Am I the only one finding the battles boooooooring?

[Dave1984]

My experience is that Archers fire when and where I tell them to but their salvos are far too slow - especiialy for 'Retinue Longbowmen' who in reality could do at leastt 4 a minute.

They used to be able to shoot their 2nd arrow whilst the first was still in the air.

In reality (opening up a can of worms) they were expected to be able to get off ten aimed arrows a minute, and there are several examples throughout the Hundred Year's War when English and Welsh longbowmen were sent home because they couldn't do so.

[Debe2233]

I do understand why the units need the spacing to stop the dreaded blob and how its accurate to real life but it sure does look stupid, and its frustrateing when your men sit around 20 meters away from the actual fight chatting away about the weather, at least make them LOOK like they're trying to join in.

And as for the charge... ugh... the front row runs in fine and the rest sit there scratching their heads and slowly moveing up i had one instance where only 1 man ran into the enemy unit the rest gently strolled up without a care in the world, have the front rank fight only, fine no problem... but again make the rest at least look like they're trying!

Missile troops dont seem to get much fire off... i think their rate is a little slow but generally ok just maybe a tad more on the range.

Other than the general look of the fight it seems good, better than RTW i just wish there was a bit more aggresiveness to the battle sometimes.

[Daveybaby]

Re: archers not aiming where you tell them to: There seems to be a bug where if you tell an entire group of archer where to aim they ignore you. If you select each archer unit one by one and tell them who to shoot, they seem to do what you tell them to. Yes, its a hassle, but its not a game killer.


Re: Charges not working. They work fine, YOURE JUST NOT DOING IT RIGHT. If you do it right they work pretty much every time. And theyre devastating when they hit - we're talking reducing a full unit of dismounted knights down to a handfull in a few seconds.

This isnt RTW. Get it right and you massacre the opposition - but the risk is there that your charge gets messed up and your knights get slaughtered.

Newsflash: Knights no longer uber unit. Thank god.

Of course i could be wrong, and it works perfectly on my machine and not on anybody else's - but from the posts i've seen its mostly people just running their knights at the enemy. THAT DOESNT WORK. WALK DONT RUN. (not shouting btw, just... um.... emphasising ;-) ).


Re: foot units not engaging, getting that here too on occasion.

[Griz]

Re: archers not aiming where you tell them to: There seems to be a bug where if you tell an entire group of archer where to aim they ignore you. If you select each archer unit one by one and tell them who to shoot, they seem to do what you tell them to. Yes, its a hassle, but its not a game killer.


Re: Charges not working. They work fine, YOURE JUST NOT DOING IT RIGHT. If you do it right they work pretty much every time. And theyre devastating when they hit - we're talking reducing a full unit of dismounted knights down to a handfull in a few seconds.

I think the archer thing is a side effect of the semi-intelligent battle line management where you select your entire line and click the enemy line and they automatically choose targets instead of all piling onto the one you clicked.

what's the trick to make charges work? I double-click the enemy, they run up and then stop to adjust formation and stroll into the enemy with swords out. I single-click the enemy, sometimes they just walk all the way up with swords out, sometimes they stop and pull lances and start charging but they almost always stop for formation and end up walking in with swords. it still fails most of the time even if the enemy is standing still and your knights are a good distance away facing directly at them.

wedge formation seems to work more often but generals can't do wedge.

the spacing thing is really annoying in city battles where the enemy has somehow massed a huge block of spears in the middle of a street and the heavy infantry attacking them will space out so there's like 10 guys fighting 60 spearmen and your units take horrible casualties.

[Daveybaby]

I think the archer thing is a side effect of the semi-intelligent battle line management where you select your entire line and click the enemy line and they automatically choose targets instead of all piling onto the one you clicked.

That would be great if it only did it when, say, 'fire at will' was on.

what's the trick to make charges work? I double-click the enemy, they run up and then stop to adjust formation and stroll into the enemy with swords out. I single-click the enemy, sometimes they just walk all the way up with swords out, sometimes they stop and pull lances and start charging but they almost always stop for formation and end up walking in with swords.

ALWAYS single click, NEVER double click. You also need to let your unit form up first, i.e. stop them far enough away, facing the target, wait for formation to stabilise, then click the target once and leave them to it. Yes, its a pain to set up, and requires a bit of time and space to do it in (which your enemy might not allow you to have) - but IMO thats a good thing - cos when it works its devastating.

And given enough space I find it works pretty much every time. Carnage ensues in enemy ranks.

wedge formation seems to work more often but generals can't do wedge.

Only just occurred to me that possibly which shape formation you use also makes a difference - i always use 2 deep wide formation. I've also noticed that once your cav get tired they wont charge as effectively (or maybe they only get a couple of charges before their lances are broken or something) but by that time i'm usually using them to chase down routers.

[Marius Dynamite]

Am I the only one finding the battles boooooooring?

No you are definetly not. I find the battles very boring. I have no idea why I find them boring though. I loved RTW and RTR battles. Perhaps It was because I loved the factions and the unique fighting styles. I also loved NTW online battles. With M2:TW its just not as fun. It could be because of the lagging in larger battles or the Sprites, I'm not sure. The bad Sprites on Cavalry has certainly put me off. I am thinking back to RTW and RTR and the many fun battles I had. I think the M2:TW graphics are not ready for a TW game.

I am hoping MTR will be more fun, or maybe the patch.

[Griz]

ALWAYS single click, NEVER double click. You also need to let your unit form up first, i.e. stop them far enough away, facing the target, wait for formation to stabilise, then click the target once and leave them to it.

Only just occurred to me that possibly which shape formation you use also makes a difference - i always use 2 deep wide formation.

tried that, didn't work. general's unit is sitting a good distance away from a peasant unit, facing directly at them in 2-deep line, mouseover shows "ready" instead of marching. and yet single-click still results in a lazy stroll into the front lines most of the time. other times they start charging and then stop like 20 feet away even though the formation is fine.

when the charge actually goes off it kills at least 1/4 of the peasants and usually causes a rout, but I can't get them to reliably charge because of the constant formation nonsense.

I haven't noticed any difference in success rates with 2-deep or 4-deep formation, but most of the time you're better off with 2-deep for maximum impact and more guys actually fighting after the charge instead of picking their noses in the back of the formation.

[Daveybaby]

Hmmm... okay well i guess i take it all back then. Weird - seems to work pretty reliably for me.

Just last night had a lone general attacked by a single unit of dismounted feudal knights. Was a bit nervous cos i knew that if i messed up the charge i was toast. 20 cav vs 60 dfk - after first charge down to 11 cav vs 18 dfk - a couple of cav lost when the charge hit, the rest before i could pull them back to regroup. 2nd charge routed the dfk.

H/H campaign, btw.

Gonna have a bit of an experiment tonight, methinks - see if i can get it to actually fail consistently.

[Maizel]

I'm begging to agree.

My battles always consist of just shooting at the enemy standing still until my ammo is used up, and if anything is still standing then, charging with all my infantry = win. I need the patch soon D: