Friendly fire isn't !

Salute !

Friendly fire is definetly a big problem for me.
Playing Turks, fielding all cavalry, fast moving armies.

One thing I can say for sure, in my first campaign (ongoing) as Turks, I've lost FAR more Turcomen to friendly fire than to the enemy. They keep shooting into an enemy unit which is already engaged and 'bagged' (Doug Thompson's terminology) by 4 other friendly units. It does'nt seem to help much if you tell them to stop because they (apparently) fire the volley the are currently loading, anyway.

I hardly use autofire as well. Most of the time if a friendly unit is crossing the line of fire, inadvertantly, the firing unit still shoots. Some men aim higher, but most of the arrows whizz by the crossing unit, usually killing at least a 3-4.

The only solution I've found is to manually control their fire (which is always a good idea anyway for volume of fire effect), and to keep a very tight watch on waypoint progression for individual units. I also usually have to wait before charging a unit, to make sure that the shooters have ceased fire.

I did'nt play much RTW at all, maybe I've gotten slow, but at times I almost HAVE to hit pause because I'm getting so many friendly kills.

As an example, one of my spies spotted a large infantry army, with only 2 cavalry, and no missile units, south of Bucharest. I dispatched the "Sword of Arsalan" (all cavalry) army from Constantinople, lead by a 9 star general.

Intercepted the Hungarian army before it got to another city (to hide), met them on almost flat ground. At the end of the battle I lost approximately 32 men, and the Hungarian army was annihilated. Of the approximately 32 men KIA, for sure at least 20 were friendly fire kills. This is an example of a great one sided batle, but in harder battles I lose much more to firendly fire almost always 50-60% are friendly kills.

If anyone has any tips on this, I'd be grateful.

Do you all think there's too much friendly fire ? I'm beginning to think so.

All I can say is that you have to remember that your units will not stop firing until their animation cycle is complete. Aside from that, don't engage in melee until all your arrows have been shot.

Well that's the thing.

Imagine you are sitting on a horse, you pull an arrow from your quiver, you begin to aim. Range to enemy formation is about 50 meters, you hear a horn sounding a flanking charge by a friendly unit. In your wider field of view you see a friendly cavalry unit breaking into the enemy unit's flank. Do you still fire ? your aim is at a man who's now engaging a freindy horseman. DO you still fire ? I'd say.... no !

If you look at historical paintings of Turks (or any other horse archers) in battle, you may notice that some of the horsemen have a bow and about 3 to 4 arrows in the same hand. Some are shooting backwards, sideways, and all this time the horse is being controlled, mostly by nudges from the man's inner thighs. Now with that kind of skill comes arrogance, and error, to the weak. I'd say it's unreasonable to assume that this kind of man would not stop shooting and wait for a clear shot.

In a long range volley attack, where the archer is not specifically aiming for a particular individual, it is acceptable to have friendly kills. But in close range it would be better if the animation was completed, but the archer did'nt shoot. It would be more reasonable.

I had the same problem with the Byzantines. I can give you a little advice, is all. First, make sure you keep units out of other units line-of-fire. A unit in this game can't cause friendly fire to itself (it did in RTW), but it does cause casualties in other units that are in the way. Be aware of elevation differences as well. When it comes time to charge, have all units except possibly the charging unit cease firing, and wait long enough for the entire animation cycle to finish. When the enemy army breaks, turn off ALL fire at will. Give it a couple of seconds for the animation cycles to end, and then continue pursuit. Like you, I tended to lose more men to my own side than I did to the enemy, unless I was fighting someone like the Mongols who had mostly horse archers.

I don't use ranged units that much, but when I do, there are a couple things that bother me.

All ranged units I've used seem to fire at a wide range of times, as opposed to a good salvo. Thinking specifically of the Jannisary musketeers, putting them into two rows, the front row doesn't fire very cohesively. I'd like to see and expect that a trained group of men in a unit like that would fire on a leader's command with very little variation in timing.

Specifically arrow units, I do have a complaint regarding their firing and the spread. I think the arrows fired land over too wide an area, and they also tend to fire not as a cohesive group as much as I'd expect. Regarding the accuracy, this directly relates to the honorable Sinan's OP about friendly fire, and having a large target area means more friendly casualties. Now I don't expect all the arrows to hit within a *very* tight radius, but I do expect them to be closer than what they are right now. Experience doesn't seem to have an effect on this, but it does seem to affect kill rates, as I've seen and another gentleman pointed out. Regarding the firing as a cohesive unit... /shrug I just don't like how any ranged units do this now. As I've read, professional soldiers back in the day were in general highly trained and skilled, and knew how to work and operate as a single unit. This "every man shoots when he damn well wants to" doesn't sit well with me, nor do I think it's very historically accurate.

From what I've seen I totally agree with Sinan. There is no way to stop archers before the end of their animated movement. After that I am not really sure, on autofire, if they always pick another target not engaged in melee with my units. I've seen it happening but can't say if it's the norm.

They certainly keep on shooting if the enemy is routing and chased by one of my units. Actually this is the point where I see most of the friendly killings in my game: friendly units getting shot when chasing a routing opponent. It seems like archers are always allowed to shoot at routing units, even if friendly units are in their line of fire.

The same animation problem destroys foot archers: they do not skirmish before the animation ends even if I order the unit manually to move and they get slaughtered, especially by charging cavalry.

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Originally Posted by Nestor

From what I've seen I totally agree with Sinan. There is no way to stop archers before the end of their animated movement. After that I am not really sure, on autofire, if they always pick another target not engaged in melee with my units. I've seen it happening but can't say if it's the norm.

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Stupid n00b question I'm sure, but how can you work out what your missile units are firing at?

No way of knowing that, never has been, as far as I know. Now that can be used as an advantage off course, when shooting at clumps of enemy units, but aside from that, you can only know for certain if u order them to shoot a a particular unit.

I agree on the FF being a bit of a drag. I constantly have to check what is happening, and in practice that means just changing target a lot..

Well, there is a very easy solution: wait with the charge until you run out of ammo. ~;)

Another strange question here..but in RTW I could engage archers in hand to hand if needed with a button press think it was ctrl or shift then click attack cannot remember..but anyway doesn't seem to be working in MTW2...did I miss something? Or have I been lazy and not read the manual! lol

With regards performance they do seem to spread out more as on poster suggested...hard to say if they are not as effective as in RTW...I was well into my archers on that one.

So far I've managed to take down a general and a captain with friendly fire :embarassed:

Really, if you have your missle units off auto-fire (I turn this off at the start of every battle) and you pay attention, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. If, however, like me you get so caught up watching the pretty little men hit each other with lumps of metal on a very close in camera angle that you forget about the rest of the battle then I guess it becomes more of an issue...

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Originally Posted by Barry Fitzgerald

Another strange question here..but in RTW I could engage archers in hand to hand if needed with a button press think it was ctrl or shift then click attack cannot remember..but anyway doesn't seem to be working in MTW2...did I miss something? Or have I been lazy and not read the manual! lol

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Alt+right click. Works for me in most cases, but skirmishers can be a bit reluctant at times.

As for FF, it doesn't seem over the top to me at all. Losing a few men to FF is a small price to pay for the crushing victories that a horse archer army can get, IMO.

You can avoid most of it by being very careful when chasing routers, or you can just not care and kill 'em all quick. Either approach gives the same macro-results for me (big victory, insignificant casualties), but the former takes more time and thus cuts into my playtime, so 'twas an easy decision for me.

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Originally Posted by HughTower

Stupid n00b question I'm sure, but how can you work out what your missile units are firing at?

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Heh, I actually follow the arrows with the camera. Especially when the armies are totally disorganized it's quite easy to see what's their target. I guess I'm still in the mood to enjoy the graphics when the battle is decided.:beam:

Use archers in melee: I usually disable skirmish mode and have good results (especially with horse archers killing siege weapon crews).

Friendly fire: I have quite a lot when I use several horse archers with the same orders, and they "merge". I don't find it unrealistic at all. Even in the last war in Iraq there was a fair share of FF.

Quillan, I had cases of self inflicted casualties. I had a cannon on a bridge that kept shooting one of its own servants.

To me it seems that the archers seem to fire more accutely when they have more experience. The circle they are hitting gets smaller. The unexperienced units shoot a large O while more experienced units shoot smaller o.

Oh, I've had that too, Spendius. Once, using bombards in a city assault, I deployed one forward of another in an effort to fit both of them into one street. The rear one kept taking out one man of the crew of the forward one whenever it fired.

Damn, doesn't it ruin your day when that happens! Blast! oh, excusez moi, collateral damage man..

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Originally Posted by Quillan

Oh, I've had that too, Spendius. Once, using bombards in a city assault, I deployed one forward of another in an effort to fit both of them into one street. The rear one kept taking out one man of the crew of the forward one whenever it fired.

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That's what I thought happened, but it was actually a cannon taking out its own crew ! They killed at least 7 guys during the battle. I think the 2 cannons were more or less one behind the other, because a bridges is narrow and the engine does not allow you to manually place units on a brigde (order them to cross, then stop when desired).

That could very well be. In my case, the leftmost bombard of unit 1 was just ahead of the rightmost bombard of unit 2. When the RH bombard fired, it would kill the rammer for the LH bombard. Another crewman would march forward to take his place, and die with the next shot. I noticed the casualties with the second, watched it happen with the third, and stopped it at that point.

Sorry maybe that's what you meant, 2 bombards from the same unit.

No, mine was two different units, with one blowing away the other. When I said units didn't cause friendly fire to themselves, I was referring to archers. It was a problem in RTW. It was most prevalent on hills. If you deployed archers on the slope of a hill, sometimes when firing down the rear rank would kill the front rank. It would happen any time the path of the arrow went through the men in front of them. That doesn't happen in this game. They'll do the parabolic arc thing instead.

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Originally Posted by Sinan

Well that's the thing.

Imagine you are sitting on a horse, you pull an arrow from your quiver, you begin to aim. Range to enemy formation is about 50 meters, you hear a horn sounding a flanking charge by a friendly unit. In your wider field of view you see a friendly cavalry unit breaking into the enemy unit's flank. Do you still fire ? your aim is at a man who's now engaging a freindy horseman. DO you still fire ? I'd say.... no !

If you look at historical paintings of Turks (or any other horse archers) in battle, you may notice that some of the horsemen have a bow and about 3 to 4 arrows in the same hand. Some are shooting backwards, sideways, and all this time the horse is being controlled, mostly by nudges from the man's inner thighs. Now with that kind of skill comes arrogance, and error, to the weak. I'd say it's unreasonable to assume that this kind of man would not stop shooting and wait for a clear shot.

In a long range volley attack, where the archer is not specifically aiming for a particular individual, it is acceptable to have friendly kills. But in close range it would be better if the animation was completed, but the archer did'nt shoot. It would be more reasonable.

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It's a pain in the proverbial. Unfortunately this game will NEVER reproduce a realistic horseback archer. At least now the men in the rear of a unit do not shoot their friends at the front. Animation sequence, merging, line of fire, etc all you can do is work hard to minimise the losses.

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Stupid n00b question I'm sure, but how can you work out what your missile units are firing at?

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Switch off fire at will. The unit you target should be the unit that gets shot. Be aware that sometimes (with this new game engine :wall: ) your ranged units will not obey orders. Leaving fire at will on will only encourage your ranged units to target enemy ranged rather than the cav/inf you want to target

........Orda

I really think there should have been an option like "Don't fire at units engaged with friends" to put on or off according to one's strategy. It's annoying, imho, to have to micromanage that kind of reaction. It's simply waste of time compared to more important matters. So please Devs, if u read this, it would be nice to have such button. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by TheImp

I really think there should have been an option like "Don't fire at units engaged with friends" to put on or off according to one's strategy.

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Excellent point, *but* I have to disagree about the option, based on the fact that I completely, 110%, utterly, totally, firmly agree with your statement:

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Originally Posted by TheImp

It's annoying, imho, to have to micromanage that kind of reaction.

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One thing that vexes me greatly about this fun new game is the fact that it seems CA thinks that rather extreme levels of micromanagement on the battlefield are a "good thing", and help "balance" the game. I couldn't disagree more with this if I tried. Trying to make a level field for players by making it just that much harder or a pain in the tookiss to get your units to do what you want, WHEN you want, is not the right way to go at all. One adds challenge and depth through game mechanics, not a kludgy interface or interface mechanics. To use the most recent iteration of the TW series, IIRC, RTW's interface allowed for immediately cessation of firing of ranged units, provided one had fire at will turned off and no enemy units in range. I seem to recall maybe a few guys would loose arrows, but for the most part, everyone stopped when I hit backspace and didn't keep shooting. This goes hand in hand with the charging as well, having to micromanage charges due to poor unit cohesion or lame interface mechanics is just beyond obnoxious. The game should know enough that if I want a ranged unit already firing to stop right now dangit, then hitting backspace is all I should do, other than perhaps taking off fire at will to prevent them from reengaging. My units should KNOW that they need to aim a bit further to the front/left/right/whatever to avoid friendly fire casualties when firing at a unit that's already engaged with one of my guys. The game should also know that if I double click a unit with my cav selected, then I want them to run all the way up, then charge when in range in a cohesive fashion.:dizzy2:

/shrug

Cheers!

In fairness, let's think about the horseback archer and how CA has made terrific improvements to this wonderful unit.
Until RTW the HA was a static, easy to target unit. It would only skirmish from the unit it had targetted, making micro management a real pain.
At last we have a mobile HA, capable of performing the cantabrian circle (see five or six units engaged in this action on a MP battlefield and it is a wonder to behold).
The friendly fire within a unit has been fixed, they skirmish away from any threatening unit and the new addition for M2TW is no longer having to re-select skirmish mode after your unit has been sent into melee. That is utterly brilliant. The few losses I can certainly live with and being mindful about where and when my HA fire is a small price to pay for the joy of at last seeing arrows fly from galloping horses.
I am not such a fan of imposing an accuracy penalty when they are in CC mode but game balance issues must apply I suppose.
Sinan, you are out of practice maybe? I haven't played for almost a year and I found remembering commands a big problem :dizzy2: I remember your Turkish cavalry and I'm sure you will find a solution to your losses in a short time

......Orda

The single stupidest mistake was when my spanish King and 7* general and his unit walked right in front of (what I thought was) a reloading basilisk. Well it wasn't reloading. It blew the king and 8 bodyguards, and then crashed into the milanese lines. I disbanded that basilisk.

Well, I agree that having to wait until the firing animation is through before a unit can stop firing is annoying.

However, I have noticed that MTW II units do stop auto-fire if a friendly unit engages the target and there are no other targets in range. Question, of course, is WHEN does the missile unit actually realize a target is engaged by a friendly unit? When the friendly' unit's first soldier engages, when most of the unit engages, when the center of the unit engages: not sure...

Another issue with this is that under the current engine, your missile units on autofire WILL RESUME SHOOTING as soon as the enemy starts to rout... and the autofiring units will ignore the fact that your units are pursuing the routers (in most cases).

I guess, in programming sense, the missile units are set to stop autofiring if a friendly unit ATTACKS the target, but there is no such trigger for the cases when friendly units PURSUE the target... annoying, to the least. in MTW I, missile units stopped autofire as soon as enemies started routing and one had to explicitly tell them to shoot in the backs of routers. A wonderful system IMHO... and... it was there already... (on a different note, i miss the MTW I feature where the rear ranks of an archer unit would stop firing if it was deployed more than 2 rows (3 rows on a hill) deep and the third row had a chance to shoot their comrades in the back of their heads... a neat tactical detail, if you ask me. seems to be lost).

On another note, at least at the beginning of RTW there was a talk that general's stars do have impact on how quickly units react to his commands. The higher the stars, the faster execution one was supposed to get. The closer the unit to the general, the faster the execution as well. I wonder has this feature been lost in MTW II?

I'm sure that when playing RTW your archers immediately stopped firing on the enemy when you committed another unit to engage.:2thumbsup:

I once made the rookie mistake of killing a general with a flaming shot from a catapult after we had already practically won the battle. With archers usually I just use them until they are out of ammo and then not worry about it, or always have them attacking a unit in the back of their formation.