Swords vs Axes

[gollum]

It is usually a hell of a crowd which doesn't have plain front lines or flanks, it is rather an untidy mess of fighters. Moreover, on expert it happens so fast, that you find it hard to be that reasonable.

Hello Girlandir,
there are ways to improve your army control without having to improve your reflexes or issuing command speed. One such way is to use the very handy grouping feature that is AFAIK unique to the STW/MTW engine.

The feature basically allows you to set up groups of units by:
1. Select the units you want to group (using control to select them all)
2. Designate group by pressing control+Shift+number
3. Recall by control+number

The system is incredibly flexible and useful as it allows you to have subgroups of groups and also groups that span groups. It is/was widely used in multiplayer because precisely it allowed players to control the bulk of their army in components (one group was the melee line, one the missiles, and the cavalry units could be given to one or more groups) that make controlling armies better and more efective and hence possible to pull off more sophisticated maneuvers and have a better degree of response to enemy movements and to the changing conditions of the battlefield.

MTW battles are not that fast paced - but they may understandably appear as such to newer players. As you familiarise yourself more and more with the game and the units' capabilities you will become better and the "mass/blob of fighters" will be discernable to you including the fronts and flanks.

Also remember to move your melee line at once all together as for the units to fight with covering each other's flanks. That is a very important point.

Considering all said above, I do brand swords as ineffective (in comparison with axes).

It much depends on your experiences too. Swords get a hidden hardcoded +1 attack against spear units. This is a considerable bonus, that cannot be underestimated. Give them time and they might prove better than what you currently make of them