Discarding siege weapons effectively

[Banquo's Ghost]

I have decided to force myself away from my beloved MTW to try and get to grips again with M2TW.

Apart from getting my clicks all wrong, it seems the biggest confusion I have at present is how to discard siege equipment when the opposition sallies forth.

I can drop the kit, but the lads are left all higgledy-piggledy, and realigning everyone quickly and accurately in a strong line appears beyond my powers of mouse-work - not least as the howling desperadoes pouring from the gates see one's confusion and rightly seek to take advantage. There is also the tendency for archers to be the poor saps given the ladders, and then placed neatly in the centre to make a nice tempting target for said charge.

I must be missing something - any chance of advice? Apologies for the utterly newbie question.

[FactionHeir]

You can normally abandon ladders and siege towers relatively quickly (unless your men are only on it, then it takes ages), but with rams, if you were already close to the gate, they will slowly move it all the way to the side before conforming with your orders. Only way around seems to be the enemy engaging them, whereupon you can control them again.

As for pre battle, you can reassign equipment by selecting carriers and telling them to drop it. Then select another unit to take it. You can even leave stuff unmanned at the start.

[Ramses II CP]

When they sally you just have to use pause. It might be a little cheap, but it works. Pause, order them all to drop their equipment, unpause for a brief second to let them start doing it, then pause again and create your formation back at a more desirable distance and order the men to run. This should give them enough time to clear the easy charge range of the AI, especially if you can leave a cheap company of spearmen back to clog the lanes.

Typically in my experience if you charge the AI and clog them in their own gate you'll be able to break them there before they can organize an effective sally.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Thank you, gentlemen.

[Adrian II]

Hello Banquo's Ghost,

it seems you and I are in the same unenviable position of the weak and doddering elderly citizen who is severely challenged by this new concept called 'computer games'.

Not.

My troops hardly end up higgeldy-piggeldy, my friend. Maybe the following comment is totally superfluous, but one never knows in this day and age.

You can (re)align your troops by turning them into a group. Highlight the required units, then hit the 'G' key. This group can now be quickly reorganised into various formations by highlighting the group and then hitting SHIFT + any number from 1 to 9. I find SHIFT + 5 (missiles to the front) and SHIFT + 6 (infantry to the front) very helpful. Be careful when using the SHIFT formations though, for the AI tends to bunch all your spears together on one flank and all your swords on the other. This leaves your swords flank wide open to cavalry charges and your spears flank open to attacking swordsmen. A simple solution to this is to create various groups consisting of swords, spears and missile support and let them operate side by side. Coupled with horse archers, hobilars, jinetes, mailed knights and other independent (and mobile) elements, your lines will be very flexible and enable a much higher killing rate and quicker break-throughs than a static one-group army.

[Ethelred Unread]

Just to add a bit more really - use the selection box by left clicking and dragging and select only the troops holding seige equipment only then group them, on the UI there should be a button for "drop equipment".

Then select your group pattern - I usually use single or double line, then with the group still selected, left click and drag and you should have the line formation appear in yellow? don't forget to press "r" to make them run cos sometimes they sally really quickly!