How to make gunpowder units hold their position

[Member of the Shieldwall]

Whenever I make it all the way to the endgame (or if I'm playing a mod with gunpowder units) I end up having to watch my gunpowder units super carefully the entire time because they refuse to stay still. If the enemy they decide to target isn't directly in front of them they will spin around to target them, and then I have to put them back where they belong, over and over. Is there something I'm missing here? Using guard mode doesn't do anything for gunpowder units, and I'd really rather not turn off Fire At Will, because setting up a target for every unit over and over would be even worse

This doesn't happen in the later games, is it just a built-in limitation of Medieval 2 that I can't do anything about?

[CheriSh17]

Hmm, isn't it the same thing with Empire and Napoleon? I haven't really noticed it in med2 much to be honest. Although I only play mods, but by the time the my gunners has to fire at enemies not in front of them, the enemy has already reached my pike and shot formation, so the gunners don't have to keep formation at all but instead switch to the rear or flanks.

[Member of the Shieldwall]

I usually make a very thin long line of all my gunners, and then I put my pikemen directly behind them so that the pikes reach past the gunners. Maybe I need to be more flexible about that, hmm.

I think what's happening is that in Empire etc. units have a really wide arc that they're able to fire at enemies from, but the effectiveness of their fire changes depending on their position relative to the enemy. Also if a better target comes into range they will switch automatically (I think). In Medieval 2, gunpowder units have a wide arc of enemies that they're aware of, but they'll only actually fire on enemies in a much narrower arc (and they will rotate their position to do so). Also, they will not automatically switch targets unless if they're moved manually or their first target leaves their range, from what I've seen (which means sometimes they will rotate to attack a target to one side when there's a perfectly good target approaching in front of them ).

I don't mean to be down on the game, btw. I've gotten hours and hours of enjoyment out of Medieval 2's pike and shot mods (including a little one I made myself with the Bare Geomod where I just applied the pikemen fix and nothing else to the vanilla game). If there's nothing I can do, I'll just come up with a new formation to use that's more flexible and probably more historically accurate anyway :]

[CheriSh17]

Yeah I used to do that too, stacking pikemen, swordsmen and musketeers together. But that way, the pikes are just used for defensive purposes, which limits their offensive potential. Now I just micro the gunners and pikemen in large formations so that they can be used together in attack or defence. Try experimenting with different formations, or you can watch this video by geoffreyM2TW for some historical formations which are also useful ingame I like that some pike and shot mods like 1648 already start you off with historical formations depending on your army composition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4pyDUwGDsM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPQBLvtt_zk