Ok, so game has been out for 2 years now...

[Biggus Diccus]

You'll tell me that you never noticed the lack of cohesion in units ? The fact that if a single man in a unit enters combat, the entire unit stop charging ? That when a unit fight, only a very small numbers of men DO fight, and the rest just stand idle stupidly, waiting to take turns ?
This doesn't require dissection of the game. Just look at the fights and it jumps in your face.

This is EXACTLY what annoys me the most about this game! Trying to make those unwilling infantry grunts fight is really frustrating; I actually run my units THROUGH the enemy and then click attack

I was actually thinking of reinstalling and play MTW2 again but reading this thread reminded me why I stopped playing in the first place.

[Akka]

Well, you may be happy to retry it then !
I've been trying to find a way to alleviate (at least partially) this horrible implementation for years, and I found it barely a few days ago !

A hidden field in the unit files which allows to change the size each man occupy on the field of battle.
Don't completely fix the fighting (seems the engine don't allow more than one or two people to attack one, so you still see men right in the front not fighting), but it improves TREMENDOUSLY cohesion, fluidity of movements and the like. Makes the fighting much more like RTW all in all (and cavalry may be quite overpowered because of this, but well, I don't really mind cavalry being overpowered in medieval settings).

I may make a quick thread in the modding forum (even though it's a really small change, even if it has lots of consequences) if enough people are interested.

[Biggus Diccus]

If you can deliver something like this I'll be very happy to reinstall and play again! You should definitely make a thread about this trick. Death to cowardly infantrymen!

[Point_Blank]

Cohesion can be almost completely fixed by:
-hidden field as above, set to 0.3 for spearmen. For other units its not really appropriate
-reduce charge distance to about 6m
-set second field in formation line to zero (ie distance between ranks)
-edit animations so that all instances of 'shuffle_backward' are replaced with 'shuffle_forward', except for spearmen which replace it by 'ready'

Please check out Real Recruitment / Real Combat, requires SS6.1 + SSTC + SSTC 1.2 patch + SSTC hotfix:
Thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=197224
Download: http://files.filefront.com/RRRCexe/;.../fileinfo.html

[Akka]

!

This is VERY interesting, Point Blank :)
Though I used 0,15 in the hidden field for ALL units, maybe I won't need it if applying the other changes. I'll definitely look into the info you've given and tinker with it, great thanks :)

[Point_Blank]

You will likely find 0.15 causes extreme unit density, with soldiers merging into eachother. The animation fix is the most important thing. But seriously, with those changes cohesion is no longer an issue. The battles look great, like they should have when the product was released.

[TheLastPrivate]

Just like many other games these days mods keep it alive. RC and SS are completing the game by doing what CA should have done before the game was released.

[Loki]

To All,

Are there any mods out now that currently incorporate the above cohesion fixes? (SS, PDER Vanilla, etc.)

If so, are they MTW2 or Kingdoms specific?

Also when someone mentioned that the fix was for Spear only, does that include other inits like Halbereds / pole arms etc?

[Point_Blank]

The mod in my .sig does, also see thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=197224

Needs SS6.0+SS6.1+SSTC+SSTC Patch 1.2+SSTC hotfix first.

SSTC: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=162498

Be advised its a beta, though the release isn't too far away, and that in Vista the incidence of CTD's seems to increase.

AOR Colonies has it also: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=175571

Cohesion is improved for all units.

[oz_wwjd]

Do all those patches require Kingdoms to run? I am also getting tired of the AI's stupidity,but I haven't found a mod that I like yet. SS seems like a challenging mod,if I can run it - kingdoms.