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.