Tips on controlling large armies

[Gurak]

Just getting back into TW and loving the Third age (Mainly with MOS).

One thing I am finding challenge though is controlling full stack+ size forces in battle.

I generally group my force into 2 or 3 maneuver elements with 1 aiming to catch the enemy force and the other(s) going for the flanks, but once the lines close, I am having a tough time keeping enough situational awareness to manage my force without hitting the pause.

Part of me feels that the Pause button is a bit of a cheat, but how to manage when I can only see a fraction of my force at any given time?
Do most people use the pause, or do you use lots of hotkeys, and preset map locations like a Korean Starcraft master?

Basically I would like some suggestions/organizational tips on how to keep a semblance of control in those large battles.
Any suggestions/tips/secrets most appreciated!

[DrDragun]

I usually end up with similar kill ratios on large battles as small, even though I feel I have less control. It might be easier to snipe a general or cause a chain reaction of routing on larger battles. But on individual unit micro, I think there is simply no way to have as much efficient control on a large scale.

Usually on a large battle, I am managing the cavalry and archers, jumping around between the groups. The main infantry line I only micro to get their charge bonus on the initial contact. After that, I leave the main infantry line and I run 2 cavalry groups to use the hammer+anvil flanking charges, checking my archers to make sure they are attacking separated infantry groups and not shredding my own units.

If I have to kill trolls, I will tank them with cheap infantry and direct archers on them. This requires periodic checking to add another infantry when the first group nears death (I don't want them all taking archer casualties at once).

Sometimes I keep reserve heavy infantry at the flanks, which adds some extra micro. They can be good to envelop the flanks and cause a chain reaction of routing. But usually I just charge them once and leave them, and manage my cavalry.

[muller227]

You and me both, I think the best way for me is to define the situation with formation infantry as a maneuver base, something like heavy shielded spearmen in shield wall, I maneuver assault, cavalry and missile elements from them. Trolls do however muck up my nicely laid plans, I keep at least one fire brigade maybe two roving behind this line. I have never figured out Schiltrom, so I change Gondor Spearmen to a shield wall attribute I can manage it better.

[ElvenKind]

Use Pause button, it is not cheating, it's a gift.

[Redgrave]

It is a gift. A gift to the foes of the AI. Why not use this pause button? Long has my modder, the King of Kong, kept the forces of the AI at bay. By the programming of our people are your lands kept safe! Give the players the pause button of the enemy. Let us use it against him!

[Legourou]

It is arguable that organization and management is the whole point of these kinds of games.

Each person has their own solution and I believe each solution is crafted to fit the styles of each person. Just try to craft your own working styles and instead of attacking each army the same way you always do, try something different each time. See what works best for you.

[ThaDoews]

You never can control any huge army on any game without the pause-button... Think about, any given captain or w/e leading a small garrison can think by it self by the orders given by the general. That isn't the case in any game. The captain will only do what ever YOU tell it to do. Therefore the pause-button is a gift. Otherwise you will end up with several units just standing and get beaten...

[Macilrille]

Pause, you do not have trained soldiers under experienced officers and NCOs able to improvise and take initiative within the framework of the plan as you would in RL. Instead you have Pause.

I do know EB players who insist on using general camera, zoomed in fully, to simulate BF conditions though. I think they are mad.

[Gurak]

...you do not have trained soldiers under experienced officers and NCOs able to improvise and take initiative within the framework of the plan as you would in RL. Instead you have Pause...

This seems a strong argument in favor of the pause not being entirely a cheat, though realistically Generals must have actually be extremely limited both in their awareness and control of units outside of his immediate close area.
I must admit that I have tended in some battles to massively overuse the pause to micromanage battle elements that no realistic commander would likely have been aware of, not to mention be able to have any influence over.

How can one strike a balance?

This leads me to think that Space Voyager may have hit on the most realistic solution.

Don't use pause. Use group AI. This way the player can have all his units controlled at all times, just not as micro as one wants - or is a general able to in a battle. BTW, you can still give the units detailed orders, even when under group AI. Don't put the general under group AI though.

I've never had enough confidence in the AI to actually try this though.

Can it do a decent job, or is it a recipe for disaster?
I could see this being a very nice option if it were possible to use it with some sort of general guidance through the use of waypoints.
It would be kind of like being able to issue a general battle plan to your division commanders, and expecting that they would be able to do a decent job of following the plan and also dealing with any unforseen situation with reasonable confidence.
That would have a good feel methinks
Anyone have any experience with that sort of thing?

I'm guessing that the pause function is also unavailable in Multiplayer, which would necessitate developing a very different skillset I imagine.
Something like this perhaps?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q


Anyone have much experience with MP, and have any tips to share?

[Space Voyager]

I've never had enough confidence in the AI to actually try this though.

Can it do a decent job, or is it a recipe for disaster?

I've used group AI extensively for years. "A decent job" is definitely a matter of perspective. I usually group all units that I don't intend to micromanage in the battle and put them under group AI - after the battle is joined. This will ensure two things;
-the units will act as a group, not individual units,
-the units will continue even after their initial goal is finished (the enemy units is destroyed). They will even flank enemy units to help others in the group, which is good enough for me.

That said, the AI is no genius (this is why you should never let the AI command the general), which works both ways. So in most respects, I also see this group AI as at least somewhat levelling the field, otherwise the player has an enormous advantage, especially with pause. Naturally, still controlling the general and most likely all of the cavalry leaves you with an edge that the vanity in me was not able to give up.

But grouping the units and setting them under AI will not disable you from giving direct commands. You can still select the unit and give a command to attack another unit etc. and it will do it just as if it was not in the group. The difference is that there is a chance the AI will not detect when the unit is "free to AI" again and it will stand idly. But you can just select the group as a whole, give an attack command and it will be picked up.

As I said, put units under AI after the battle is joined (group them beforehand), that is the worst part of the AI, as you can probably notice.

In my view, group AI only has pros. It levels the grounds a bit to make the battle somewhat more fair, it helps simulate the chaos of the battlefield, it lets you play the battles without pause, retain your clicking sanity and it makes the battles a lot more life-like.

[Gurak]

I've used group AI extensively for years. "A decent job" is definitely a matter of perspective. I usually group all units that I don't intend to micromanage in the battle and put them under group AI - after the battle is joined. This will ensure two things;
-the units will act as a group, not individual units,
-the units will continue even after their initial goal is finished (the enemy units is destroyed). They will even flank enemy units to help others in the group, which is good enough for me.

That said, the AI is no genius

Actually, this sounds quite good. (+1 rep)
Both usable and quite realistic.
The manual says, 'You can give high-level instructions to the computer by selecting the group, then clicking on the place you’d like it to defend, or clicking on the enemy you’d like it to attack.'
Does it also allow for waypoints?

I think I will have to set up a few custom games to give this a try first.
Anyone else have any comments on the use of this command?

In another thread, someone noted that you should group-ungroup 3 times (G-G-G) to ensure that the groups will stay cohesive when moving. Someone else noted that even this is not 100% guarantee that formations won't go wonky in the heat of battle.
It had worked for me well for some time, but recently I had a case where I tried to reform my right wing (about 3/4 of a stack) after a furious melee, to deal with reinforcements that were bearing down on my disordered forces.
I dragged out the group as usual only to find that they were all over the place
I had to pause for minutes while I degrouped, and unit-by-unit reformed the entire wing - a very disturbing break to the action.

Is this a common occurrence and if so, what is the cause solution?
I saw one post that suggested that for custom formations, it is more reliable to form them up, select them, and maneuver them ungrouped.
Thoughts?

[Bladvak]

I have never used the pause button to help me with the actual battle. The only times when I used it was when somebody was at the door, or food was about to get burned.

What I do instead, is make mental notes on who is fighting who. I especially look out for units that get the numbers rolling down very fast. Also, I tend to double click around a lot on units, just to see if everything goes as planned. It does help that I study the battlefield and how the enemy positioned his units, so I know where the hotspots tend to be, usually I'll be around those controlling some cavalry.

I also have this thing where I group the units before battle : for example I put all my archers in one group, to be able to select the fire arrows quickly, I also put the shield, line infantry in one group (and then deselect them so they're in one line in the unit cards area), the cavalry usually is divided into two groups, and that's about it. Archers are left on fire at will, they're usually best used this way, infantry it depends on whether it needs reinforcements or if they have special abilities (powerful charge, javelins), and cavalry needs the most micro. Once all the grouping is done, I usually have all the units de-grouped so as to not be impedimented by the groups' remember positioning ability.

I should really make a video of how I play, I suck at explaining.

[Cenk]

The real cheat is the AI being able to control all his units, simultaneously, without even pausing!

[Veteraan]

I began playing Total War games when there was only Shogun 1. I have used several keyboards since then.
All of them ended up with some signs of excessive pause button use. It enabled me to fight some amazing battles though. In fact it still does so.
For me it it's a choice between reducing the difficulty drastically or use pause.
However, as a gamer who started his "career" playing a pong clone on a black and white Television, I slowly am getting to that frightening point that even hitting the pause button in time will be something of a challenge in itself.


In defensive battles I don't use the pause button very much. If you place your troops carefully to hold the line and make sure the archers can be easily moved out of harms way, it is usually just a question of managing the flanking movements.

[Jmonstra]

Just getting back into TW and loving the Third age (Mainly with MOS).

One thing I am finding challenge though is controlling full stack+ size forces in battle.

I generally group my force into 2 or 3 maneuver elements with 1 aiming to catch the enemy force and the other(s) going for the flanks, but once the lines close, I am having a tough time keeping enough situational awareness to manage my force without hitting the pause.

Part of me feels that the Pause button is a bit of a cheat, but how to manage when I can only see a fraction of my force at any given time?
Do most people use the pause, or do you use lots of hotkeys, and preset map locations like a Korean Starcraft master?

Basically I would like some suggestions/organizational tips on how to keep a semblance of control in those large battles.
Any suggestions/tips/secrets most appreciated!

Dividing your force into groups tends to be the preferred method. use the same group numbers each time and it will become natural. i.e. Group 1 for the main infantry line, 2 for archers 3 for cav etc etc etc

[Space Voyager]

Don't use pause. Use group AI. This way the player can have all his units controlled at all times, just not as micro as one wants - or is a general able to in a battle. BTW, you can still give the units detailed orders, even when under group AI. Don't put the general under group AI though.

[Ulfgard the Unmaker]

I've only seen group AI slaughter my troops. For that reason, I prefer very direct control with liberal use of the pause button (which is more because it bugs me when things aren't symmetrical than for decent tactical reasons) during assaults or set-it-and-forget-it defensive positions.

[muller227]

I was once told that efficient command structure could only be handled 5 elements at a time. Most modern military commands keep at 3 or 4 under direct supervision while indirect fire forms the extra element. The Pentagram infantry system was briefly tried in the US military but abandoned because it did not allow proper control of support elements for the direct combat commander, while his five infantry units were engaged. Its been a very long time since those trainings and I might not be remembering everything quite right but given my own inability to think beyond about 4 maneuver elements it seems accurate.

The fire team, squad, platoon command structure makes a lot of sense if this is the prevalent theory.

[Macilrille]

History is full of examples of how a well-trained and motivated army has had a junior commander or NCO seize an opportunity and defeat another. Kynoskephalae is very relevant to this discussion. In WWII the Germans trained their army to do this and every soldier down to the last newcomer knew the assignment and could carry it out if needed. In contrast to its enemies (See Jörg Muth's "Command Culture" for an excellent analysis).

Hence I gladly use pause to simulate that. Though perhaps one should only for professional units, not horde and militia.

[ElvenKind]

If there is a Pause button available in Real Life fighting, I am sure most of the Generals would use it. Hell, even Sun Tzu would use it: Pause for every tea break, pause for every note for his WAR DIARY etc..