Formations in Captain mode in relations to speed

[Super Jew]

This is how the formations speeds should be in relation to each other from slowest to quickest:

Shield Infantry

7. Square- This formation involves the units being tightly together and turned in different directions.

6. Circle- This formation also involves the units to be turned into different directions but allows for more spacing.

5. Shield Wall- Simply line formation with the shields being help up. This formation is was extremely useful at countering archers. Pushing archers till you got close enough fight them in melee was the best counter against a group of archers as a solo queue player. The speed of the ai should be that of a player holding their shields up and not significantly slower like it is now. Revert the speed changes back to their previous state!

4. Column- This formation has literally no use unless you want to LARP being a Roman commander.

3. Skein- Units form a "v" formation and has no use for infantry.

1. (tied) Loose- Units stay far from each other due to COVID restriction. Possibly useful for unit with long weapons like menavlion infantry.

1. (tied) Line- The standard formation where units don't block with their shields defend against projectiles.

Conclusion: Revert all changes regarding speed in formations (1-5) to where they have been the whole time until recently.

Cavalry

All cavalry units in different formations should be relatively the same given that the units always stay facing the same way and the horses are doing the work of the movement (not the rider).

Shield Wall- The movement speed should be the same as line formation. Having your ai in shield wall allows them to survive for a long time. If your goal is to distract the enemy or have them pull out their pikes/spears, this is a great option that can extend the life of your men.

Skein- Besides shield wall, all the other formations don't seem to affect ai cavalry performance. Skein formation should allow for a slight increased speed boost that allows for a dynamic approach to cavalry in formations in comparison to what there is now.

Column- The first line should be to initially knockdown the enemy. The second line should be to run over the enemy while they are still on the the ground and do even more charge damage than if the unit was standing up. The speed of this formation should be slightly decreased from that of line formation.

Archers

All the formations except for loose are completely useless for the time being. Circle could be good if you are surrounded but the ai seem to shoot each other at the same rate as they hit the enemy.

 

[Spottswoode]

I agree with you on so much, but the new slow speed has really grown on me for shield wall. I'm not sure if they changed the frequency shield units block in line formation, but with a large shield I find line to be really effective closing the distance, you take a little bit of damage, but you make it to the archers in pretty good nick. If your the only shield leading in to 3+ groups of archers then shield wall is a must over distance in open areas.

Shield wall also seems to offer better protection now than it did in a choke point during a mele fight as well as in front of archers, Our units seem to be a bit more aggressive when enemies are in front of them while in shield wall. So I think the speed change has come with a bonus to the units capability with the formation in multiple situations.

But I do get that it is slow as hell, definitely feels too slow, but from the tactical standpoint, i think it has made a good change to the way we are playing the game and encouraged people to think a bit differently about how to get the job done.

 

[vfkaseke]

Shield Infantry

5. Shield Wall- Simply line formation with the shields being help up. This formation is was extremely useful at countering archers. Pushing archers till you got close enough fight them in melee was the best counter against a group of archers as a solo queue player. The speed of the ai should be that of a player holding their shields up and not significantly slower like it is now. Revert the speed changes back to their previous state!

1. (tied) Loose- Units stay far from each other due to COVID restriction. Possibly useful for unit with long weapons like menavlion infantry.

I pretty much agree on all of these, and actually think the suggestions made to cav formations are great, but these two I'd like to give my take on. Having played for a while now, I have had the slower shield wall grow on me. It is definitely too slow, but I don't think it should be sped up to quite the speed it used to be. It's a super defensive formation, and should be slower than line by a considerable amount. This stops it from being the defacto counter to archer fire when advancing with infantry, and has made cavalrys role much more meaningful in the last few weeks. I also feel like shield infantry in line has become better at blocking arrows with shields in general, and don't get punished as hard when advancing even in line formation.

As far as Loose goes, I feel like it has some more uses than just being useful for menavs. It could be used for shock infantry to better envelop shield infantry in the open when in a melee fight, and is great for setting up traps for cavalry charges with any longer weapons, like pikes or spears.

 

[Deviant]

Infantry;

I feel like some formations should be static only i.e. square and circle and once asked to move go back into default or line formation, i dont think its viable to even move in some formations or realistic.

The fastest formation should be line/loose formation, makes more sense as it takes less coordination to just stand in a line etc...

I would like to see Skein used for inf more and changed a bit, i feel like skein should be used to break a shield wall and punch a hole, so maybe a short burst of speed once applied as to charge.

Cav;

Agree with shield formation, there really isnt any need for this to affect speed, remove it or make it same as line formation.

Realistically using shield formation to cheese the ai into pulling out a spear should be patched, only real reason its used for atm is protecting rider while a ramboing cav captain is dealing with enemy cav, maybe combining the speed boost in skein you are talking about and shield formation for a "break charge" to knock over or punch a hole in a shield wall might be the best way to go.

Archers;

I mean the formations are broken completley, ive had my own ai archer firing into the back of anothers head in square/circle formation, i think you should have special formations for archers, a split group formation would be good

 

[Sh1mbo]

i agree that shield walls need a slower speed but their current speed is far too much, is shield wall, not a testudo formation imo, i believe that square and circle needs to be really slow because they are a more "complex" and defensive formations like the spanish tercios and british infantry squares

 

[Brandis.]

Foremost, units should follow the captain as soon as they make the command. The delay in response and overall slow speed of formations causes units to lag quite far behind the captain.

I view Circle as very defensive anti-cav, compared to loose formation, which is an aggressive anti-cav. Both have their uses.

Square, on the other hand, is used against infantry, meaning it's necessary to relocate the formation in order to be effective. Otherwise, you might just aggro a single unit while everyone can simply walk past your square.

Shield wall should be slightly faster than it is currently, but not as fast as it was before.

I'm not sure about Skein or Column. Column might be useful for cav, because then your entire unit can hit the same spot instead of some units going wide, but it's hard to say.

 

[Thiil]

This is where more commands would have a great use.

"Skein formation" - "Shields up" - "Ignore targets" - "Move" to make your infantry push through enemy lines, clearing way for your shocks.
Sure, your units would be somewhat tanking/forfeit, but by skein-shield-moving without fighting, buy precious time for teammates to slaughter the ones seperated by the skein with shields or whatever.

Advanced tactics aren't possible without more captain control like weapon overrides, "equip shield" (regardless of formation) and "Ignore proximity" so they don't get baited cause there's 1 enemy 7 m. away

 

[Spottswoode]

This is where more commands would have a great use.

"Move" to make your infantry push through enemy lines, clearing way for your shocks.

Shield wall is the best way way I have found to do this, they will push through fighting units and you can get them to effectively push an enemies front line back, or it can be used to push shields who are late to the fight deeper into the lines so they can take up the front position and protect the 2h behind them.

 

[vfkaseke]

Shield wall is the best way way I have found to do this, they will push through fighting units and you can get them to effectively push an enemies front line back, or it can be used to push shields who are late to the fight deeper into the lines so they can take up the front position and protect the 2h behind them.

I'm pretty sure Thiil knows about using shields to take aggro. What he's trying to say is, let captains have more control. A skein formation would be much better at dividing shock inf than just basic shield wall. For now, the best formation to draw aggro and divide enemy forces has been square, because it's small, defencive, and draws a lot of aggro without the units stopping to attack.

 

[ParzivaI]

Yes formation shoudl go ack to original speed.. square, circle and shield formations walking is hilarious to watch as they get destroyed by archers..

 

[Spottswoode]

I'm pretty sure Thiil knows about using shields to take aggro. What he's trying to say is, let captains have more control. A skein formation would be much better at dividing shock inf than just basic shield wall. For now, the best formation to draw aggro and divide enemy forces has been square, because it's small, defencive, and draws a lot of aggro without the units stopping to attack.

I'm sure he does too, but based on what i see out there, I'm sure lots don't know because shield wall is often underused in circumstances it really shines in. Might be useful to someone lurking..

I'm not sure what you mean about using square as your describing, but I'm interested in learning if you don't mind elaborating.

 

[vfkaseke]

Walk next to enemy units with shield inf->Go into square formation->F1F1 into the enemy formation or wait for them to envelop you->your teams shock charges in

 

[Spottswoode]

Walk next to enemy units with shield inf->Go into square formation->F1F1 into the enemy formation or wait for them to envelop you->your teams shock charges in

That's cool mate, thanks for taking the time to explain. Kind of baiting them into breaking formation and then capitalising on the chaos. Cheers!

 

[vfkaseke]

That's cool mate, thanks for taking the time to explain. Kind of baiting them into breaking formation and then capitalising on the chaos. Cheers!

It's hard to pull off without having a stack of some form, but it used to be one of the more effective infantry moves.

 

[Thiil]

I'm pretty sure Thiil knows about using shields to take aggro. What he's trying to say is, let captains have more control. A skein formation would be much better at dividing shock inf than just basic shield wall. For now, the best formation to draw aggro and divide enemy forces has been square, because it's small, defencive, and draws a lot of aggro without the units stopping to attack.

Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, i do know how shield walls work, but more control to players will make more interesting plays is my point.
I'd love to be able to do a double-lined Wedge formation, forcing them to raise shields and NOT FIGHT BACK, then push into the vast blob of rabble before calling them to form a square, while still ignoring fighting, making shields and formation last longer - and in the end, hopefully charge the remaining enemies with my friendly shocks.
With added "Weapon switch", I can even devide if they should use axes or sword - amazing!

 

[Thiil]

Shield wall is the best way way I have found to do this, they will push through fighting units and you can get them to effectively push an enemies front line back, or it can be used to push shields who are late to the fight deeper into the lines so they can take up the front position and protect the 2h behind them.

Thanks, forgot to quote you in the above reply

 

[Spottswoode]

Thanks for clarifying.
Yes, i do know how shield walls work, but more control to players will make more interesting plays is my point.
I'd love to be able to do a double-lined Wedge formation, forcing them to raise shields and NOT FIGHT BACK, then push into the vast blob of rabble before calling them to form a square, while still ignoring fighting, making shields and formation last longer - and in the end, hopefully charge the remaining enemies with my friendly shocks.
With added "Weapon switch", I can even devide if they should use axes or sword - amazing!

That would be sweet to be able to have that kind of control, agree completely.

I didn't address it correctly but my comment was more for lurkers who might not know there is a very basic option to get your men to move through enemies without succumbing to their desire to attack everyone and break formation. It's basic... But it achieves some of the desired effect were talking about

 

[Zarthas]

Foremost, units should follow the captain as soon as they make the command. The delay in response and overall slow speed of formations causes units to lag quite far behind the captain.

I view Circle as very defensive anti-cav, compared to loose formation, which is an aggressive anti-cav. Both have their uses.

Square, on the other hand, is used against infantry, meaning it's necessary to relocate the formation in order to be effective. Otherwise, you might just aggro a single unit while everyone can simply walk past your square.

Shield wall should be slightly faster than it is currently, but not as fast as it was before.

I'm not sure about Skein or Column. Column might be useful for cav, because then your entire unit can hit the same spot instead of some units going wide, but it's hard to say.

Square used to also have a significant anti-cav use, as it allowed a densely-packed spear formation to have overlapping "fields of fire", meaning as soon as a cav got close enough to hit a man on a corner, he would get 5-6 pikes in the face.
Now, however, they are far, far, far too slow to react to cav.

I'm super surprised no one has mentioned loose being used against missiles, I thought the primary purpose was to make it less likely to be hit by area target fire at range.

Your troops move significantly faster in loose as well, as they are not constantly "pinging" off of each other and losing inertia.

I really like to run rabble in loose when making contact even, as it means they're more likely to surround the target unit.





What I'm getting it is that formations are a MASSIVE part of captain mode, and TW has effectively reduced the number of usable formations to 2 with this speed nerf nonsense.

Crashing into an enemy formation as Varyags in square was one of the coolest things in Captain mode.

 

[Ulfkarl]

the AI is way too slow, even the cav, its unbelieveble that you tell your cav troops to follow you and start charging and then you turn back and see they are far behind at the other side of the map, this encourages the rambo playstyle, with better and faster AI (as fast as the captain) rambos may want to actually use their troops

 

[vfkaseke]

the AI is way too slow, even the cav, its unbelieveble that you tell your cav troops to follow you and start charging and then you turn back and see they are far behind at the other side of the map, this encourages the rambo playstyle, with better and faster AI (as fast as the captain) rambos may want to actually use their troops

Oh yeah, this is definitely a problem. When you can run away from AI faster than they can chase you, you can make ample opportunity of funnelling them to you one by one to get some easy kills.

The cav problem of course is on a whole another level. It's very hard to use cavalry effectively on follow me, and most of the time it's just way more useful to F1F1 them to a location instead of for example charging them. Problem is, when you F1F1 they just trot along to wherever you point them to instead of going full gallop and getting those devastating bumps and stabs. With that being said, charging cav is pretty much useless, unless there's only a few scattered units left.