Manipular formation

I hope this is the right title of the formation. Anyway I have found this to be incredibly effective and realistic.

Okay for those who don't know the formation goes like this:

Velites in the first line
Hasati and other light infantry in the second line
Principes in the third line
Triaraii in the fourth line
Cavalry on the flanks

This tactic is number 5 in the army group list and i find it works well against all armies bar phalanx based armies. Firstly I send velites forward to pepper the enemy. hen the hasati charge and if needed the principes cover the flanks. Then once the units begin to get tire I withdraw them and charge the Triarii in and send the cavlary in against the flanks or rear.

It seems to work really well, and I was just wondering if anyone else has had success with this formation.

I tend to manually make it.
But velites & cav exposed in the front/flanks tend to inspire AI armies to just charge at them, so I generally keep them behind the main line...

Seems a bit excessive to use so many lines when the AI usually just comes at you in one big long line. Hard to flank an enemy that is 3 times wider than your current formation.

Still against smaller, more compact enemy formations it's probably useful.

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Hopefully that showed up right.

Thats usually a good way to set up a battleline I've found, the main frontline is your main frontline infantry, the two bits on the end of the frontline are your spearmen/anti-cavalry, behind them are your cavalry (the two bits on the end of the second line). Behind your frontline troops are your missile troops (three units in this case) and behind the centre of those sits your general.

The formation has become even more effective after the patch because even though the enemy AI has smartened up, missile troops are far more cost effective thanks to the friendly fire issue being resolved. Simple and effective, the archetypal battle.

this works, but only if you use it right and are johnny on the spot with your triarii. The hastati don't hold their own for long, but the principes usually do the business when you send them in. The problem is that you do tend to get flanked unless your draw off some of the enemy with cav.

It seems to be a bit all or nothing - either you win quite comfortably with the principes as the killer punch on a softened enemy, or you get annhilated. Not far off what happened to most roman armies in this period.

as to phalanxes I find them quite easy to defeat with this, so long as your velites soften them up as the approach, and the heavy pila allow hastati and principes to hold them long enough for you to get your triarii or some cav, or even velites round and behind the phalanx.

The enemy do flank me on this tacitc but I find I can usually rely on my principes to hold them off on the flanks. I have had generally minor casulties with this formtion even when the enmy flank me with far more troops.

The main advantage of it is, if the the enemy do break through anywhere I can almost always cover the hole.

The best use of this formation is to attack one wing of the enemy army rather than drive into the middle.

As someone said you can easily face a double flanking move due to the fact that the enemy often has its forces stretched out.

However when you attack one wing of the enemy army, you can easily have one of the rear lines reel around and create a second front to deny any flanking move...

So for instance if you attack the enemy left, you can have your principes reel around to the diagonal left of your main line to protect your advancing Hastati, with the Triarii still held in reserve. Enemies on the far left will also have longer to arrive at the point of crisis to attack your army so it can work in your favor as you focus your strength on a smaller part of the enemy army to begin to rout them and roll up their battle line.

Its a good formation and can be used well.

You can also try......an infantry square! (Again weak inf. factions!)

If they come at you in 1 long line and you know that their inf wont take much of a beating (Hillmen, Easter Spearmen etc....tht sort of class) arrange your best troops at the head of the square, you most durable troops on the side and some good strong troops at the back too.

When they've got relatively close to you, charge the formation as a whole and set your front line to do the attacking and the durable troops tohold the flanks. The enemy inf shouldn't hold long and you should have created a gap in the middle whcih you can then clear up the rest of the enemy army with/

I generally actually use the checkerboard technique for width.
The front line Hastati can thus cover a wider area while the Principes are still effectively reserves even though their width counts towards the front line.

I don't like to spread my army thin with the whole super formation piercing ability of cavalry.