A new form of friendly fire?

[Zatoichi]

I posted this in the entrance hall, but I guess I failed to ask the obvious question - should this have happened - should you be killed by running through your own unengaged phalanx units, or was this a glitch?

"So, I'm playing as Carthage, and I'm helping the Greeks who are being attacked by the Scipii in Scicily. My troops are lined up with my mercenary phalanx and Iberian inf in front, and my general and other cavalry behind. We're closing in on the Romans, when I decide the time is right for a shock and awe cavalry charge - the next thing I know, I get the 'General dead' movie - Initially I thought 'oh goody, the Roman's copped it without me noticing', but no - it was my faction leader.
How did this happen? Well, it seems they ran through the back of my phalanx (which was unengaged, just slowly marching forward), and instead of the usual thing where the troops part and allow the cav through (or get knocked over only to stand up again), my general did a suicide leap over the back of them and got himself squewered on the second row of pikes for his pains, along with about 5 of his bodyguard. Bah!
Now there's an unheroic way to go - imagine the epic poets and balladeers would have been hard pressed to put a positive spin on that one...

'How about if we say he was trying to raise morale with a dazzling display of show-jumping prior to the battle?'
'Nah, nothing rhymes with show-jumping. Let's just say he died while fighting 3000 Romans single-handed, armed only with a toothpick and a rolled up papyrus scroll- it's more heroic, and closer to the truth.'
'Done!'"

[R'as al Ghul]

A new form of friendly fire?

Yes, it is called the "friendly impaling" (without any sexual relation ).

Call it a glitch, call it a bug..It's there and you should avoid such moves until it is patched.

R'as

[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.