Marching your armies in formation in the battle map

[Memnoch]

G'day all, I thought I knew how to do this but evidently not. Back in MTW I thought that if you had a grouped army (or had your entire army selected), you could get it to move en masse and in formation if you held down the ALT key while moving it. But when I'm marching my army a distance in the battle map (eg trying to get up a hill) I found that even doing this they would get out of formation - the cavalry that made up my wings would march well ahead of the infantry and missile lines, and my general (at the back of the formation) would "catch up" to the infantry in front of him and start walking through them.

I went through the manual and apparently the game "remembers" what formation the group was in when they were first grouped and will go back to that grouping when they get to their destination - but what about when they are marching on the way? I want them to march in an orderly fashion. And what if I don't have my army formally grouped in one huge group, but have selected all of them for movement purposes (CTRL and click on each unit)?

I hope this makes sense - any suggestions?

[Xehh II]

It does remember the formation, it's just that cavalry are faster than infantry, that why they go first.

[Omisan]

The only way I found to move large armies in formation to to rotate them first to face the new direction and then give a move command straight ahead.

Seems like ordering an army to move left, right or in diagonals will always end up with all units getting mixed up.

[Ciaran]

Simply speaking, there´s no way to keep the army in formation all through the march. The units will always move at their own speed, so if you travel over long distances the whole formation will disrupt. If you want an orderly approach move in small steps, let them redress their ranks frequently.

Holding down ALT just remembers the facing the units had when given the marching order, the relative position within the selected units they remember by themselves (which is one of the big improvements RTW made - yes, there were some)

[FactionHeir]

In M2TW, the button is now shift and not alt from what I figured.

[Sheogorath]

Heh...I remember the good ol' days of RTW, painstakingly stacking up my hoplites into nice neat lines, then accidentally clicking the wrong place, correcting it, and watching as my men promptly formed up into a huge mess, and were then eaten alive by barbarians.

[Ethelred Unread]

You can also right click on where you want them, hold it down and rotate your battle line to face whichever direction you want.

You can also adjust the width/length of the line by dragging the mouse about too.

They don't march in formation though so make sure there's no cav nearby to hand you your ass.

[phunkbot]

hey ppl,

can anyone confirm if its the ALT or SHIFT key that you use to have your army march in the formation you've arranged it in?

[pike master]

i think this is a minor bug as i have seen some of this myself. and it is not made any better by the fact that infantry have like 20 different marching speeds[exaggerated a little]

in mtw/vi the cav would advance a short distance stop and wait up for the other units and the halberdiers would run to catch up. but all in all the formations kept well.

i dont understand why the current game is so lame on maneuvreing your entire formation neatly.

[vonsch]

Dragging formations can have some weird effects too. I often see my front line of spears decide to put a couple units into a 4-deep formation instead of the two I set them up in. It's pretty random though. Most of the time it works fine. It only comes up after a phase of a battle when I'm trying to get everything back into order for the next wave of enemy reinforments.

But usually I set things up, select all, and march to anywhere I want with only the cavalry insisting on going too fast. Which I can handle.

Occasionally I do see the blob effect also. Not sure what causes that. Instead of maintaining formation, everything tries to converge on roughly the same point. That seem to happen more when things are ungrouped. And making one huge group of everything seems to totally avoid that problem (but it's not so good for actually trying to command in battle.)

[Memnoch]

Is it SHIFT instead of ALT? Maybe that's why I'm having a problem with it.

[FactionHeir]

Yes

[Shahed]

Sometimes it works if you have the whole formation grouped.
It isn't as perfect as MTW/VI, and it often gets disorganised (badly).

[Philippe]

Can't remember how much of this applies to RTW rather than M2TW since I've stopped playing until the next patch comes out, but I can usually move my entire army around the map in formation, but have to do it in lots of little hops. Long moves are too dangerous in any case because every so often the AI decides that I'm telling my entire battle line to pivot, which I almost never am.

Stepping back and thinking about reality for a moment, armies did not march around in line formation for the simple reason that it is too hard to keep alignment. Anything other than a short tactical move would be done in some kind of column formation (though most medieval armies didn't really stand in formations anyway).

One way that I deal with the problem is to deconstruct my army into half a dozen (or fewer) elements. My final battle line will be composed of these elements arranged in a certain order, so it isn't to difficult to get things back the way I want them if the AI scrambles them up (as it eventually will). I'm particularly fond of the single line group command formation. But the key is to get your army sorted out into tactical groups before you start making sweeping operational moves with it -- reimposing order on an AI-scrambled battleline would be a real nightmare if you had to do it within striking range of an enemy.

In the Middle Ages the most popular arrangement in Western Europe was to have everything organized into three formations that were normally called Battles. You essentially fought with a column of battles, each stacked behind the other. Not a bad practise, really, since it forces you to keep a reserve, and anything beyond three units on the battlefield was probably beyond their ability to control.

[Shahed]

Did you play MTW/VI ?

[Philippe]

Yes, but I don't remember it well. I do remember liking the battles in VI better than those in MTW or Shogun. I think the mass movement of armies may have been a bit more stable, but I still remember getting my battle lines scrambled from time to time on long moves.

I try to only move straight ahead, which, given command control in those days, is probably pretty realistic. When I really need to turn my battle line I usually do it with a rotation from a stationary position. What I don't find realistic is the amount of time I spend having part of my battle formation turn around and march away from the enemy just so that the entire group can pivot thirty degrees, or whatever.