Grouping problems

[Rhuarc]

Battle – these are not a new problems, but have not been fixed in the patch so I’ll bring them up again.

When removing a unit or several units from the main army group, the original group is ‘rebuilt’ according to unit position at the time of this change. This means that your carefully arranged order of units from deployment is often inexplicably replaced by the current position on the field- just by creating a new sub-group of a couple of units. This is extremely frustrating as I have often moved several main group units into temporary positions during the battle, and now have to redo the whole battle line to get it right again. Removing units from a group should NOT result in rebuilding the first group at that moment. All previous TW games allowed you to peel off units from the main group at any time while keeping the arrangement of the other units intact. Why has this changed for the worse?

Moving grouped units by clicking and dragging is buggy. The green highlighted position that you choose is not always where it puts your formation. You pick your position, give the order, and sometimes the position is shifted or turned inexplicably. Either let us position the formation there or not. As it is, moving and positioning units on the battlefield where I want them now requires micromanagement, since you never know if your formation order will take. You have to wait and see (spacebar) where it puts them. Ugh.

Naval -grouping behavior is now worse than before.

Pre-patch, grouped ships would sometimes run into each other, or get tangled, often as faster ships to the rear of your line caught up to the heavier ones. Annoying, but not too frequent and workable.

Post-patch, I can no longer get my ships to stay in formation and make turns ‘in formation.’ I arrange my ships in an offset single file, close together to maximize overlapping arcs of fire.

Now, they don’t keep this formation and invariably stretch out into something like the default single line, with big gaps between as I begin to maneuver. This happens as 2nd and 3rd ships are constantly slowing and stopping for no reason. This totally defeats the purpose of creating a grouped formation. Let grouped units move and respond as a group in formation, or do away with naval grouping. I have become so frustrated with this that I now am forced to break the group and micromanage the individual ships. Fine with 3-4, but impossible with a large fleet. Please fix this. I don’t want to auto-calc naval combat as I feel this is the best part of ETW.

[Vlad Tzepes]

I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, Rhuarc, but what I do when I want to extract some units from a larger group is to select those units (ctrl+click), un-group them (G), select the remaining group (click on the I or II or whatever number you have there), un-group and group immediately.

This is to tell the computer that now I have a new selection of those units, in the assumed position. It works very well.

Regarding the naval grouping, I think if you try to force ships too close one into each other you get some maneuvering issues that are pretty logical - sail ships shouldn't be able to tailgate so close, me thinks

[Rhuarc]

I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, Rhuarc, but what I do when I want to extract some units from a larger group is to select those units (ctrl+click), un-group them (G), select the remaining group (click on the I or II or whatever number you have there), un-group and group immediately.

This is to tell the computer that now I have a new selection of those units, in the assumed position. It works very well.

Regarding the naval grouping, I think if you try to force ships too close one into each other you get some maneuvering issues that are pretty logical - sail ships shouldn't be able to tailgate so close, me thinks

Selecting multiple units in your main army (I), and then clicking the group button (or pressing G), will create a new group (II) out of those units. Fine and dandy. My problem is that this will rebuild the original group (I) as if you just created it. Ok if your lines are in position. NOT ok if you are halfway through the battle, with cavalry off chasing routers or whatever, and you need to get your main group (I) back in position for the enemy's second wave. Until you ungroup the original (I) army group, the units still in that group should retain their group formation, not change it to reflect the current situation (with Cav ten miles away, etc.) when you remove a few units.

Yes, I understand the risks of grouping ships too close together. Before the patch, they would foul each other if they were too close. Well and good. I never put them THAT close together, but I did arrange them in a staggered single line to allow for overlapping fields of fire (there are several posts on naval tips and strategy that illustrate this formation). However, it seems that with the patch, in an attempt to prevent ships getting tangled together, they have gone too far the other way. Now, my tactical formation invariably degrades into a strung-out single line in short order. And I'm not out there doing radical criss-crossing figure eights with my fleet either. Even relatively mild S-curves result in a breakdown of the formation as my ships apparently go out of there way to not even come near each other. Baring collision, grouped ships should stay in the formation I give them. Pre-patch this was done much better.

[FearofNC]

there have been features removed from the way groups move... i dont understand why either.. its always 2 steps forward 1 step back in this series..

i also find the group formation box pointless... maybe if we could save are favorite custom formations i would use them... as it is now all the formations are practically worthless..