Gunpowder experience needed

[Doug-Thompson]

Whacker stuck to task much better than I did, but I think I've stumbled onto a couple of things.

I used grassy field, good weather, normal unit size, 41 Mamaluks vs. 75 Scottish nobles, no experience for either. I used loose formation and ran a zigzag pattern, running all the time in front of the Scots. This left 51 Scots alive.

Then I reloaded and moved the Mamaluks as little as possible — and discovered something I think is important.

Skirmish moves a unit too far. I'm not complaining about a bug, but I am saying that an HA player who hits the "halt" button soon after skirmish kicks in spends a far greater proportion of his time shooting while standing still than shooting on the move.

Let me put it this was: Only 19 Scots survived the second round.

Furthermore, I was also driven nuts by the unit cohesion issue -- so much so that I was got sidetracked from completing the shoots and started concentrating on that.

Tapping on the "c" hotkey — in essence, going from "open" to "close" and then back to "open" again before the unit really has time to reform — goes a very long way toward herding up the stragglers. You can do it for a whole group, too. I tried doing it when a straggler was caught in melee, but it's too late by then.

Don't wait between taps. Tap it twice as fast as you can.

Thoroughly sidetracked by now, I tried the same thing with Reiters on the Morocco map. Square or line formation seems to make no difference. Range, at least for accuracy, does. PaulTa seems to be on to something here.