Change 'Charge' at Start of Battle

[PrinceGhaldir]

I agree that your army should listen to your commands, AoE was a good game, they always do exactly what you say.
But for tactics against Khergits:
Go stand at the ''invisible wall'' at the edge of the battlefield, Khergits charging in, making a turn, crash against the wall, CHARGE!. En voila! One Khergit army coming right up.

 

[HugoC]

But for tactics against Khergits:
Go stand at the ''invisible wall'' at the edge of the battlefield, Khergits charging in, making a turn, crash against the wall, CHARGE!. En voila! One Khergit army coming right up.

Gamey exploit. Makes me wince. And entirely unnecessary against the AI. All you need is a decent number of Huscarls, and the Khergits will empty their quivers into your troops without killing a one, then close (those that haven't accidentally closed and been swallowed up already) and be moulinexed. And the wall tactic won't work in MP anyway (or it shouldn't if the Khergit players have even 3 synapses).

I'm not sure whether it's better to have your troops on "Hold" or "Charge" at the start. Either way it's only 1 keystroke to get them to do the other. The thing that needs to be sorted is the response when you do hit F1. As has been said, it can take ages for your troops to respond (I find in vanilla-not-warband that it's mostly my companions that are the worst offenders, and really I think it serves them right if they run off and get their head kicked in when I told them we were staying put...). Having an option at least would be good, and on the whole, I think having them default to hold would be best because:

* Doesn't require any changes to unit behaviour/response algorithms.
* A one second delay in issuing the charge order will probably lead to fewer undesirable outcomes than a 1 second delay in issuing the hold order does.
* A flashing "press F3 to make all your troops charge" is more likely to be seen by a  player frustrated that their troops won't move than a "press F1 to stop their headlong rush to destruction" message is to be seen by someone panicing that their troops are all rushing headlong to their destruction.

Ideally, I'd like to have some idea of my battlefield and the chance to order my battles before you get into the frenetic windmilling bit, but that's another thread entirely.

 

[Nemo]

Bump for support.
It'll be so great to be able to set default commands for each unit, or at least each command group.

 

[Caba`drin]

0) Make a backup of mission_templates.txt (found in your Warband\Modules\Native\ folder)
1) Open up mission_templates.txt (turn off Wordwrap or use Notepad++, etc)
2) Search for "lead_charge" (should be around line 369)
3) Find the line of code that begins with "0.000000 0.000000" (it follows a line beginning with "-19.000000 0.000000" and comes before a line that begins with "30.000000 0.000000"; around line 383)
4) Select that entire line
5a) To make open field battles begin with your troops HOLDING, replace it with the following:

0.000000 0.000000 100000000.000000  0  11 2133 2 144115188075856297 0 2133 2 144115188075856298 0 2133 2 144115188075856299 0 1 1 936748722493063615 1 1 936748722493063651 2133 2 144115188075856300 2 1700 1 1224979098644774912 1770 2 1224979098644774913 1224979098644774912 1107 1 0 1790 3 1224979098644774913 9 0 1107 1 1

5b) To make open field battles begin with your troops FOLLOWING, replace it with the following:

0.000000 0.000000 100000000.000000  0  11 2133 2 144115188075856297 0 2133 2 144115188075856298 0 2133 2 144115188075856299 0 1 1 936748722493063615 1 1 936748722493063651 2133 2 144115188075856300 2 1700 1 1224979098644774912 1770 2 1224979098644774913 1224979098644774912 1107 1 0 1790 3 1224979098644774913 9 1 1107 1 1

6) Save and play!