How do you pull back a group properly?

[Sharpe's Rifles]

Lets say you have bows, spears, swords all in 1 group and want to drag and drop back, it stupidly sends them accross each other and makes them disorganized so they can charge cav into you and **** you over.

How do you do it without the crossover thing?

[Majuts]

Cover your retreat by using your own cav and attendants as a screen.

Retreating without them crossing over is not really possible if you use large groups. Unless you fall back directly behind were your army was.

[Sharpe's Rifles]

It was possible in the other total war games I played. There has to be a way here, it seems like a bug they would do this.

[Thorien Kell]

Not that I'm using it too much : ) but if positioning remains the same, I mean unit is facing same direction and has same position just a little back, I believe units should go orderly, am I wrong?

[Majuts]

No you are not wrong. If you pull back with the army facing the same way they will not chaotically run through each other but will just walk a bit back keeping their formation. The problem I guess is when you fall back diagonally or to the side so you will get units running through each other so they can get to their new position using the shortest route.

Its just the way Shogun 2 works and you just need to play close attention when you are moving your entire army back.

[Captain Clueless]

no its no about the shortest route.
and no its not about moving an entire army.

I mostly use groups of 3 Units and it happnes to often that the left & right units switch possition while moving backwords.
An example which happens pretty often is:

I am standing close to enemy range and want to fall back with a 3 unit group
- centre unit turns backwords properly
- left unit makes a right turn before falling back and gets into enemy range
- right unit makes a left turn before falling back and gets into enemy range

after that i am in my new position but left & right units switched sides and both took one volley.
This strange pathfinding happens since ETW, anoyes bigtime, and i dont understand when and why it happens.

[spicykorean]

You just have to use the Back arrow in the movement dial to make your units move directly backward instead of crossing over each other. I hope that makes sense and helps.

[Man'o'War]

As above, use the back arrow and tell them to run.

The mistake you are making is R clicking the position you want them to fall back to but not telling them what way to face so they are falling back facing the wrong way. Consequently the blokes on the right will make their way to the left and vice versa.

The way to overcome this is to select the group, R CLICK AND HOLD the mouse button and you will see a ghost outlay of where your units will run to, swivel it until you're happy, let go and your units should run to their new positions and face the right way when they get there. A little practise and you'll soon get it.

Hope that helps.