Cant activate aome special formations

[Josephus Maximus Soter]

I recently got Barbarian invasion, and now i see that in EB that the hoplites can form Shielwall and night battles can apparently be activiated. the problem is when i have a hoplite unit on the field, even though in the unit card it says it can form shieldwall, it doesnt even have a button for it, and cant be activated. When i attack a faction, even though there is a night battle option, and even if all the conditions, which i know, are met where a night battle can be activiated, it will never be availabel. i didnt download a mod for all this it just happened wen i got BI.

Whats going on? for one thing i say the hoplited need shielswall, because other wise they fight in their odd, non-hoplite-like style

[Tito Pullo]

The shieldwall you mentioned is not the same that bi uses, and is activated with the same button used to disperse and compact formation (to avoid heavy losses
from enemy missile).

And I'm sorry for my english, my native language is spanish,

[Josephus Maximus Soter]

if you mean like putting them in loose and tight formation, i tried, and there is no change at all, they just stand there withouT even moving

Edit:after a while they will go into a state where they put they spears over there shields, but it is broken instantly when they engage in combat, so im not sure...

[Watchman]

That's something I like to call "EB pseudoshieldwall" - it's just the unit being defined as being really closely packed in the EDU. The engine being as dumb as it is, though, they're not going to stay that way without guardmode on.

Originally it was done so the tighter formation was the second one (normally that's the looser one), activated by switching the unit to 'loose' order, but as that was understandably rather counterintuitive and the poor tactical AI was naturally very confused by it the tighter spacing was switched to the "primary" formation space instead.

The BI "shieldwall" special formation is an entirely different animal; it does weird things to how the units' stats behave among other things, so in principle you should tweak the numbers (down) to maintain unit balance if you want to use it, and as EB is on plain RTW base such a BI-only feature naturally wasn't included and accounted for in the first place.

[beatoangelico]

That's something I like to call "EB pseudoshieldwall" - it's just the unit being defined as being really closely packed in the EDU. The engine being as dumb as it is, though, they're not going to stay that way without guardmode on.

Originally it was done so the tighter formation was the second one (normally that's the looser one), activated by switching the unit to 'loose' order, but as that was understandably rather counterintuitive and the poor tactical AI was naturally very confused by it the tighter spacing was switched to the "primary" formation space instead.

The BI "shieldwall" special formation is an entirely different animal; it does weird things to how the units' stats behave among other things, so in principle you should tweak the numbers (down) to maintain unit balance if you want to use it, and as EB is on plain RTW base such a BI-only feature naturally wasn't included and accounted for in the first place.

actually some units still have the tighter formation activated with the "loose formation" button

[Watchman]

True. Some of them also still have their formation numbers seriously buggered (eg. Pheraspides), but by and large those should be gone by the next release.

[Josephus Maximus Soter]

thanx man i think i understand :)