Signal Order and Hold?

[lancerunolfsson]

1]On the signal order I seem to be missing somthing about how it works. In the manual it says"before the battle starts, you can tell your men to hold position and wait for a signal." It goes on to suggest that this is a global advance order for units that have not yet moved. Is there actualy a way to get your army to hold position and not advance untill told otherwise? Long hold just is'nt long enough for some situations. It gets tiresome (and is inefective) trying to keep in position by repeatedly ordering halts for individual units. It is understandable why barabrian armies might always eventualy go impetuous but not Roman regulars or cowardly peasants. ;^)

[Redpossum]

Yeah, it's poorly explained.

The answer to your question is no. It is not possible to get an indefinite hold.

What the "Signal" command does is give an immediate "Charge" command to all units that have not yet been moved.

If a unit has already been moved, either with a manual order, or in response to orders issued at deployment, it will be totally unaffected by the "Signal".

[lancerunolfsson]

thanks Possum

What the "Signal" command does is give an immediate "Charge" command to all units that have not yet been moved.

That does not seem to work for me when I put several units on a long hold then give the signal command later they just stay put untill ordered individualy or the needed time passes.

[Redpossum]

I'm stumped, Lance.

It works like that for me

Anybody else here got a contribution?

[IainMcNeil]

You must use the hold order from deployment, not halt during battle. Once they have started to move the singal no longer effects them.

[Redpossum]

Yes, that's what I was trying to say

[lancerunolfsson]

Yeah Iaian and Possum
I have been experimenting with it and most of the time it works the way you say and somtimes it does not seem to activate all the units that were on long hold what I'm guessing is that the units that seem to fail to react are units that have moved slightly, somehow? Of course the other problem may be that my powers of observation just suck. Any way it is hardly a game breaker. Now if I could just figure out how to get my silly General to stop charging into nearby melee's ;^)

[Redpossum]

Lance,

Keeping your legate from doing that can be difficult. Sometimes the "Stop" button can help, (the one with two little feet), and sometimes the "Disengage" button is required.

Sometimes all you can do is keep him well to the rear, like the classic "Hilltop Commander".

[lancerunolfsson]

Yeah in the rear with the gear and on long hold yet try to get him close enough in the end to gain experiance and tip the scales on the last critical fight!

[Redpossum]

I usually wind up engaging my commander. As you say, one needs the bonus.

The trick is not letting him get out front and engage first, so he's sandwiched between friendly troops and hostile. Instead, send him in afterwards, so he's in the back of the pack.

[kongming]

It is inelegant, but I have resorted to using the halt button to keep the boys in their lines, especially when terrain is a factor. Nothing worse than having your auxilliaries ruin your plan by running out of the rough into open ground smack into heavy infantry. Halt seems to be a very inexpensive command, order points wise, so I'll just run to the lines, halting all the units that I need to stay put at the beginning of the battle.

Halt also works to keep the legate in firmly in place.

Probably I should play with signal and hold more, but they are not crystal clear to me either.