I was hoping you fixed my pet peve about your earlier games

[kyle]

1. Why can't your troops stay in formation. Every Damn time a enemy gets near a formation of troops, your troops break formation.

Since your troops break formation when enemy troops near them, do your troops recieve a lower defense rating? If not there should be.

Is there some kind of variable that goes: yes/no, if yes troops break formation?, if no troops stay in formation?


why'd you change the pre-battle set-up, you guys had an awesome setup before in legion, Got, Spartan, & COW. Why did you guys dump it.

Before reading the post that , someone here said was a decent one I thought the pre-battle was the same. But now that I've played the demo, since I don't have the money to buy the full version, I agree with him that the pre-battle setup is horrid.

You can't set it up to where you can have ranks of men anymore, that was what made your previous titles so appealing to me. I hope you know what a rank is, or I'd have to shoot myself.

xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx if you didn't this is what I'm describing, but it would be about 3 lines deep one after the other.

In the old games you could build up a strong attacking force by actually making a square.

[IainMcNeil]

They bunch up when in hand to hand, but thats what would have happened. Battle were one big pushing match in those days. They form up again after the fight has completed.

[kyle]

Wow Ian. "They bunch up when in hand to hand, but thats what would have happened. Battle were one big pushing match in those days. They form up again after the fight has completed."


Ian, if the troops were spartites,hoplites and any other variation of hoplite they would've been shield to shield, if not how did they fight in the classical world?

The purpose of locking the shields was to create a nearly complete barrier of shields. The force of the collision between two armies was staggering. Normally the army that had more ranks of men didn't waver the other did, when the other army waverd it must have made some of the front men fall, thus a new man was shoved into the open spot.

[IainMcNeil]

Yes exactly - i think you're imaging it being a bit more clean & organised than it really was though.

[kyle]

thats the problem, Everything was clean and organized before the melee combat insued, or before the cracking of the shields. Oh and by cracking of shields I'm not trying to be literal hear.

Ian, didn't spartites, hoplites, and other spin-offs of hoplites that you use in your game usually march in some kind of formation? I mean what's the use of better formations if there not going to hold.

I've got a perfect solution to this. It might be a pain in the ass. Since it allready knows what kind of army you are going up against prior to the battle; is there a way to know what level of unit comes into contact with another, there is one exception to this rule. This doesn't apply if a set of missile troops hits that troop.

For instance I can't belive a army of any skill, like the spartans had would care to run madly at their enemies.

[kyle]

"They bunch up when in hand to hand, but thats what would have happened. Battle were one big pushing match in those days. They form up again after the fight has completed."

This would have been after the inital clash of both armies, yes/no?

[IainMcNeil]

I dont understand - they do keep formation before they make contact. You can tell them exactly where to go with waypoints at deployment.

[quintusvarus]

Actually Ian I think you will find that the truth is somewhere between the two positions for highly trained troops (Macedonians, and Romans for example). Whilst the front ranks would bunch, and shove to maintain pressure and momentum, and break up a bit, the rear ranks would have maintained their order until pressing forward to replace losses. It was primarily because the Dog's Heads broke up the Macedonian Phalanx that the Romans were able to beat them as the hasti and principii could clamber into the gaps the broken ground created in the phalanx and kill the pikemen at close quarters. In a different way Hannibal's forces at Cannae, and the Germans in the Teutonberg forest defeated large Roman armies by constricting and bunching them preventing the strong disciplined formations that made them such fearsome opponents. By contrast Agricola with a small army maintained disciplined structures in a good strategic position and slaughtered the Britons under Boudicca who although vastly outnumbering them were too bunched and constricted to fight properly.

[spedius01]

By contrast Agricola with a small army maintained disciplined structures in a good strategic position and slaughtered the Britons under Boudicca who although vastly outnumbering them were too bunched and constricted to fight properly.

Ave quintusvarus,

It wasn't Agricola who defeated Boudicca in 60 AD, it was C. Suetonius Paullinus, the Provincial Governor. Please read Tacitus' "Agricola".

Vale

M. Spedius Corbulo

[quintusvarus]

Apologies Spedius, I was confusing the biographer (or should I say publicist, Agricola's reporting was pretty biaised!) with his subject.

Sorry all I have just re-read this and cannot believe how addle brained I've been! Tacitus was Agricolla's son-in-law who wrote a hagiographic account of his relative's time as governor of Britain (amongst other things), so I have managed to confuse not only Agricola with Paulinus, but also his son-in-law. I need to go and conquer something to relieve the stress!!

[kyle]

I at least now know that I'm partially correct

[joseph_kerr]

It would be nice to have troops stay in formation especially when you're using a wedge or other specific formation but maybe it's just not practical in a computer game. How much effort would have to be made to make sure each unit stayed in formation while also having to make it so men would fill in the gaps left by the fallen. It seems like it could get pretty complicated to manage including all the different scenarios of when they could and couldn't keep formation. I imagine they have all sorts of ideas they'd love to to work into their games that just don't work out when it comes to actually implementing them.

[honvedseg]

Somehow, I can picture the real situation being somewhere between the two extremes. On the one hand, your neighbors in the line protected your vulnerable sides, so you'd be very reluctant to step away from them, even to exploit a momentary advantage. On the other hand, the units' flanks would have "wrapped" around the ends if possible, and individuals would have shifted forward or back slightly depending on the current state of affairs. This would have given a flexible frontage, but not the chaotic mass that the units in the game devolve into. The discipline and training of the unit would also have come into play, with peasant and warband units rapidly losing all cohesion after contact, and well-drilled cohorts and phalanxes maintaining their rigid integrity under all but the most extreme circumstances.

The earlier games had the same strange behavior, with ranks of hoplites degenerating into an unruly mob, all surging toward the nearest enemy. The smaller maps tended to reduce the problem, however.

[miki]

Yes, but as far as the game doesn't depict combat fatigue, it doen't matter that much. Rear ranks replaced losses AND tired soldiers too. If your soldiers are always fresh, I dont see why the rear ranks must rotate...

[kyle]

This topic is a good one I see.

I totally agree that the peasants should scatter like a shotgun blast towards the enemy. On the other hand the well trained troops shouldn't