Friendly fire bug...

[Kristaps]

I have noticed that if a unit of my own troops passes through a unit of archers who are firing at the time: the unit passing through archers takes friendly fire casualties. One would have thought that (1) archers who normally shoot at an angle wouldn't be hitting their own men passing by; (2) units passing through a bunch of archers would know better than to march straight into arrows. I see this as a programming oddity or am I wrong?

P.S. I'm fine with my troops taking friendly fire casualties when archers fire into melee: but taking friendly fire casualties from simply walking through an archer field does not seem right.

P.S.S. I agree that it would be harder not to take any friendly fire casualties walking through a regiment of firing arbalesters since they shoot straight.

[Odyssey of War]

This is built into the game and I think it is accurate. If you have an army or archers firing their arrows, only concentrating about getting those arrows off and shooting their targets, then when some stupid idiot from the same army goes walking right in front of him as the arrow goes off, of course it is going to hit him. Even if the arrow is fired at an angle, it is still not a steep enough trajectory to not hit someone right in front of them. Additionally, if you fire arrows into a melee of troops, you cant know exactly where the arrow is going to hit and purposely miss your own troops, especially at long distances and where the men are moving all over the place. Think of it this way, your troops are well disciplined and are following your orders, they are trusting in you to tell them where to go, if you decide to have them move through your missle troops, then thats where they go and you have to tell your missle units to stop firing, otherwise there will be friendly fire.

If you dont want units killed from friendly fire then dont move your units through missle units when they are firing and dont have your missle units fire into a melee.

[rasoforos]

soldier passes in front of archer
archer cannot see where to shoot
...and is kinda drunk
...takes his knife
...stabs the soldier
that ll teach him.


a possible explanation

[HopAlongBunny]

I once walked my general in front of the cannons. I didn't think they would be reloaded anytime soon...WRONG

One shot, one casualty and an army on the run

I take much more care around those things now

[Foreign Devil]

I noticed this when I was fighting a battle and I had two units of archers and the AI had no missle units at all. Suddenly, on of my archer units was under fire. What th'??? I took a closer look, and the two units were mingled in with each other, I guess some were being shot in the back. I am now careful to make sure each of my ranged units has enough room to shoot on its own.

[housecarl]

I have to agree with Kristaps in a way. If I have several units facing forward, and I want to move one to the side to face a new threat, instead of turning to the side and then moving, they do a wheel first to face the direction and march through the units in front passing through archer units and so receiving friendly fire before I even notice. I now try to use way points to move them away first, but in the heat of battle you sometimes move first without remembering the consequences.

Perhaps an archer unit should become ineffective while a unit marches though it so it doesn’t fire at the enemy but your unit doesn’t receive friendly fire, this would still invoke a penalty for foolishly marching through your own units, but also you don’t annoyingly hit your own forces. I know in reality there many casualties from friendly fire, in the Gulf War the British Army lost one casualty to the Iraqis and 14 to the Americans, but this is simulated already as Kristaps says when archers fire into a melee.

[Teutonic Knight]

I once did that with my king, walked into a bunch of longbows and got a nice big arrow in the side of his head. It worked out ok for me tho, he was kinda crappy anyways.

[longjohn2]

It's a side effect of the way shooting works, and ironocally is actually a side effect of not wanting to shoot your own guys.
Basically in order to not shoot your own guys, an archer has to calculate where his arrow will go, and if it'll hit someone on his own side, not take the shot. However, this leads to them being able to shoot accurately through very small gaps, or through other units. Therefore to combat this unrealistic ability, sometimes I let the archer take the shot anyway,

[Magyar Khan]

there are more annoying features than this one