Why won't my guys stay in formation?

[Paladin247]

I imagine this may be a bug that goes back to original RTW. About half the time that I group my cohorts and set up a formation, I then have to change the axis when the enemy shows up not directly to our front. So I swing the axis and everyone moves into a single line formation disregarding totally the original set up.

Is there a way to prevent this? Or is there some step I'm forgetting to do?

[Chris Death]

you have to: set them up as you want

then: select all those units u want to be in that formation

and: press simply "g" to group them

Now if you made it exactly that way you should be able to
move them as a whole group.

:edit - forgot to add:

When you want to move that group make sure it's only this
group you have selected (and all of that group).

~S~ CD

[General Brittanicus]

I imagine this may be a bug that goes back to original RTW. About half the time that I group my cohorts and set up a formation, I then have to change the axis when the enemy shows up not directly to our front. So I swing the axis and everyone moves into a single line formation disregarding totally the original set up.

Is there a way to prevent this? Or is there some step I'm forgetting to do?

If you group your units, then they will stay in their original formation when you move them.

edit: beaten to it

[Ayanami030]

If you group your units, then they will stay in their original formation when you move them.

edit: beaten to it

What I do is, assign a group to all the cohorts (say number 1), another group for missile units/artillery units, and finally cavalry. This would solve the formation problem.

[naq]

I assign the whole legion into a single group. That's more simple.

[Paladin247]

Thanks for the help.

What I've been doing for years is organizing into sub-groups, legionary right, left, center, cav ditto, skirmishers ditto, artillery ditto, normally have like five or six such. So what I'm reading is I have to set everyone in place then group as one then shift axis and then reorganize. OK, can do easy.

Thanks again.

[Dzhon]

Select all and group them before you turn them, then ungroup when they're where you want them.

Beaten twice...

[Ferdiad]

Ohh, double burn

[a-woowie.doowie]

Beaware of group-usage though, some units tend to ignore direct orders. For example if you have a group of archers and you put them to focus a singel target - they'll ignore it and fire at the closest targets to each individual unit. Another example would be with missile cavalry; if you have a group of lets say, 2 missle cavarly grouped up and one of them runs out of ammo - now if you want the one that runs out of ammo to attack in melee combat while the other is shooting - then it wouldn't work. The one you want going melee doesn't respond to the command. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think it's like this judging by own experience and some comments which I have a vague memory of.

[the.phoenix]

Beaware of group-usage though, some units tend to ignore direct orders. For example if you have a group of archers and you put them to focus a singel target - they'll ignore it and fire at the closest targets to each individual unit.

so you are saying to always use archers as separate ? caz i am really frustrated at archers for misbehaving, they just wont take my orders and fire as they want to

[Chris Death]

You can use them in a group too but when they are being grouped you have to consider
the fact that you can't make them all attack the very same unit with a single click while
when they aren't grouped together a single click would do the job.

There's no point at all for having your archers in a group - here's a tip: group your archers
and then ungroup them - now all your archers will be at the bottom of your unit cards list.
Now you can easily find them during the battle.

~S~ CD

[a-woowie.doowie]

I think there is a hotkey called "select all missile troops". You can easially check it up in the "options"-menu. There are additional commands of the same types such as "select all infantry" etc. This hotkey won't group the units, just merely select them as if you would've "shift + clicked" them. I used to use the group-command all the time(habbit from Age of Empires 2), but when I posted a link in the XGM forum regarding some problems - I learned that grouping units you want to use for focusing, simply isn't the best way of doing it. I'll try to find the link to that thread, it helped me - could probably help you and anyone who needs help with this issue too.

Here is the link; http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=423635

[Chris Death]

ctrl-m - all missiles
ctrl-i - all infantry
ctrl-c - all cavalry
ctrl-b - all artellery
ctrl-a - all ....... ?? - yeah it's true - all your units

ctrl-dbl-click onto a unit = select all units of that type (not kind)

ctrl-single-click onto a unit - add this unit to those you have already selected
or - remove this unit from those you have selected

shift-click - select all unit cards beginning with the one being already selected
and ending at the one you are shift-clicking.
*note - this option works best down on the unit cards since they show up in
logical order there

Reorganizing your unit cards:

select a bunch of units - group them and ungroup them -> you will see they are
now all at the end of the unit card list - from here one it should be easy to figure
out how to organize your unit cards so that you can have them where you need them
just play around with it a while.

~S~ CD