Troop orders

I know other people have suggested this before, but I think the way you order your troops around needs changing.

I think that most of us have ordered our troops to charge, only to have our mounted knights ride off into the distance to be hacked to bits by the approaching sea raiders/vaegirs/swadians/etc while the rest of our troops catch up. The alternative is to simply sit and wait for the enemy to do the same thing and send their cavalry in first before the rest of the troops arrive.

I know that it has been suggested that a menu system is used to give your troops orders on an individual basis but that seems a bit too much like micro-management to me, something I think Armagan said he wants to avoid doing as it gets away from the fun simplicity we have at the moment.

My suggestion is to keep much of the current system for issuing orders, but add in just a couple of extra keys for 'selecting' your archers, infantry, and cavalry. For example to get your cavalry to follow you, you just press 1 to 'select' cavalry and then 4 to tell them to follow you. If you want your infantry and archers to charge, just press 2 then 3 to select them both and then 5 to order them to charge.

I think that this approach will add alot to the combat without adding the distraction of menus and such like. What do you all think?

Yes, it has been suggested before even at this very form, but I still find the idea a very good one.

It has been suggested often - in various forms - before.

It remains a good idea, I think, as long as it remains simple. To much micromanagement is out-of-character with the theme of small war party melees in which the commander himself is fighting for his life and his troops are doing likewise.

The suggestion that will not stay dead!

Maybe..

Alt - 1-5 = Mounted Orders
Shift - 1-5 = Archer Order
Ctrl - 1-5 = Footman Orders

Simple, yet effective.

This is very much needed in my opinion, but only if the enemy AI gets a bit better. Otherwise some small managment of units would make the job pretty easy.

As it stands I pretty much keep the orders on 'follow me' or 'hold position', having something like this would be good for making the archers hold up in the hills, or making the calvary retreat back after a charge, etc..

I keep imagining a large 32 player battle whenever I hop in to the game. It just seems built for it. Having such commands in that type of game would be great too, helping the battle commander organise the troops.

Currently the small group battles are near perfect, better controls like this would certainly make the larger group battles reach towards perfection too.

I wouldn't really say that even the small group battles are perfect, due to the AI. I wonder if the issue behind having all the allies get the same orders is tied to the AI being able to do two things at once. It seems like the enemies all move in a clump as well. I'd be seriously scared (in a good way) if I charged into battle only to find that a line of pikemen were arrayed in a defensive wall in front of a row of crossbowmen, who were standing on a hill with a flank of knights waiting to charge down it when I approached. The AI is probably the weakest part of this game, from a tactical standpoint. Armagan has done a great job of making them GOOD fighters (I get cut to ribbons on a regular basis), but they're a long way from being SMART fighters. I wonder if there's any way to make them understand terrain and use it. Or group tactics. That would be awesome.

If you had all those orders it would be cool to have like 1 minute or so to set up your troops before the attack..

"Archers, take the hill and hold position, cavalry flank wide right, spearmen and infantry guard the base of the hill! On my mark, unleash hell!"

What if we use the system, rome total war uses, have sum buttons along the bottom with numbers with each one activating specific formation like having the horses move to the flanks and the pikemen up front and the archers behind them. Or have the horses up front and the pike men on the flanks etc. this way they will stay in some kind of formation.

My contribution to orders and formations:
A flank command. Basically tells the fighters to split up into two groups, and tells each group to attack at 90 degrees to the direction the enemy army is moving. The direction the army is moving could be the sum of all the enemy soldier movement vectors, i.e. the average direction.

Also a get into formation command. This arranges everyone into a wall one or two people deep. This wall arcs based on how scattered the enemy army is. At the start of a battle, where the enemy spawn in a big cluster far away, this line would be almost straight. If you're surrounded by enemies, this wall will form a circle.

Secondly, people want a way of ordering around different groups of troops. I suggest in the party screen you should be able to tag the individual troop types with a number from 1 to 5. You can tag as many groups with the same number as you want, and a group can belong to more than one number. This offers great flexibility for giving out orders to your units.

Pressing the number that corresponds to the group, (maybe with the keypad numbers) you then see some floating text on screen telling you of which group you are about to send the order to. Perhaps there could also be a list of the possible orders, along with the number you have to press in order to carry out those orders.

Let's say you press numpad 1. You see this float up on screen.

Group1: vaegir peasant(8 ), vaegir footman(3), vaegir veteran(9), Borcha.
1. Hold position
2. follow me
3. Charge
4. mount
5. dismount
6. flank
7. get into formation
8. cancel

Or if you don't use the numbers (like me), the corresponding letters that you configured show up.

If you press one of the order keys without pressing a group number, the order is simply sent out to everyone.

Sound good?

EDIT: wow, looking through old posts, someone else came up with almost exactly the same idea.

It could also, with a much simpler system, be implemented with a single command: an "infantry hold" command. Giving such an order could make your archers line up with a preference toward a rectangular formation, facing toward the largest group of enemies, from the position they are currently most concentrated. Around this archer formation, or alone if no archers are present, the remaining infantry line up, with flank and rear guards if enough men a present, again facing against a larger group of enemies. This sort of formation will be difficult to penetrate with cavalry, espcially if the infantry are armed with pole arms. It would have to be broken up with other infantry or archery, which reflects pre-modern tactics rather well.

The infantry could, as an added realism trait, form up slower if consisting primarily of untrained troops, with peasants barely able to form up and elite infantry rushing into positions.

Infantry are all too often butchered in the current system, where they cannot form defensive positions against the more manouverable cavalry attack.

Future installments can include the possibility of commanding both cavalry and infantry formations, but a solution such as the one outlined above will prevent the all-too-frequent infantry massacres I'm able to produce with my all-cavalry group, and encourage tactical thinking.

I think the orders as such are fine, simple orders fit with the pace of the battles. There is however one thing that would be nice to have:

The option to directly select which units will join the battle! I know there is some sort of priority system but the current system can be a tad frustrating if one keeps a diverse force. How many knights and how many sharpshooters will join the fight? And it would also be nice to set the order of your reinforcements. Maybe there should be some limitation so you have limited control (besides some sort of default "marching order" that you can set at any time) when the hostile force is the one initiating the battle. This could all be done from a screen that automatically pops up before battles, though it would require some UI coding.

If increased tactical options are desired one it could be combined with the option to divide the "first wave" into a few (maybe 2 could be enough?) subunits that could be commanded individually, ie 1-5 commands subunit 1, ctrl-1-5 subunit 2, etc. The reserves could be considered as one subunit once they appear. This would make it possible to put your archers on a hill and your footmen or cavalry someplace else.

Better strategy options for the player would however also require a boost to AI ability as mentioned above. As it stands the stretching out of forces is a bit silly both to player and AI.

EDIT: Some AI comments that might well be totally unrealistic and require extensive re-coding... I'm a computer scientist myself and know that coding game AI:s that can pass a Turing test or even defend themselves without cheating is damn difficult

From what I know of AI:s and my observations of the game the AI soldiers dont act as a group but only as individuals, who attack the "closest" (in some unknown metric) enemy relentlessly. The players soldiers behave in exactly the same stupid manner but have an advantage in that the player can STOP them from running away Implementing some sort of realistic group intelligence is very difficult, but maybe it would be possible to give the AI some bias towards sticking with its mates rather than straying away on its own. It could also be an idea to have wounded infantry behave differently, maybe by increasing the distance between itself and hostiles and switch to using ranged weapons, or whatever behaviour would seem logical.

Anyway its too late in the evening for me to come up with any reasonable model for squad behaviour Such concepts might only be feasible for M&B II at any rate.

I dont know if it is suggested but there should be formation orders. Like make a circle, infantary front, archer front, archers fall back, archers melee etc. Since this game mainly revolves around battle, there should be more diversity in it.

Keep it as it is now, but add a layer for the three types there is.

That idea with the Shift, Ctrl and Alt is very nice indeed. We need subleties like that, for this is not a strategygame. We just need the most basic orders so as to help us out in our fights.

hey yall. does any one know of any mo that fixes some small bugs when giving comands? like when i tell all cavarly to dismount my archers don't. i've tried every comand combo i can think of and i still cant make them dismount