Tactics & Strategy

[RobertF]

Don't know if I'm duplicating another STW folder on this same topic.

I have a few questions about maintaining control of units in STW:

1) It seems that my missile units (archers and arquebusiers) have a tendency to break formation and spontaneously change their facing as they fire towards an approaching enemy unit, rather than hold their position and instead aim obliquely at the enemy unit. Is there a way to prevent this occuring?

2) Has anyone had any luck combining units together? For example, intermingling two missile units together to create a denser unit with twice the firepower. Or combining two yari spearmen units together to create an unstoppable Swiss pike-type formation. I've always had control issues keeping the two units together.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

2)If they aren't fighting, the units will try to separate themselves. You don't want your archers clumped together anyway, since they will have a harder time seeing the enemy and won't be as accurate.

1) Perhaps hold formation? Or fire at will (ie don't click on the unit)? It may be that they can't fire obliquely.

[Drisos]

Option 2 is not really doable, but luckily it's not necessary anyway, like Sasaki explained.

As for 1, I think the only times ranged units change their position is when you ordered them to fire an enemy unit and it walked out of range without routing. Then your unit will do whatever is takes to keep firing - so, it may change direction if the enemy is walking to the side, or chase the enemy when they walk out of range.

[Togakure]

If you want larger units in general, you can increase the unit size up to 120 men in Options. This will increase the size of all units, however, and increase both the training time--and I believe, cost--correspondingly. With many large units like these on the battlefield at once, you may notice a decrease in performance depending on your PC's processing and graphics capabilities.

I often put ranged foot units in Hold Formation / Hold Position to alleviate their tendencies to move out of position. This usually keeps them from pursuing targets that move out of range. I'm not sure if this will prevent them from turning to face a target which they've been ordered to shoot if their current angle won't allow them to shoot effectively though.

[Ninjak]

Don't know if I'm duplicating another STW folder on this same topic.

I have a few questions about maintaining control of units in STW:

1) It seems that my missile units (archers and arquebusiers) have a tendency to break formation and spontaneously change their facing as they fire towards an approaching enemy unit, rather than hold their position and instead aim obliquely at the enemy unit. Is there a way to prevent this occuring?

2) Has anyone had any luck combining units together? For example, intermingling two missile units together to create a denser unit with twice the firepower. Or combining two yari spearmen units together to create an unstoppable Swiss pike-type formation. I've always had control issues keeping the two units together.

You can’t do that for STW and M1TW. CA just started adding that feature in RTW of mixing different troops together or different infantry companies together in one line formation. Also, for STW and M1TW, I think it’s best to stretch your archer companies in 2 or 3 lines so that all archers will fire. From what I’ve observed on the battlefield, if you put the archers in a squar box formation in deep ranks some of the archers might not be able to shoot their arrows.

[Puzz3D]

You can’t do that for STW and M1TW. CA just started adding that feature in RTW of mixing different troops together or different infantry companies together in one line formation.

I wouldn't call it a feature of RTW. It's actually a consequence of not including the "squeeze too tight" feature that was in the STW/MTW battle engine.

Also, for STW and M1TW, I think it’s best to stretch your archer companies in 2 or 3 lines so that all archers will fire. From what I’ve observed on the battlefield, if you put the archers in a squar box formation in deep ranks some of the archers might not be able to shoot their arrows.

This is another feature that RTW lost. In the RTW battle engine, if one man is in range all the archers shoot no matter the shape of the formation, and as far as I can tell there is no accuracy penalty for deep formations.

[TosaInu]

Was searching for this, posting here for future reference:

http://www.totalwar.org/strategy/twug/index.html