A new form of friendly fire?

[Zatoichi]

Ha - yeah, best avoided. I suppose if you tried to do this in real life, it would also prove pretty fatal, I'm just used to the 'troops automatically move out the way' feature in the game I guess. It does seem that in this case, the general and several of his troops did the 'cavalry leap' manouver rather than keeping their horses firmly grounded whilst travelling through/round the phalanx like the remainder of the unit. Anyway, from now on, my cavalry will remain on the flanks where they belong - getting impaled by unfriendly fire as per usual...

[The_Emperor]

The solution to that is to move your men out of Phalanx until they get close to the enemy.

You may have noticed that when horse run through your formations they don't do it in a nice way... They knock your men over and push them out of the way, well you can imagine what trying to run through a tight Phalanx would do!

I have never lost a general like this but I have taken casualties from it. Just tell your guys to get out of Phalanx and "watch where your pointing that mate!", spears held upright are always safer.

[*Ringo*]

Maybe loose formation would help also if the Phalanx was un-engaged. Still sounds quite like a Roman form of extreme sport... spike jumping!

*Ringo*

[Basileus]

Thats happens quite often when you charge thourgh your own lines especialy through phalanx formations heh

[Zatoichi]

OK - I've gone from thinking this was a glitch to thinking 'wow, extra added realism!' Thanks for your input chaps! It still is an embarassing way to lose your faction leader though... But yes, let anyone else who didn't appreciate this learn from my poor Carthy leader's sad and futile death - and remember kids, run around your phalanxes, not through them.

[Ktonos]

Genghis Kan died when he accidently fell from his horse.

I had this one when my 9 star general charged through the poeni infantry in front of him when he spotted the enemy general banner.

It was realistic. I dont charge through friendly phalanxes anymore.

[vodkafire]

I have no problem with the impaling, as it's just stupid to charge your general into the front of any unit w/ their spears pointing forward. However...

If you put your archers behind your melee units on a steep hill, and the enemy is comming up the same hill(i.e same angle as you), the archers will shoot the melee unit to pieces, no matter how much space you put b/w the archer and melee units. Like so:
----------A/
----------/
-------M/
-------/
------/
-----/
---E/
---/
E=enemy
Note the ample space b/w the melee units and the archer, and that the enemy is no where near the melee unit. In STW or MTW, the archer would either NOT SHOOT or shoot over the melee unit(if possible). The result: 1 archer auxilia unit of mine killed 2 huge legionary cohort units down to about 20 men each. Now THAT is rediculous. Note, IRL it would be easy to shoot over the melee unit, as the archers would just not pull the bow strings as hard and let gravity do the work.