troop control and management in battle

[Terry]

I seem to have more difficulty ordering and managing my army in battle than I did in previous TWs. Maybe it is just slightly different and something to get used to? Anyone else experiencing this? Maybe my graphic settings need to be lowered...

Terry

[Terry]

For me, I've throttled back my settings a little. That helped the flow of the battle and moving, but now I suffer from poor generalship and dumb troops. I was given the task of taking Fort Dusquene (sp?) and during the setup, I didn't realize that the brown area in front of my troops was water, so I basically kept the default setup. Once the battle started, I noticed the bridges ( I should have seen them, oh well). I had some troops very near one bridge and I ordered them to cross it. They proceeded to march West and go over a ford that was quite some distance away. I found that I had to click just ahead of a troop to keep it on track. Did I miss the waypoint option in the manual ( if so, I learned a lesson). I blew a hole in the fort and ordered units to attack inside. They wandered around away from the hole. Then, when I wasn't looking Washington gets himself blown up.
I can tell you I didn't save after that fiasco, even if I won the battle.....

Terry

[Mister V]

Yesh, things seem to be more disorganised. Possibly it happens because the AI is more active, trying to find some easier targets to pick off. If I'm not defending (with trenches and stuff) my troops can get disorganised if hit in melee.
The unit coherency is quite awful, too.

[Gaiseric]

Im also having trouble adjusting. I think that the battle interface in this game badly needs patching. I have problems when deploying my troops into thin lines by left click-dragging. I can group units but I cant reorginize their unit cards on the roster. Cannons are a pain and need to be handled manually and watched closley.

Other things like time and practice wil eventually improve our battle skills. Try finding a good army balance and a good formation that you can re-use in a lot of your battles. Grouping units so that they march, stick, and fight together can also help against battlefield clutter.

[DEY123]

I actually like the chaos that my units seem to get into in the big battles (except for when I crash my ships into each other). I know it is a bit frustrating when guys don't do what you want exactly, but makes the battles a bit more hectic especially because teh large land battles tend to get really sprwd out...and given that the AI sometimes seems to move kinda crazy maybe its only fair that my guys are a bit crazy too...

[Gaiseric]

Lol, Anarchy I tell you!!! How can you play like that?

I was actually hoping that ETW battles would be more organized like in the movies or like in the RL battles that took place during the period. Sighhh.... I am just glad that the AI is not such a pushover.