Do fire commands impede skirmish?

I was experimenting with skirmishing with longbows. I notice that one unit didn't skirmis away very well. It was a unit that was ordered to fire on the approaching enemy infantry.

Intrigued, I re-fought the battle. This time, I ordered the longbowmen forward a little but gave no fire command. The fired at will and skirmished away normally.

Re-fought again. Gave a fire command, then a movement order when the enemy infantry got too close. The movement order was ignored, even after I hit "run".

Finally, I issued a fire command, set waypoints and hit "run" and held the shift key down to keep seeing the waypoints. Sure enough, the "waypoint" over the enemy infantry indicating the attack order stayed and the movement orders were ignored.

The problem doesn't affect HA -- because HA fire on the move. They will keep firing and move with no conflict.

I haven't tired this with other types of archers, but if you have archers that don't seem to want to skirmish, try not giving them fire commands and letting them fire at will.


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Foot javenlinmen seem to have the same problem as gunners. If one of their number dies to missile fire, they'll tidy up formation before firing -- and probably lose one of their number, and hence barely fire at all.

If you've got the time, try redoing the test but with fire at will off on the unit you've manually selected the target for.

FaW can be a pita in that regards sometimes.