CA - a suggestion

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I think this may have been mentioned before, but it merits a real discussion.

One very simple thing CA could give us in TW would be an "advance" option.

What am I talking about? Well, in battle, it can be cumbersome to select a group of soldiers and tell them to move, as a whole, in a specific direction. Wow. That was vague. Let me explain: at, say, the beginning of the battle, you array your troops in the perfect formation. You are the attacker, by the way. So you're ready, and you hit the "Start Battle" button. The enemy is directly in front of you. So you want your whole army to move out, straight ahead. You move the cursor right in front of the enemy, and click. You click the spacebar to see where the troops will be, and you notice, to your horror, that the troops are not facing exactly as you want them to. Your perfect formation is now slightly off to the left or right. You have to keep clicking until you get it perfect again. A hassle, particularly in a pitched battle.

My proposal is to create an "advance" command, that advances the unit or units selected a certain distance straight ahead. There could be two kinds of advances: one that moves the unit indefinitely (until edge of map or counterorder or rout) and one that moves the unit a certain length (that can be decided later).

This would be a great feature, particularly for large groups of phalanxes that you want to attack with. Point them at the enemy and advance. Like (to my limited understanding) in real hoplite warfare.

Anyway, what does everyone think? Would this be useful? Would anyone use it?

[King Azzole]

Very nice idea.

[Oaty]

Would be a nice option. As for right now I micromanage it and keep my line straight. Also prolongs the suicidal generals death many of times. The comp usually charges there suicidal cavalry in only when 1 of your units has exposed its flank. Sometimes the comp tries so hard to make me expose a flank and it leads to its suicide. The Gauls go for a headlong charge wich so far have been the hardest ones to beat. All other factions so far march there army up and send in 1 unit at a time suckering or trying to sucker you into exposing a flank. And then once flanks start getting exposed the comp starts the bum rush.

I wish it was more of a game of geared towards a battleline instead of a flankfest.

[Parmenio]

Group them.
Rightclick and drag in the area you want them to be. You'll get an arrow representation of the formation they have at the moment, which you'll be able to point in any direction you wish.
They'll now march to that position and assume formation. If you've got them to march to area directly to their front, they'll mostly keep in formation as they march.

[lancelot]

Using the < and > keys helps alot with this, but yes this is a good idea.