Argh! Hoplites turning sideways!

[Midnight]

I just played a battle, my Greeks vs Romans. I joined up a group of 2 Militia Hoplite units with a group of about 8 Militia Hoplite and 2 Hoplite reinforcements. I then told the nice, neat, orderly, gap-free line to advance. The line advanced, but as it did so it tried to turn 90 degrees, and all the units broke formation. The Romans charged, I suffered a horrible loss, as I couldn't get the line back in time. All I did was select the group, and click on the ground in front of them - a simple enough 'move directly forwards' command.

Other than "don't move hoplites once they're in formation; let the enemy come to you", does anyone have any idea why this happens? It's happened several times before, although with the sword-factions (Romans, barbs) I've previously played, it hasn't been an issue. It also never happened in MTW, and it's very annoying.

Am I doing something obviously, stupidly wrong? I'm running the latest patch, if that helps.

[Zenicetus]

Try selecting all the units in your line, then hold down Alt and rightclick on the destination. That should retain the formation when they move.

It's a little tricky, because you have to guess where the exact center of the line is, and then click ahead of that center, otherwise they might not move exactly where you want. But it's better than nothing. You can also use the "'," and "." keys to rotate the line (with all units selected) to a different facing, if you need to.

[Midnight]

Ah - I didn't know about any of those. Thanks!

[Grumfoss]

Also another little tip is to press the spacebar, which will highlight on the battlefield to final positions of your troops. It makes it easy to see if your troops are moving to the correct positions. I use this a lot as I had the same problem when trying to advance in formation.

[Braden]

I've also noted that different Phalanx units walk at different speeds so watch for that - i.e. you have some Militia Hoplites and some Armoured Hoplites the Militia walk faster than the Armoured (logically) which means you get a broken line mid-trip. So, make sure you move lines in small "hops".

[Zenicetus]

Good tips about the spacebar preview and the different speeds. When I have a general unit behind the front line for morale, I have to put him a little further back than I normall would, and use the short hop movement. Otherwise his cavalry unit will walk into, and through, the slower infantry.

This is one thing I hope CA can fix in MTW2 (and hopefully the new RTW/Alexander mini-expansion). It shouldn't be that hard to progam all units to march at the speed of the slowest unit, when given a group selection-and-march order like this.

BTW, another reason to use short hops instead of long march orders with Alt-rightclick, is that terrain differences can cause different movement speeds on different parts of the line. That's especially true with a large, spread-out army. That confused the heck out of me, until I noticed what was happening. Some of the terrain differences are subtle, and not that easy to spot.