Roman formation Issues engaging units and after.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

Not sure wether or not this has been announced already or unknown.

Bassically through my campaign being the romans i've been banging my head against my screen on numourous occasions because my soldiers have lost formation engaging or having been engaged in combat leaving them when un-attended open for attack.

This is actually causing more losses then usual, now with the scale of battles in SPQR it's hard to keep an eye on all my units at once, im having to re-arrange units after being in battle and losing precious time on the battlefield for strategic moves or positioning.

This is my first problem, i had set my front cohorts to tight formation, great formation for frontal attacks causes minimal casualties, but when you then later engage the units into combat they loose formation and that tight formation is lost and you begin to move forward and engulf your self for example below.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see my cohorts are loosing what formation they had and are pushing to far forward into lines, I don't want an aggressive engagement but a defensive engagement holding formation and pushing them back in a line. Now for me not to loose formation i must leave my units in guard mode and not engage the enemy so leaving them without even clicking them, im pretty sure i don't get an attack bonus from doing so.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

clealry shows that after engagement made by the enemy my lines are secure and havn't moved at all, but soon as i do engage they loose formation. Bad times....

What bugs me even more when you have selected and engaged the enemy, and the enemy have broken ranks and fled away this happens.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

soon after the AI see the opitunity and start attacking me, hitting the broken line because of me selecting my cohorts and attacking and pushing back the enemy.

Key issues here are:

- Units don't form back into previous position.

- selecting a target and engaging them makes units loose formation and start pushing forward at the center causing an en-gulfing mode as shown above.

-Occassionally units will engage the enemy from where they stand so if the enemy are at the flanks the cohorts will not face at line then attack they will attack at awkward angles.

Whilst i enjoy this mod greatly i favoured it to none else it's very frustrating playing as the Romans and not having that discipline of formations and organisation.

Any thoughts on the matter?

[BiggBudd]

If you used the "alt" click method of moveing your formation, you can normaly alt click again and they will reform to original posisition! Its hard to judge the exact posistion but by pressing "space bar" you can see where they will end up and adjust again using alt click.

[lt1956]

Also I dont use Guard mode alot, you do less damage on Guard mode. If fighting Barbarians you should use Shield Wall in Guard mode, this will hold, I have no had the issues you have had its dealing with your formation setup. Keep in mind that some things are in RTW vanilla and have issues, SQPR also has more effect when spears attack, they can PUSH your line back.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

Oh right but why does the romans break formation for example when selecting a unit to attack the enemy they seem to go into wavey lines? They slowly seem to spread outwards stretching or they pummel through the center and often end up in an odd triangle shape.

I'll try to not use guard mode next time, i've always put that on so my units don't break away and chase after when the enemy rout.

That wasn't the greatest battle used for an example but i quickly just done a battle to highlight what bugged me, mostly the scenario when you attack with your units they loose their formation.

[Ejergard]

The neat formations you speak of only applies when defending in guardmode. When you choose to attack an enemy, you unleash the cohort to skirmish, pretty much. They will try to shove and push and gain ground where they can. Good or bad, this is because of the way RTW was coded by the creators...

[czePowerslave]

Thats why we have cavalry! Infantry just holds the ground, while mighty cavalry wins the day!

Really, all you need is more micro management of the guard mode and your unit doing. Thats bout all. Dont watch, act!

[Lord Thesaurian]

Lord Stason: It appears that your problem is simply poor troop management (no offense). I think the problem is your men, when ordered to attack, keep attacking the same unit. This is a common problem and is easily fixed. Usually said units attack the enemy, then formation is gradually lost in the melee as your units press into the enemy ranks. This can be dangerous, but CA did a good job of illistrating unit cohesion in an actual battle, and generally this is how ancient battles were fought. Two lines of infantry would press at each other until one broke through and routed the other (this was especially the case in western armies, most of whom had mediocre cavalry).

While this rare attention to accuracy is appreciated, in RTW if enemy units are mixed together your men will ignore all enemies in front of them and try to move through to continue attacking their target, often suffering signficant casualties as a result. To fix this, just watch your men carefully. If they begin to break fromation, just halt them and reorder the attack simultaneously. Hope this helps.

PS: depending solely on infantry flexibility is a bad idea. Always keep some cavalry and missiles on hand. Then you wont have to worry so much about your infantry losing formation.

Also, if you want to maintain a solid line, use spear units and leave them on guard mode and dont order them to attack. This will always ensure a rigid line, but requires supporting troops on the flanks to be enitrely successful.

[c_kais3r]

Thats weird. Whenever i leave a spear unit (Spartan Hoplits for example) on guard mode withour ordering an attack, they automatically revert to using their swords and only a few men in the formation will attack. But when i order the attack in guard mode they will use their spears and maintain (for the most part) a decent line. Also thank you for the help with the men braking formation.

Sorry for double posting but are you sure that you do less damage in guard mode? It doesen't make much sense to me. I just read an article on twheaven about how guard mode is very useful with roman or spear units. But perhaps thats only in basic RTW not SPQR.

[lt1956]

RTW Guard mode does less damage in attack.

[Titus Maximius Thongus]

this isnt a problem with vanilla. when you order a unit in vanilla (or any other mod for that matter) to attack another unit when in guard mode, they will maintain formation while pushing forward slowly.

when I used to play SPQR I did raise this matter that units would always break formation when ordered to attack, even in guard mode. this has nothing to do with historical accuracy or 'the way units should fight', just the way SPQR is coded