How to form specific number of ranks

[Minji]

Reading frogbeastegg's wonderful and incredible guide I got the impression that a player can form his/her units into one or more ranks. I could find either in the manual that came with the game or elsewhere how this can be done. Can anyone help a 67-year-old newbie?

[Dutch_guy]

well if you click on a unit, then hold down the right mouse button and move your mouse you should notice the unit blueprin appear on the battlefield.
Release your mouse and the unit's will move to that area in the exact position as you said they should.
Experiment with moving your mosue when you're holding down the right mouse button , so you learn how to put a unit in the exact position / rank depth as you want it to be - and learn to do it fast in the heat of a battle

well hope that helped !

[Minji]

Thanks.

[YAKOBU]

Welcome to the org Minji

When you have an individual unit highlighted you can also press "+" or "-" to increase/decrease the number of ranks.

[Rodion Romanovich]

BTW, is there any way of making a group have a fixed number of ranks? The click+drag function gives a fixed width of the unit, but usually it's of more interest to have a fixed depth. I've never tried it out and worked around it by manual adjustments, but it would be great if it had been possible to get the same number of ranks even when the units have taken different amount of casualties.

[Ciaran]

BTW, is there any way of making a group have a fixed number of ranks? The click+drag function gives a fixed width of the unit, but usually it's of more interest to have a fixed depth. I've never tried it out and worked around it by manual adjustments, but it would be great if it had been possible to get the same number of ranks even when the units have taken different amount of casualties.

Actually, the number of ranks is fixed in the export_unit_descr. You see that when you loose lot of men and then go into battle with a heavily decimated unit. They´ll always deploy in a fixed depth (if you´ve got eighteen phalanx soldiers left they´ll deploy three men wide but six deep, because they always deploy in a depth of six). Minimum depth, by the way, is two.

[Minji]

Thanks Yakobu. I've found that with frogbeastegg's great guide and all you folks help here in The Guild in my implementing it, my play has imroved immensely. The biggest difference is that I don't lose near as many men now in battles.

[Sir Chauncy]

Don't.

Lose.

Men.

In.

Battles.

*grows faint*

But, but, the whole point of fighting was to kill people! Do you sit around a table and talk about your problems?

BLASPHEMER!

These "lives" that you save, are they grateful? Do they reward your generosity with cake and ice cream? I doubt it. Crush them under foot and hit them with a rolled up newspaper until they see your point of view. It really is the only way.

[EatYerGreens]

Welcome to the org Minji

When you have an individual unit highlighted you can also press "+" or "-" to increase/decrease the number of ranks.

I tried this the other day and it didn't work. Instead, the camera tilted up and down.

Q1) Is this [KEYPAD] + & - or the ones on the top row of the keyboard?

Q2) Were you talking about RTW or MTW? I'd like to be able to do this in MTW and I'm using VI, so it's version 2.01.

Q3) Are you using a customised keyboard mapping of some kind?

TIA

[lugh]

I think that's only in RTW. I tried every combination of + and - I could think of.