Hello alll,
I tried to follow the whole disucssion but in case I missed something and I seem to be repeting a point already raised I do apologise.
I think that as it stands now the game by and large is fine in the department of troop management. However some tweeking could be used to add another layer of gameplay. I am of the opinion that formations, understood as structures of troops in lines and rows, or wedges and so on, are really uselles and/or pointless for the game as it stands. It seems to be the focus of tha game is more on skirmish battles of around 20-30 people on each side. Added to that, the fact that in those 20-30 you probably end up having footmen, archers, cavalry of all sorts (light, heavy, archer cav, ect.) telling a band of 5-8 men to drop into a formation makes little sense.
If however, by formation we understand the more loose sense of telling your ment to stick together and not stray, then of course that is a much needed command. I think we all have our experiences of our men advancing in a piecemeal fashion only to be cut down to peices one by one when the reahc the enemy.....or the (in)famous example of the stray archer.
I really think that a command to make your men stray close to each other and/or advance while staying together is basically solving all the problmes here.
Adding formations and increasing the battle sizes to the range of the hundrends sounds to me like making M&B too much of a TW spin off. Having said that thouhg, there are ways to add a more tactical side to the battle without going over to the TW aspects of it. Here is my idea on it. Bear in mind is only a suggestion and I have no idea whether or not is feasible within the framework of the game from a technical view point.
It is what I call pre-battle preperations.
I magibe you engage an enemy force. At the screen where you get to choose either to lead your men to battle or to send them off by themselves, you get an additional option of pre-battle preperations. What does that do?
You click it and another screen comes up. That includes your troops, a mini map of the place you wlll be fighting and some commands. Here you can do the following:

hand pick your troops you want to fight

arrange your troops in small groups, you can designate a key (f1-f12) for each group

position each group anywhere within your deplyoment zone

give each group one simple command to follow when the battle starts, for example 'move to yonder hil'

decide if the group is to stay closely packed or spread out
.......and so on.
Then the battle starts and you men follow the orders you gave them initially which you can override in the course of the battle by the current selection of simple orders (follow me, charge, etc.)
In order to keep things challenging and somewhat realistic, the pre-battle screen runs on a timer. I.e. you have a time limit to set your troops in groups and give them the orders. I dont think it is reasonable to take a lifetime giving orders when the enemy is closing on you. Plus there is the challenge of thinking quickly and effectively when under pressure....it is what seperates the men from the boys
Moreover, the whole pre-battle preperation could be linked with the leadership and tactics skills. Incresing these skills could have certain advantages, for example:
- more time available during this phase
- ablility to give more advances commands or to give a series of commands to a group
- Setting group leaders which increase morale of a group
- coordinating groups to work together (e.g archer shoot then fall back behind spearmen, or swordmen protect acrhers, etc.)
The whole scheme could add another layer of tactics/strategy to the game while keeping in line with the more skirmishing nature of the gameplay. This could even make the option to send your men to battle on their one a viable one for charcters with high leadership and tactics ratings
Thanks for reading,
Mozi