Game-breaking bug!

[Midnj]

And then the formation I have them in gets messed up, and the charge is not as effective

Move-select your infantry _in formation_ just past and parallel to the enemy battle line. Don't select any units to attack until they close to charge distance. Voila, cohesive front-line in an assault.

That's the problem! I had slingers and archers as well, but once I ran out of ammo for both, the enemy archers and slingers still had ammo. In fact, not once did they stop firing during the entire battle, they shot every chance they got, even long after I ran out

If you're going to turtle you better be heavy on the ranged units. You can't turtle with inferiority in ranged units.

Tried that as well. Only problem is that the archers and slingers would run in the middle of the infantry, and would never follow my cavalry. So that only ended with massive causalities for me.

You break off before engaging in melee with anything but the skirmishers. Not hard. While they're moving, they're not firing unless they're horse archers. And if you're fighting horse archers, you have no business bringing an army onto the field without a lot of archers/slingers, horse archers of your own or ample fast-light cav to pin them with. Unless you fancy recreating Carrhae that is. Incidentally, the Parthians did bring in wagon loads of arrows during the battle (unlimited arrows FTW) during that battle to defeat the Romans.

Did that the first time. The first cheap unit (just some levy spearmen) got decimated, so did the one after that, and once I noticed the enemy still had plenty of ammo to spare, I was forced to charge much sooner than I wanted, and was forced to leave my really good position

Loose formation. I usually only take 1 ranged in my armies (unless facing horse archers) and it's never died to ranged fire, even with 4-5 enemy slingers/archers shooting at it. And frankly, when the AI attacks it will always initiate the battle for you unless you have your ranged units sitting way in the back. Just put your skirmishers/ranged units in front of your infantry where they belong and the AI will 95% of the time rush units in to engage them, right into your infantry and then shortly thereafter commit everything else.

I'd love to do that, if I didn't already say that long after my men run out of ammo the enemy were still firing away, never seeming to end.

Again, if you're going to turtle you better have superiority in ranged units. Or if you really must build that semi-circle of phalanx units in the corner of the map against the invisible map boundaries, shrink it a bit so you can take more ranged units and less infantry.

[EasyCo506]

Thanks, didn't know about a lot of that. Maybe it will help.

It might have been a bug, actually. I just tried a custom battle, and gave a skirmisher unit to the enemy. For some reason, they never attacked. They just stood there in a throwing position, but never threw anything.