Hey, I just had a question about keeping my archers properly disciplined. I'm playing through a Greek campgain right now, and have gotten pretty Cretan archer happy. The only trouble is, how do I keep them rooted to one spot? I've mostly been using them to snipe masses of enemies from afar, but the targets have a nasty habit of running back out of range. When they do, my Cretan archers "break ranks" and pursue them, usually ending up either right in the middle of my phalanx formations (whom the archers promptly proceed to friendly fire to death) or hopelessly entagled with another block of Cretan archers (and the two groups of archers take turns friendly firing each other). One of my groups of Cretans, for example, has been with me for almost fifteen years of campaigning. The ONLY casualties they've sustained so far are because of running into other archer formations (well, that, and the time their "Skirmish" script got confused and sent them charging straight into a cavalry charge...)
I tried setting them to "Defense" mode, and that doesn't seem to help one bit. Setting them to "Fire at Will" helps a little bit... they don't pursue enemies without my consent, but they also tend to attack the wrong ones. I really don't want to be wasting ammo against one block of half-dead peasants when there's a nice, juicy, compact block of four Nile spearmen divisions just begging to be arrowed to death. So is there any way to get around this problem? Or will I just have to keep micro-managing them and pulling them back into formation whenever they get out of line?




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