanx on/off command - in fact, I generally leave most troops with phalanx off until the last possible minute to benefit from their faster movement. Yes, I'm into micro-managing... OK, I'll admit, I'm playing with the speed reduction mod as well, so these tactics may only be advisable/practical for all you speed demons out there.
Just don't all come running to me when you've developed RSI and arthritis.
