Grouped Cav Charges

**CountMRVHS** · 05-13-2008, 14:17

I seem to remember in RTW or BI that you could make a long line of cavalry, group them together, and click on an enemy unit, whereupon your cav would advance and charge at units that were directly in front of them -- not necessarily the unit you clicked on. This was great for charging a long line of enemy infantry without having to select an individual target for each one of your cav units: one click anywhere on the enemy line would make your cav find reasonable targets of their own.

In M2TW, however, that appears to not be the case. Playing the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Crusades campaign, I'll make a line of my heavy cav, group them, and click the enemy line. Instead of all my cav units charging straight ahead into the enemy unit directly in front of them, they'll ALL charge at the only enemy unit I clicked on. This will result in my long, shiny line of knights bunching up annoyingly until I select them one by one and give them new targets.

Is there a way to get group cav charges without having to select each individual target manually?

**Andrei** · 05-13-2008, 15:49

I would also like to know if there is such a possibility ...i hate it when it happens like that...

**Old Geezer** · 05-13-2008, 17:10

In MTW IIRC, you could double click beyond the units you wanted to charge with your group and they just move out straight toward that point and not converge, but in M2TW they seem to bunch almost immediately. Can the group be set to move to a new location with a stretched out line and then changing the group to run? Will they then charge into any obstructing units and not bunch up? I never seem to be able to get them to charge properly at all when they are in a group.

**CountMRVHS** · 05-13-2008, 19:24

You can double-click on the ground behind the enemy line and your grouped cav will, I suppose, just run straight forward without bunching up, but in that case they wouldn't charge; they'd just run into the enemy and start fighting without getting the charge bonus.

It's a shame this doesn't seem to work, because I had a ton of fun playing with massed cav charges in the BI-based mod Fourth Age: Total War. You could just line up all your Rohirrim, group them, and send them flying at the enemy. That's the kind of thing I'd like to be able to do with my Templars in the Crusades campaign, but it seems I'll have to just pause and micromanage each individual unit's charge. Unless someone knows something I don't!

**Zild** · 05-13-2008, 21:33

I am sure I read in the manual (a few weeks ago) that it was perfectly possible to do this in M2TW simply by doubleclicking the target, as long as the units were all part of the same group (I think merely having them all selected at once does not count). However, I cannot recall doing this myself - I rarely have such large battles.

What I can recall, however - with painfully frequent occurrence - is archers and artillery "intelligently" choosing targets in such a way when using ranged weapons! Whilst I admit this makes them possibly more efficient than all firing at one target, it also causes them to aim at enemy units I would rather ignore - such as feeble peasants or units currently engaged in combat with my own men!

So I ask: is there a way to turn this feature off?!

**Lord Fluffy** · 05-13-2008, 21:51

I think they will do it to a degree. I seem to remember charging several cav units at an enemy line and as the enemy units diverge, my cav will start to follow different targets. Ironically I wanted them to all hit this one enemy cav unit, so I had to click on each and retarget to the enemy cav unit. This is on 1.2 not Kingdom.