Can you explain - Pushback better than melee

[R'as al Ghul]

I came across a problem that may be related to unit cohesion and "lethargic battles", two problems that have been reported before.
Whenever I get tired of waiting for the outcome of a melee battle, especially in cities where a road is being defended and I have the feeling that my superior troops should've beaten the enemy by now, I doubleclick my unit behind the enemy one that it is currently fighting. This results in my men forming a more dense formation than before and simply running down the enemy. While running down and through the enemy the enemy routs or wavers and looses men more quickly than before. True, my men also suffer casualties but not that many. Also, my spear militia is able to push back Dismounted Feudal Knights. Messed up a cavalry charge (like it happens to me so often), no problem, doubleclick behind them and watch your knights running them down.

I do remember that this was mentioned in the tutorial to some extend but clearly this is not working as intended?
It seems to me that this feature messes up unit matchups, meaning that a unit which should normally loose can win with this method.
Has anyone else experienced this?
My campaign setting for battles is very hard.
I've to add that it makes sense to me in certain situations. Dismounted Feudal knights pushing back spear militia is perfectly okay I guess.

R'as

[R'as al Ghul]

Sorry for being impatient, but out of 120 views nobody knows what I'm talking about?

[TinCow]

I know exactly what you are talking about and I use that tactics regularly, but it is not a guaranteed benefit and I have actually lost battles a few times because of it. There are a few key elements to this strategy that make it work the way it does.

By clicking behind the enemy, your unit attempts to run though them. This results in a great mass of men along their front line and good infiltration into their front ranks. However, when your men are running, the enemy continues to attack them and they do not attack back. In addition, while you are bringing more men into contact with their front line, the men you have infiltrated into their ranks are isolated and being attacked by multiple enemies at once.

This means a few things. First, you will take casualties much faster than normal while doing this maneouver. Second, you will inflict casualties much faster than normal after the unit stops moving and resumes fighting.

It seems to me there are right ways and wrong ways to do this.

Incorrect Method: Double-click behind enemy unit. Your unit charges and then eventually resumes combat on its own. The AI decision to resume combat is slow and results in excessive running-time during which you take high casualties and inflict few.

Correct Method: Double-click behind enemy unit. When desired level of contact/infiltration is reached, click to attack enemy unit. Doing this manually brings your unit out of running mode and resumes combat, reducing the high casualty period for your men.

There are also situations in which you should NOT do this. Keep in mind that you WILL take heavier casualties than normal during the running phase. You will only get the benefit of inflicting higher casualties afterwards. So in order to make this tactic useful, your unit(s) MUST be able to absorb those casualties and keep fighting. DO NOT do this with wavering units or anything that could break with a sudden jump in casualties. Also remember that even after you finish running, you will have many men isolated in their ranks. If you have low defense units and the enemy has high attack, they will be slaughtered even after they resume fighting. This will result in a second wave of casualties which could also break your unit.

I have found this method is best used for breaking enemy units that are already wavering or otherwise close to fleeing with friendly units that have good to moderate morale. Also, it is generally a bad idea to do this with lower quality troops against high quality enemy troops. The low defense of your men will result in an absolute massacre if you fail to break the enemy immediately.

So, in summary: Use this tactic to cause a sudden morale break when you have superior quality troops than the enemy and your morale is good to moderate.

[Tamur]

I've noticed this as well. I haven't been using it as a morale-breaker, though. I've been using it to just get my men into battle. Quite often a standard "charge" will result in the front row charging, sort-of, and the rest of the unit will wander into battle a minute or two later, as if they've got nothing better to do.

[jabo0511]

What you can do is when your unit start engaging just double click behind the enemy unit and when your unit start charging through just single click on the enemy unit again. I've been doing it quit successfully.

[Sir SillyDuck]

I've noticed this sudden push/rush too, but not exactly while giving orders or clicking. In fact, I saw it yesterday in a city battle. I was engaging a spear unit with a spear militia of myself. They were fighting in the usual way, both units only engaging with a loose 1st or 2nd rank, the rest standing a bit aloof to the back (If I was part of that battle, I might see the sense of that ).

Now, I don't know if it was triggered somehow, but suddenly the enemy unit rushed forward into my unit, pushing my unit slightly back and suddenly there is a dense pack fighting each other.

The only thing I can think of that triggered it was that I was sending my general and bodyguard round the block to run into their rear. The weren't however, in sight of the unit yet (still had to take 2 turns around half the city). It MIGHT have been that they were at that moment flanking them, coming over the point that they were no longer in front, but to the rear of the unit.
The enemy unit was not routing however, still fighting when it ran into my men, and the intensity naturally increased, so densly packed as they suddenly were. They were cut off from their main square. MY spear unit was with their backs to the square, having slit behind them earlier in the streetfighting.

It was quite a suprise seeing this sudden change really. I think this 1 or 2-line-fighting-only between units is quite realisticly done in MTW2. Not that I'm saying its good or bad for the game, but I find it quite realistic that not every (by large) unit just brainlessly clashes into every enemy, but sometimes cautiously advance. Everyone could use the full clash of a charge only the better for their advantage, but the fighting has become actually a lot more realistic IMO (ever seen a peasant who WANTS to fight in a war?).

Seeing u unit suddenly intensifying their battling could be understandable if it percieves a thread coming from the flanks or behind (lets finish this asap, so we might be able to focus on the new threat).

[past caring]

I noticed fairly early on the problem of only a few of the front rank of a unit engaging and did the old "click behind" thing to bring more of a unit into combat - seems like a fair few of us have come up with this independently (or remembered it from cavalry charges in Shogun or was is MTW?).

Anyway, it's now my standard tactic if on the attack. Form spear units into a line, group them, hold the alt button to keep formation and then click behind the enemy formation. I then just let them get on with it and can concentrate on managing my archers, cavalry and other flanking units. Works a treat.

[Quillan]

I do it regularly when I'm facing a unit with the "very long spears" tag. If I don't, they tend to kill off all my men who can reach them, and from that point they don't take any casualties. Forcing them to close and then reengaging puts another batch of troops in close combat with the halberdiers (the usual unit I have to use this trick against).

[Whacker]

My findings and experience are exactly in-line with Mr. TinCow's descriptions, and when to use/when not to use.

I will add this bit out of my own experience. It usually pays off much better to do this when you have a superior unit. It doesn't necessarily seem to break morale directly, that happens normally through attrition. The best point of this is to, as others have stated, create a much bigger zone of engagement and more men fighting. The fact that two lines just draw up on your average meeting engagement, with little to no intermingling, seems... I dunno, kinda boring to me, and also doesn't feel that accurate, though I have no support for that last statement. As such, I'll usually use this tactic to create a larger area of engagement, usually when I have superior units, that will hopefully result in faster casualties, and as a consequence quicker morale drop and faster routes.

Cheers!

[rios]

In the older totalwar games pushback usually (if not only) happened on charges. It forces the defending unit to move back, which gives them a combat penalty. IIRC the deeper the charging units are, better the chance for a pushback.

What this post described sounded more like a swipe...

[CBR]

Same "tactic" worked fine against pikes in RTW.


CBR

[afrit]

Thanks for the tip. The only situation I was using this is in was double clicking beyond routers to collect prisoners (old trick from MTW1)

Now I'll use more often in city battles