Very Annoying Battle...

[anti_strunt]

I just fough a campaign battle which I quite halfway through out of sheer frustration. The reason? I though using lots of archers/slingers would be a good idea... The first problem was the terror of friendly fire; one of my slinger units ran through an archer unit an in an instant lost 10 men, shot in the back. I was aware that shooters can create dead zones, but not that those zones would be in the middle of my own lines... The second problem was that of strangly slow soldier reaction times. I had turned off skirmish mode for my slingers as otherwise they would run back into my archers and die an even quicker (and more embarrasing) death than at the hands of my enemies. Anyway, some eastern infantry show up and I tell my slingers to run off to the left to avoid them, but the dimwits apparantly see it fit to stand still for a few seconds and stare out into space before moving out of the way, and even then they only move a few feet before stopping with their backs turned towards the rapidly incoming enemies. So, in a desperate attempt to get them out of the way, I turn on skirmish. Not even that can save them from their own stupidity, they still remain calm (almost bored) for several seconds before they slowly start to jog away, and by now the slow spearmen are upon them and the unit is torn to pieces.
F*******************T!

With all this mircomanagement needed to stop my little idiots, sorry, my soldiers, from being decimated I'm starting to like the strategic game more than the battles, something which I have never experienced with a Total War game before. If autocalc didn't give such absurd results (just a turn before a rebel army of two units had defeated a 6-unit stack of mine with a general) I would use it for every battle, I just can't stand the incredible ineptness displayed by my own soldiers...

[Maltz]

Did you issue a group command to your slingers? Units in group tend to respond weirdly. Even worse when you issue command to group A, some units in group B might overheard your conversation and decided to move accordingly.

It is actually good to have a lot of missle units on a field battle. For archers and slingers you can put them into a single line but deeper formation depth. This way there won't be any friendly fire problem. In STW (don't know about MTW, didn't really play it) the same unit also head-shot the guy in front - that I think is even more stupid.

[Sin Qua Non]

Man, what swear word has 21 letters in it? Did you say it in German?

[anti_strunt]

No grouping involved... My point (if it wasn't clear) is that the individual soldier appears to be much, much stupier than his STW/MTW counterpart, almost to the point were I suspect that they were all lobotomised at some point in development. Does anyone else share my experience with this?

[Besieger]

maybe u shld try groupin them as a group.....but sometime that will be a problem when the whole group do not respond to ur order.....to solve it, simply ungroup and group them again bfore giving them new orders....that will solve ur problem....

[master of the puppets]

i have problems with all kinds of troops but slingers are the dumbest buch of retards this side of persia. i mean the slingers i have used run around in damn circles shoot my own units and charge into enemy units when in skirmish mode
then while the enemy are cuttin' up your men the slingers finally descide to shoot here enemies exactly 3 inches from your face
anyway refrain from using them enywhere but on the flanks shootin the enemies attacking your front lines.