Formation problems

[Foz]

Also note that your formation problems may go away if you adopt a policy of right-dragging at the target location to set the unit formations. I've found this very necessary, as clicking left or right of the group's center (even way forward but a bit left/right) translates into grouped units turning their line to that side, which is almost never what I want.

If you then need them to run, you can always just hit R (instead of the double-right-click functionality, since we're right-dragging to issue the move command).

[Whacker]

army formations not holding properly when commanded to advance by single click any greater distance than 100 virtual yards

Also note that your formation problems may go away if you adopt a policy of right-dragging at the target location to set the unit formations. I've found this very necessary, as clicking left or right of the group's center (even way forward but a bit left/right) translates into grouped units turning their line to that side, which is almost never what I want.

If you then need them to run, you can always just hit R (instead of the double-right-click functionality, since we're right-dragging to issue the move command).

That's not the point Foz. Formation holding is still pretty horrid in v1.2. I'll grudgingly admit it feels ever so slightly better, but it still stinks. Chasing routers is also improved, but my cav units will still occasionally start to do the 'spread out in a star' but stop after a second or two, and the tend to form these really deep, maybe 5 guys wide by 12+ deep (I play on huge) when doing this. It's annoying, they should maintain the formation that I put them in to begin with, AND they should move in whatever formation I had them in, instead of randomly choosing if they want to do that and picking their own.

Also, per a post you made awhile back, I decided to humor you and do exactly as you suggested, and tried different unit sizes. It doesn't make a whit of a difference really. There's that infuriating 1-2 second lag when giving an order and units start moving to start with. Then, when moving, there's that loveable ... halfarsed effort to get back into formation when moving, this is most notable when in double-time. Also noticed it's much worse when the unit is shooting, say for example as horse archers. Really am convinced at this point that this is how the game was designed to work, to which I can only respond

[Foz]

That's not the point Foz. Formation holding is still pretty horrid in v1.2. I'll grudgingly admit it feels ever so slightly better, but it still stinks. Chasing routers is also improved, but my cav units will still occasionally start to do the 'spread out in a star' but stop after a second or two, and the tend to form these really deep, maybe 5 guys wide by 12+ deep (I play on huge) when doing this. It's annoying, they should maintain the formation that I put them in to begin with, AND they should move in whatever formation I had them in, instead of randomly choosing if they want to do that and picking their own.

Also, per a post you made awhile back, I decided to humor you and do exactly as you suggested, and tried different unit sizes. It doesn't make a whit of a difference really. There's that infuriating 1-2 second lag when giving an order and units start moving to start with. Then, when moving, there's that loveable ... halfarsed effort to get back into formation when moving, this is most notable when in double-time. Also noticed it's much worse when the unit is shooting, say for example as horse archers. Really am convinced at this point that this is how the game was designed to work, to which I can only respond ...

I'm not trying to write off the problem, I'm simply trying to help people play the game in spite of its sometimes quirky behaviors. Some readers may not even be aware that they can drag their selected units into shapes at the target location instead of just clicking, so I took the chance to drop a useful tip that may get many people a lot of mileage. Is that really so evil?

As for the "horrid" formation holding, I'm sorry unit size didn't fix it for you. I still haven't seen anything even nearly as bad as pics you've posted, and I'm really not sure how you do it. Certainly the units don't move in nice neat lines, and they do stretch out a bit sometimes, but to me most of the time the imperfections come off as... how did someone else put it? Ahh yes, "organic." It lends a certain individuality to the men that I like, and that you simply can't get from perfect formations. It would be really great if they would try a lot harder to stick together though: unit's occasionally look more like buckshot patterns on practice targets than they do trained military units.

To the 1-2 second order lag, try to be realistic. You're a general giving orders to troops. You're even represented by a man in a given unit on the battlefield. How do the men get your orders? Certainly not by walkie talkie. Someone's blowing a horn or shouting at them, and that means it takes time for the men to hear, understand, and react. In fact on that subject, I'm almost certain someone said the lag is worse if your general is further away, and is much better when he is near. If that's true, then it almost certainly shows intent for this to be a feature, mirroring real combat conditions.

[Daveybaby]

That's not the point Foz. Formation holding is still pretty horrid in v1.2.

This has been happening to me since RTW - i've never really noticed it as much in M2TW because by now i just avoid moving my entire army around by single clicking. I now always re-drag groups out into formation separately. Not an ideal solution, but i've gotten used to it after years of intense annoyance.

[Whacker]

I'm not trying to write off the problem, I'm simply trying to help people play the game in spite of its sometimes quirky behaviors. Some readers may not even be aware that they can drag their selected units into shapes at the target location instead of just clicking, so I took the chance to drop a useful tip that may get many people a lot of mileage. Is that really so evil?

Fair enough, my intent wasn't to minimize your contribution, it's a good suggestion. My point was simply that we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger problem, even though there's a form of band-aid for it in the mean time.

As for the "horrid" formation holding, I'm sorry unit size didn't fix it for you. I still haven't seen anything even nearly as bad as pics you've posted, and I'm really not sure how you do it. Certainly the units don't move in nice neat lines, and they do stretch out a bit sometimes, but to me most of the time the imperfections come off as... how did someone else put it? Ahh yes, "organic." It lends a certain individuality to the men that I like, and that you simply can't get from perfect formations. It would be really great if they would try a lot harder to stick together though: unit's occasionally look more like buckshot patterns on practice targets than they do trained military units.

Believe me, I'm sorry too. I don't know how I manage it either, I never had these kinds of problems in RTW. As much as I say that I'm not that good at these games, that's more modesty than anything. I'm actually pretty good and can more than hold my own, so it's definitely lack of skill on my part. As to the unit cohesion being "organic", again I understand the sentiment but disagree. The rigidness in STW and MTW was a bit exaggurated but it's the engine we had to deal with. RTW was much closer to what I expected, M2TW just took it too far overboard. Somewhere in between but closer to RTW's cohesion would be fine in my book.

To the 1-2 second order lag, try to be realistic. You're a general giving orders to troops. You're even represented by a man in a given unit on the battlefield. How do the men get your orders? Certainly not by walkie talkie. Someone's blowing a horn or shouting at them, and that means it takes time for the men to hear, understand, and react. In fact on that subject, I'm almost certain someone said the lag is worse if your general is further away, and is much better when he is near. If that's true, then it almost certainly shows intent for this to be a feature, mirroring real combat conditions.

Again there's two sides to that argument, it just so happens (SURPRISE!) that I am on the opposite one. While it's true that this is a "simulation" and an "approximation" of battle, there is a certain leeway to both sides arguing for or against certain mechanics. In terms of command lag, I just plain hate it. Realistically speaking, issuing commands in the order of fine-grainness and precision that we can in these games wasn't even REMOTELY possible throughout the classical and middle ages, even with modern technology it's still hard for a commander to maintain tight control in any given theater. Even with a good battle plan up front, and good capable runners, such a level of control was just a dream. As such, I think that 1-2 second lag is infuriating, I prefer to think that when you click to give the command, the game has a sense of... premonition, and knew ahead of time that you were going to do that, hence the troops jump immediately to do your will. Fruity? Perhaps, but it's just how I think.

This has been happening to me since RTW - i've never really noticed it as much in M2TW because by now i just avoid moving my entire army around by single clicking. I now always re-drag groups out into formation separately. Not an ideal solution, but i've gotten used to it after years of intense annoyance.

You know that's interesting you say that, I found RTW's controls to be leaps and bounds better than the old STW/MTW controls. Going back and playing those games after RTW was almost physically painful. While RTW wasn't absolutely perfect, I didn't have as much trouble controlling my troops in it as compared to the new M2TW mechanics and controls. /shrug Guess it just boils down to personal preference.

[Daveybaby]

You know that's interesting you say that, I found RTW's controls to be leaps and bounds better than the old STW/MTW controls. Going back and playing those games after RTW was almost physically painful. While RTW wasn't absolutely perfect, I didn't have as much trouble controlling my troops in it as compared to the new M2TW mechanics and controls. /shrug Guess it just boils down to personal preference.

In general i agree. It's just when i click on a destination for my army, once in a while (actually it seems to happen once every couple of battles) my army's formation will get totally mangled. If this happens and you dont notice it because youre keeping an eye on the enemy army, then you can lose the battle because of this - not fun. At all.

[sapi]

Split off from the buglist.

[dopp]

Is this the bug where your units insist on forming up twelve deep when you give them a move order? I only noticed it after v1.2.

[FactionHeir]

I got it pre 1.02 as well.
Still on 1.1 that is.

I tried the drag out to march to position method, but it didn't quite work out the way I was hoping it to. The 3 units of cav (mailed, border horse, kwaz) who I told to form up 3 ranks deep formed up 4 ranks wide (and very deep) and the longbows formed up 3 deep instead of the 4 i told em to. Both times they had to walk a fair distance to get that far and both times they assumed their final formation shortly after starting to move, so it doesn't seem distance related or at best indirectly.

AS the French, I was never able to form up Voulgier units 3 ranks deep in guard+phalanx mode except in the deployment screen. If I told them to do it during battle, they'd end up 3.5 ranks deep (i.e. half of 4th rank filled)

[crpcarrot]

i rarely find myself moving my whole army as a group and like foz said any breaking in formation is a mnor problem. i rarely have my whole army charging at another army i prefer to give my orders to individual units . and only have my archers and flanking cavalry grouped to help me remeber where they are really more than anything else. even though the army loses formation while moving they always come back into perfect formation when they stop so i dont see the problem there really.

the cavalry and routing units problem is some thing i can totally ignore its boring and although i would like to capture those heavy infantry units rather than let them fight again it's no gamr breaker

[Foz]

I got it pre 1.02 as well.
Still on 1.1 that is.

I tried the drag out to march to position method, but it didn't quite work out the way I was hoping it to. The 3 units of cav (mailed, border horse, kwaz) who I told to form up 3 ranks deep formed up 4 ranks wide (and very deep) and the longbows formed up 3 deep instead of the 4 i told em to. Both times they had to walk a fair distance to get that far and both times they assumed their final formation shortly after starting to move, so it doesn't seem distance related or at best indirectly.

I have to ask... what game are you playing? Are you running some crazy mods or something? In all my campaigns I've never once seen a unit or group of units fail to move exactly into the position & formation I dragged out, even if required to run through a gate en masse to get there. This is getting more and more crazy...

[Whacker]

I have to ask... what game are you playing? Are you running some crazy mods or something? In all my campaigns I've never once seen a unit or group of units fail to move exactly into the position & formation I dragged out, even if required to run through a gate en masse to get there. This is getting more and more crazy...

It's rare, but it's happened to me before Foz. In both RTW and M2TW.

Also for the record, I've been paying much more attention to formation holding for individual units when doing custom battles. Cav esp. seem to be prone to reforming to something other than what you set them as. Can't really nail down any specific situations, other than they occasionally do it when skirmishing (run away!), and almost always when chasing routers.

Also, for the sake of this discussion, it may be worth comparing, in detail, our various "methods" of gameplay, in how we control our armies when on the battle map. This includes setup, positioning, grouping, and control. I'm open to the idea that perhaps I'm doing something "wrong" but I highly doubt it, would be interesting to compare notes.

[Fußball]

I rarely have any problems with my unit's formation because I pause and micromanage each unit while on the move. I know the bug you speak of though, very annoying when you do not feel like micromanagement. It only tends to happen when you double click your men to run to a position without and the only time I do this is on the move to get to a position faster. Once I am able to actually see the right-click drag formation "ghost" then I begin micromanaging every unit's movement so they will not reform so deep.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Empirate]

I'm beginning to suspect there's a performance issue here. How much RAM do you guys have? What kind of CPU? Because I happen to own a rather powerful computer, and I'm experiencing almost no positioning problems whatsoever if I drag out the formations: Give them some time to adjust after reaching the location, and the men'll sort themselves out just fine. When I move the whole army, especially by using ALT+RightClick, there occasionally are some problems, like the back lines moving up closer to the front line than I intended. Very rarely, the formation breaks down totally when I try to move the whole army at once, but since I hold down SPACE a lot to see where everybody will wind up, I usually notice this way before it can cause any problems. BTW, you'd most certainly only move the whole army at once while the enemy is still far away, wouldn't you? If not, the blame goes to you, sloppy generals that you are!
Also, unit cohesion during the march is much improved by 1.2 for me, and I don't really see a problem here anymore. I noticed one odd kind of behaviour, though: Sometimes I'll issue a move command by dragging out new positions. Say, I drag out three units of cavalry to go there-and-there, three ranks deep please. They'd also been three ranks deep before I issued the command. Now while it is marching, one of the cav units will form into a column six deep, or even deeper and narrower. Once it reaches its destination, it again forms up three deep like ordered! It's a bit strange to see this, but usually it causes no problems whatsoever.

[Ciaran]

I strongly suspect pathfinding to be responsible for the formation change, many battlefields in M2TW have obstacles on them that prevent the units from keeping formation, much like the streets in cities.
Or there is some code that tells the units to switch to a marching formation when ordered to cover a certain distance, instead of advancing in combat formation; and that code has some glitches.

[sapi]

@Empirate - I doubt it's a performance issue, as I'm getting the problem with a system that I know to be easily capable of handling the game.

Rather, I suspect that the game doesn't automatically update formations when a unit gets interrupted, so when a unit goes into marching formation it can fail to get out of it correctly...

[dopp]

But in my case it's the skirmishing Cossack Musketeers that are mucking up their formations. They skirmish about 50 feet and then form up twelve deep, ten across. Being musketeers, this messes things up considerably.

[Foz]

It's rare, but it's happened to me before Foz. In both RTW and M2TW.

Also for the record, I've been paying much more attention to formation holding for individual units when doing custom battles. Cav esp. seem to be prone to reforming to something other than what you set them as. Can't really nail down any specific situations, other than they occasionally do it when skirmishing (run away!), and almost always when chasing routers.

Also, for the sake of this discussion, it may be worth comparing, in detail, our various "methods" of gameplay, in how we control our armies when on the battle map. This includes setup, positioning, grouping, and control. I'm open to the idea that perhaps I'm doing something "wrong" but I highly doubt it, would be interesting to compare notes.

Yes the router chasing does seem to get cav into new formations a lot for me as well. Maybe they try to adjust to slimmer formations because the routing unit is usually in a longer more narrow shape itself, so the cav can more effectively rake it if matching its width (at least in theory - I'm not delving into what really happens). Otherwise you'll have many wasted members of the cav unit riding harmlessly to the sides of the enemy. Not all of the new formations are useful, though. Even since installing 1.02, I still occasionally have my router chasers adopt the infamous buckshot formation where they scatter randomly at ~15m intervals in all directions.

Concerning your gameplay, I rather doubt you're doing anything wrong. It's far more likely I've lucked out and not had the issue, or simply not noticed it if it has come up. That said, I don't think I do anything really special that should be preventing it from happening to me. I tend to assign groups by position so that I will have a rough idea where a unit is just by noting its group. The main battle line will get a group, a second line if there is one, archers, then cavalry possibly with multiple groups depending how I intend to deploy them. I commonly issue move orders to the groups, and as I've mentioned generally will drag out their formation unless they're marching straight ahead (when I sometimes lazily click to move the group). I almost never issue group attack commands: it's far more effective to target each unit to a given enemy one. I don't think there's much else I do that's out of the ordinary or deserves specific mention, but if you have further questions feel free to ask.

[Foz]

Also, forgot about this one til now: there is a very useful variable in a somewhat obscure file that may help the situation for anyone with formation-related gripes.

	; Movement configuration
	movement_configuration
	{
		formation_hold_distance 20.0	; formations update 20m after the last point
	}

You'll find it in descr_pathfinding.txt. One of the first things upset forum-goers did in trying to help out cavalry charges was to change this setting to 1.0 instead of 20.0. It seems to control how often your units adjust formation when they are moving, and IIRC setting it in the 1-ish range tightened up the formation-holding quite noticeably. I've not used the 1.0 setting since 1.1 though. We have no idea as to the extra burden this places on the game, but in my experience it has not performed noticeably worse because of it. Hopefully experimentation with this might bring some troubled souls a bit of relief!