Why do my defenders always start on the wrong wall?

[waywardryan]

That got it. Thanks! you rule. That was driving me nuts. What a stupid game dynamic.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

My purpose is to serve

[mightilyoats]

Cool Omanes. They say you should learn something new everyday. I learnt something new already now, so I think I should call it a day!

I've never tried arcade mode before. Now I won't... ever.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I've never tried arcade mode before. Now I won't... ever.

Arcade mode is useful for something - it removes morale, fatigue and limited ammunition so is good should you want to play with a more simplified battle mode similar to that of an RTS game such as AoE or the Civ Series, also useful if you are a veteran of these games wanting to go into the TW series a step at a time. On the down side it disables the ability to deploy troops and instead of having a small portion of your/the enemy's army survive, it all has to die for one side to win the battle. Convenient if you have done the destroying - not so convenient if you are the one being destroyed...

Yep, that's it. Omanes the not-so idiot got it right. I don't suppose anyone knows Why the computer automatically sets troops there?

I believe that the troops are set there because the AI by default would deploy it's troop in front of where the computer deploys yours by default. The AI, wanting an advantage, repositions itself hoping that you don't notice and take time to get to your wall to defend against them. BTW the AI has already deployed their troops while you are deploying yours. What it doesn't realise is that you are intelligent enough to realise that they are there, can deploy pre-battle and can send an force there to go and chuck 'em out of your city!

[MuseRulez]

If you still want to play in arcade mode, but still like to set up your forces before battles: go to the preferences folder, it should look something like this:Rome - Total War\preferences. There you will find a text file called "preferences". (you didn't see that one coming, did you? ) Look for the lines MORALE:TRUE FATIGUE:TRUE LIMITED_AMMO:TRUE. These are the settings for NON-arcade battles. Just change TRUE to FALSE. You can now play a normal campaign and still have all the "advantages" of arcade mode.

REMEMBER: Back-up your file FIRST!