Question about moving troops in the battlefield

I just remembered something, the first time I played RTW was when I was at a friend's house and he let me try it out. I remember vaguely about a command that told your troops to "march forward in formation" meaning that they won't break formation but march a couple dozen steps forward. I used this a couple times in the fight. A couple months later I bought the game in Hong Kong(Such a bargain for a legit copy ~D ) I wasn't able to find the command anywhere in the manual or in the game. Anyone have any idea on this?

One easy way of doing this is to group your entire army and then draw out your formation where you want it to move to by using right click and drag. Using this method still allows you to select individual units to attack or counter the enemy but selecting the group and drawing them out again puts them back in their original formation. They will remain in this formation until you ungroup them

....Orda

Yeah but sometimes they do weird things like run out of formation, then run back into. The command I'm talking about is basically, "All legions, forward." and is alot easier than the right click and drag. I'll have to see my friend about it again.

Well just group them and then right-click where you wanna go should do it.
But it won't be as precise as when you right-click and drag.

The problem with just right clicking is that most of the time it changes their positions completely.

The command you might be looking for is 1) select the units you want (Ctrl-A if you want the whole army), then 2) hold down the Alt key and right click. That moves the army without changing the initial formation you've set.

I use this a lot, when moving the army forward in the initial engagement.

Yes, the ALT key is your friend in this situation. It's not well-enough documented, but it definitely works.

Oh GREAT that's what I've always been hoping for. It's a wonderful tool that made me wonder why CA didn't have it in... Most of the time depending on where you're facing, if you right click without holding down alt your units stay in formation but their line is seriously slanted to one side or the other, which is CERTAINLY not what you want if your enemy has cavalry working around your flanks.

The problem with ALT is, the units will take up their initial positions at the end of the move, but while they move, they don´t keep formation. Somehow I did manage to move units in a way that kept the formation, but I´m not sure how I did that.
It doesn´t matter much if you play with any units but phalanxes, but handling those is a real pain, in my opinion, especially if you need to attack. One unit will stop and fight, but the others won´t and march on, opening nice large gaps for the enemy to exploit and attack the flanks. The best you can do is very carefully plan how far you can march up to the enemy, because if you move only a little too far, your formation gets disrupted.

Yes, the Alt move isn't all that predictable sometimes. First, you have to guess where the exact center of your battle line is, then click ahead of that center... otherwise your army turns in a direction you don't want. Sometimes I'll need several Alt-right button clicks to get them moving forward without turning.

The army can get disrupted during movement by uneven terrain that slows down some units more than others, so the whole formation falls apart until they get re-organized at the endpoint of the move. The Alt-move seems to be much more predictable on completely flat terrain with no vegetation.

And finally, just as the individual units don't "know" that parts of the line are being slowed down by terrain, they also don't adjust unit movement speed, to keep the battle line moving uniformly, at the speed of the slowest unit. The cavalry walks faster than infantry, so they'll usually end up arriving at their position before the rest of the army... the general on horseback will walk right through the front line infantry while moving, etc.

So what I usually do is a series of small Alt-moves, sometimes with a tweak using the "," or "." keys to rotate the army if needed before the next move. And mainly it's for positioning before combat. Once we're in contact with the enemy, I'm usually selecting and commanding individual units or unit groups, because the Alt-move is too risky. The only time I'll use it after battle is joined, is when I want a fast way to call back skirmishers and cavalry to the original formation after successfully driving off an initial attack. That can be useful, combined with the R (run) key... as long as I'm careful not to have returning units exposing their rear to enemies who are too close.

The reason alt+rt click isn't well documented is because it was in the 1.2 patch, after howls of protest from old MTW players. It had been dropped in RTW.

MMMmmmm I don't know about that. I'm playing 1.0, without downloading the patch and ALT+right click works just fine.

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

MMMmmmm I don't know about that. I'm playing 1.0, without downloading the patch and ALT+right click works just fine.

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The way ALT+right click works was improved in the v1.2 patch, but keep in mind that the AI will change your formation if it thinks your setup is too disorganized. Also, you cannot stack rotation and translation movement commands. If you rotate your whole army as a goup, you have to wait until all the units finish that movement before moving out in order to maintain the original formation.