Pile in!

[Owain Glyndŵr]

I've noticed that in a melee, troops maneuver very poorly. If I try to reinforce my spear militia with dismounted knights, two knights rush to to front to fight while the rest sit in the back and spread out. I also notice that units tend to spread out while fighting in general.

To counter these issues, I'll double-click behind the enemy, forcing my troops to rush forth and overwhelm the enemy, though taking a few casualties in the process. What do y'all think of this "piling-in" trick?

[Viking Prince]

The pile in as you have coined it then becomes a question of moral. I am assuming somewhat equal fighting and defense abilities. If your troops have higher moral, they should survive to break the enemy. This is due to the surround effect on morale. This does presume that I underswtand what you are trying to do.

[Old_Scratch]

Yeah, you can use that to quickly rout some units, especially if they are in too thin of a formation and you can push through.

[O'Hea]

I've found myself doing that too. I don't understand why the maneuvering is so off in this game, it's so obvious that it has to be intentional, but I can't figure out what purpose it serves.

[chaplainDMK]

Ye it sucks especialy in sieges
I have like 3-4 spearman teams and they got 1 or 2
And i order a charge and evreyone just stayes behind the first one and gets slaughtered. I have to manualy order each unit to move to the flank to have evreyone attacking

[Viking Prince Olaf]

Easy thing is to protect your ranks and formation like line em up like 10
feet away from the enemy and simotaniously order them to attack them and box them in roughly like this /_\ with the enemy in the middle so you get greater effect.

[OdinX]

Always use this...

[Callawyn]

Definitely worth doing in certain situations. Most of the time you aren't going to rout the enemy unit with this alone, so its important to single rt-click your target once most of your men have jammed up to the front. Otherwise, they try to keep moving past the enemy rather than fighting them, and you'll take extra casualties.

[Conquistatore]

Good tactic for breaking through the enemy lines. Especially useful at the front gate when your infantry and going toe to toe and it is a stalemate. Order all your units to rush forward and 9 times out of 10 you will force the enemy to rout!

[Landtuber]

Just from personal experience, its best not to attempt this with two-handers. Their lack of shields makes them take far to many casualties from trying to push straight through enemy lines.

[France]

I use this tactic all the time when this happens, especially with the more untrained troops as they tend to do this a lot.