Weird things you see on the battlefield.

[Afkazar]

What are some of the weirdest things you have seen when fighting on the field.
I once saw a rebel general chilling in a unit of 100 peasents
Also my cataphract was swinging at an invisble enemy freezing my entire unit...

[mightilyoats]

I have seen that invisible unit once too. It was like one of those enemies was just lying on the ground "pretending" to be dead... I was able to get my unit to snap out of it though.

This is not a battle field moment... I once had an Egyptian prince who was described as a "True Roman"... He he... I sent him him to Italy to go and claim his heritage...

[KHPike]

A full army of flaming pigs set on fire...

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I once saw a rebel general chilling in a unit of 100 peasents

That sounds very familiar.

[caravel]

The lone man detached from his unit, stuck in the ground running on the spot while spnning around. I see those frequently. In cities they're often stuck against wall or siege equipment as well. Sige tower platforms that fail to lower are another good one, with all the men stuck inside.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I just found another one this morning - men in a phalanx flying into the air and landing on the ground for no apparent reason. Another one I have noticed is a man, again in Phalanx formation, fighting at the air moving slowly backwards, dodging an invisible blow with his shield, falling over, getting up again and then repeating the whole sequence again. Very weird....

[caravel]

All of this is down to errors in the clipping and pathfinding aspects of the game engine. This is a common thing in 3D games where the 3D models have to navigate obstacles, well any games in fact. The unit you've mentioned is probably actually fighting, though it's visible animation has become pushed out of place. If he was on open terrain you probably wouldn't have seen it, though among buildings/obstacls or within a city displacement is common because the units go out of formation in order to navigate the narrow areas. What I can't work out is why the boundaries had to be the actual buildings themselves. This just helps the units to get stuck and causes them to be visible through walls. Placing invisible clip fields with non square corners slightly out from the walls and making the streets inside the towns a little wider (this always helps the AI also) would have helped a lot.

[Upxl]

Once when seizing a city, one unit was standing (idle) on a corner of the fully captured walls.
One by one all the men of this unit started to throw themselves off the wall into a horrible and pointless death.

I decided to not to interrupt them and see how many would survive these self-destructing spasms.
The entire unit got wiped out.
Didn’t felt the least bit bad about it cause I don’t wont morons like that in my army.

I think they where principes.

[Lorenzo_H]

When units are fighting, particularly Spartan Hoplites for me, I often notice a single man MILES and MILES away from the rest of his unit, and I'm like, how the heck, and what the heck?

[Dindylas]

I've had the following happen to me while I was playing as Armenians. I was in the middle of a battle and the armies had made contact. I instructed my light cavalry to charge the flanks of the enemy (from both flanks), because my infantry was outnumbered and slightly outclassed. So, I told them to fly like the wind and they... ignored me. Fully and completely. They were fresh and eager, they was happy knowing that the flanks were secured, but they were also not moving one bit. They were sitting there, watching their countrymen die, one by one. Needless to say that I lost the battle. After the infantry fell or fled, my general among them, the cavalry was attacked and it broke in no time. In the end only they remained alive. I disbanded the units immediately, imagining that my generals sold the insubordinate men as slaves.

[caravel]

I've seen that quite a lot. Another issue I've had is with Hoplites. At times they won't go into a phalanx if they've already been fighting in melee. I can pull them out of melee, form them up, click the phalanx button and... nothing.

[antisocialmunky]

Phalanxes attacking backwards. They moonwalked into a unit of perplexed phalangites and promptly died... in style.

[germanpeon]

I had a similar, if not the same, problem as Dindylas. I was playing as the Julii and I had just repelled an army of Gauls, but I still had to fight their reinforcements. Problem was, I couldnt get my general to go back behind the infantry. He was facing backwards and needless to say his unit was wrecked and he died. But I still won the battle.

[César Victor]

A Spanish King that WOULD NOT DIE. I hacked him down, a message appeared to the right saying he was dead. He rose again. He died again- another message. He rose again and was the only enemy left alive. Then he died AGAIN and the battle was won.

Was a true Monty Python moment; "Tis merely a flesh wound!"

[IceWolf]

It wasn't on the battlefield but on the map. During my current Carthaginian campaign the Julii were doing something really weird. For about 30 turns they would land an army on my ill defended isle of Palma then pick them up and withdraw the next turn. Then they'd do it again and again. I just let them keep doing this as i was occupied in Spain and didn't want to fight with Rome yet. Eventually they left the army there and since it was ruining morale on Palma I had to dispatch an army to get rid of a 330 man Julii force. WTF?

IceWolf

[Quintus Of Pompeii]

Elephants + Charge X Light Infantry = Elephant with infantry on back

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

A full army of flaming pigs set on fire...

The lag is unbelievable.

[Mooks]

Thousands of dogs scattering all over the map, running away.

Must have created hell for the neighboring villagers...

[IceWolf]

Men walking on air and through wood! I pulled my Scippii seige tower up to an enemy wall. The drawbridge didn't drop but 4 Hastatii somehow strode through the crack tween the drawbridge and the tower walked on air to the wall and attacked the Carthaginian peasants manning the wall. They died quickly, then a 5th Hastatii walked on air, saw the bodies of his comrades, apparently thought better of it then walked on air and through the still undropped drawbridge. The bridge eventually fell and proceeded normally in about 30 seconds after that. If my men can walk on air then why do I need towers in the 1st place

IceWolf

[caravel]

Men walking on air and through wood! I pulled my Scippii seige tower up to an enemy wall. The drawbridge didn't drop but 4 Hastatii somehow strode through the crack tween the drawbridge and the tower walked on air to the wall and attacked the Carthaginian peasants manning the wall. They died quickly, then a 5th Hastatii walked on air, saw the bodies of his comrades, apparently thought better of it then walked on air and through the still undropped drawbridge. The bridge eventually fell and proceeded normally in about 30 seconds after that. If my men can walk on air then why do I need towers in the 1st place

IceWolf

I see this a lot also. I was able to attack them while they were still in there. The siege towers are seriously bugged, and the speed that the men disembark onto the ramparts is far too slow. If you have your men in position on the walls they are very easy pickings, and it's not uncommon to see a kill ratio of four to one or more.

[naut]

Sige tower platforms that fail to lower are another good one, with all the men stuck inside.

Lost many a siege due to that.

[caravel]

I always back up the towers with scaling ladders just in case, and always take peasants or militias to an assault so that they can man the equipment. With the ladders, I don't understand why they can't be pushed off or destroyed?

[Punicus]

I once charged a group of Militia Hoplites with my cavalry, one guy went flying in the air but he was standing as if he were on the ground. As he came back down he started kicking and screaming, though.

Another thing is when I directly hit the enemy captain with a catapault boulder.

[professorspatula]

Weird things? I could think of a hundred and one things.

For starters this:

My Julii army had the last of the Greek armies cornered and prepared to finish them off for once and for all. Unfortuately it turned out to be a bit of a Greek tragedy as the Greeks foolishly turned their backs on my army. They faced the wrong way and just sat there whilst I slowly but surely whittled down their numbers with artillery and missile fire. Never seen anything like it. They even had a small force coming which they could have caused my forces problems but it was too late and their main army was destroyed.




A bit daft this but....
Dacian's deploy new battlefield millipedes, only problem is they have a habit of falling asleep under ladders.


This is something I amusingly witnessed during a campaign as Numidia. After many years of taunting us, Egypt finally besieged Siwa which I'd sneakily emptied of most of the defenders the previous turn. However, they decided to make fun of the last of the brave defenders who refused to leave home by leading their rams to the walls... then twisting them round and round 2 or 3 times - as if to mock us, causing all kinds of mischief before the rams finally smashed down the walls and then the Egyptians slaughtered everyone alive.
http://disko.co.uk/images/misc/rtw/ramdrivers.jpg


I also have some videos of some stupid AI phalanx behaviour and my men charging out of a siege tower and jumping off the walls in an apparent suicide pact. Might upload them some time. Sadly the one of the hoplite running along doing 20 back flips along the way to the tune of Van Halen's 'Jump' has been deleted.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hmm, I think the battle with the peasant ram problem is a common error. It always happens to me when any unit is not in a standard formation, such as tightly packed, instead they are loose. Also gladiators, sadly, have this problem too, also because of their formation. However, on the positive side, once when that occured it gave me enough time to wipe out their ram and win the battle.

[Jonathan_Thompson]

A unit of Armoured War Elephants running across the entire battle map on their own, while their unit info says their in combat and saying "defeat seems certain only a military genius...). The entire unit died and doomed my Carthage campaign

[ByzantineKnight]

When units are fighting, particularly Spartan Hoplites for me, I often notice a single man MILES and MILES away from the rest of his unit, and I'm like, how the heck, and what the heck?

I have a problem with this when I'm chasing down routers with cavalry, the cavalry charges at the middle of the unit, when there is 2 men left that are half the map apart, it gets kinda hard to kill them all, lol.

[caravel]

I saw a weird thing yesterday, which I have seen once or twice before now I come to think of it. My forces had assaulted the last Macedonian City in the north (I forget it's name) and had killed every last man (or so I thought) yet the flags in the plaza didn't change to my faction's (the Greek Cities) colours. I had a glance around and saw nothing then, looking at the minimap there was an enemy marker right in the centre of the city, in the plaza to be precise. Also my archers kept firing into the plaza at my own men!!?? So I began pulling my units out of there to get a better look, as they had all converged in that place and it was quite busy. It was then that I spotted the solitary Phalanx Pikeman router right in the thick of it but still alive. Just moving my units "unblocked it" and he was cut down in a few seconds.

[Caius]

A hastati unit in the air

[Barbarossa82]

A hastati unit in the air

On a related note, levitating hoplites: