Skein, Column and Scatter Formations are useless

[Rossa]

I was recently trying to use different formations and since talewords broke the square and circle formations before the "Full release" the only usefull ones left in my opinion are shieldwall and line. Anyone has been using any one of the others? i am especially curious about the skein and the column, have you found any use for them?

 

[JunKeteer]

Sorta, but not used in the way I'd assume they were supposed to historically.

Skein

• Tiny (emphasis) bit more effective for couch charges but requires micromanaging your cavalry to move 'through units' constantly, reform, etc...; due to how AI targeting priority works
• Tiny bit more effective formation than line for archers/infantry depending on situation/terrain/fov - very circumstantial

Scatter - unsure, thought it would be like 'stand ground' in WB which had some tiny use here and there on occasion

Column - only use I found was preposition for HA as stationary; gaining that tiny bit extra second for them not having to rotate their horses for certain shots. Also makes your HAs start/gallop at the start a second or so quicker too I guess.

Again, too tiny to really be worth using; especially where tactics isn't really that important for a game like this, and when battles only last maybe 5 minutes too.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I think the downgrading of the unit AI has made the formations even more useless. They were niche before. Basically bannerlord AI want to attack what s directly in front of it and anything that goes beyond putting them closer what you want them to attack either does nothing or makes them less effective.
In the past I would use skein to have my stationary horse archers close up around attacking cavalry to trap an kill them, but in recent versions attacking cav will just hang out in the HA formation and let them kill them anyways so no need to even do this. Cullum Column can be used get HA to fallow you in a longer line instead of rectangular blob, but guess what, it's not at all needed, it's so much better to just park them in a good spot to shoot enemies in the butt.

Scatter can (maybe) be used to make ranged units in a siege attack go to all the little barriers...... however guess what... it's 100X better to just park them IN front of the ladders and let them fire squad the defenders there. Also when I've tried recently they didn't really scatter all that well and a lot just kind of stayed where they were.

If they add group targeting then maybe some these formations will be more useful though.... maybe.

 

[Rossa]

Column - only use I found was preposition for HA as stationary; gaining that tiny bit extra second for them not having to rotate their horses for certain shots. Also makes your HAs start/gallop at the start a second or so quicker too I guess.

That's exactly the opposite of what i have experienced with HA and collumn formation, they were so slow the infantry always caught up with them. Using line and making it very narrow seems to work better. I don't like skein formation for cav., they get stuck way more often then if you use a deep line formation.

If they add group targeting then maybe some these formations will be more useful though.... maybe.

I would lose a lot less cav. if they did.

 

[JunKeteer]

That's exactly the opposite of what i have experienced with HA and collumn formation, they were so slow the infantry always caught up with them. Using line and making it very narrow seems to work better. I don't like skein formation for cav., they get stuck way more often then if you use a deep line formation.

I only use them for stationary positions (ie row of elevated HA behind my archers). For any movement/charge/advance, line or square pretty much handles better in all scenarios.

Issue is there is not mass/group targeting, so a lot of these formations are useless if the individual units still act individually (ie one cav can waste the 'thrust' of 5 infantry or 5 archers can aim same infantry unit).

 

[Rossa]

It would be great if those formations changed not only the geometrical form the units are standing on but also their behaviour. I don't know if it's possible to, for example, make cav. in skein formation work more like shock cav. trying to use more hit and run tactics and couch lancing while if you leave them in line formation they would try to sitck arround and switch to swinging polearms or 2h.

 

[Rossa]

Just having the formation to force units to use the same type of weapon would be a huge improvement

 

[swally0ne]

scatter is great for very much needed anti cav strats and/or on the archers.

 

[Zoonanay]

Scatters useful for pushing enemy archers after you've wiped their inf, stops them slowing down to stay in formation and I find making distance faster reduces casualties more than keeping formation like shieldwall or line.

Columns good for cav if you're charging enemy archer formations perpendicularly, stops the furthest wings getting caught on enemy infantry too.

Can't really find any use for Skein though, if I'm charging cavalry into infantry its probably for the morale damage which is more potent if they all hit at once rather than in a staggered wing.

 

[Rossa]

scatter is great for very much needed anti cav strats and/or on the archers.

Scatters useful for pushing enemy archers after you've wiped their inf, stops them slowing down to stay in formation and I find making distance faster reduces casualties more than keeping formation like shieldwall or line.

Never played arround with scatter that much, i will definitely give it a try!

Columns good for cav if you're charging enemy archer formations perpendicularly, stops the furthest wings getting caught on enemy infantry too.

I tryed it a few times but cav seems to ride a lot slower when in column, you just tell them to follow and ride along the archers?

 

[Zoonanay]

I tryed it a few times but cav seems to ride a lot slower when in column, you just tell them to follow and ride along the archers?

Yeah run down the line with follow command, works well for one charge to either deal some damage or to disrupt formation. Careful getting overconfident though, archers will be aiming for you second time round if you come in too soon after the first, with the velocity bonus you're adding with horse speed its an easy way to get one shot.

Works best in smaller battles (as do cavalry in general imo) or as a last resort against an enemies superior archers.

 

[Rossa]

Never played arround with scatter that much, i will definitely give it a try!

I was unable to make scatter work, i don't know if it was changed recently, but now it is just like line formation. Maybe it's something on my end, can anyone confirm if scatter is currently working?

Works best in smaller battles (as do cavalry in general imo) or as a last resort against an enemies superior archers.

I found it works better with a small group of cav with swinging polearms, as it gives more time for them to hit the archers. They also get hit a lot more so it's probably not worth it.

 

[Zoonanay]

I found it works better with a small group of cav with swinging polearms, as it gives more time for them to hit the archers. They also get hit a lot more so it's probably not worth it.

Hadn't thought of trying with menav cav, though I'd worry that without a shield they'd turn porcupine pretty quick. Depending on how heavy you want to be microing, you can have the cav shield wall then switch column as you're about to impact. Might soften a few casualties here and there. Definitely more for disruption than killing.

 

[Philozoraptor]

Scatter makes ranged troops go to the predefined positions if they are present (castle siege for both attackers and defenders). But other than that the answer to the thread name is

 

[Rossa]

Scatter makes ranged troops go to the predefined positions if they are present (castle siege for both attackers and defenders). But other than that the answer to the thread name is

Do you know if it is possible to mod the skein formation, for example, to force cav. to reform before cicle charging?

 

[Philozoraptor]

Do you know if it is possible to mod the skein formation, for example, to force cav. to reform before cicle charging?

Not by formations no. You can of course code custom behaviour and it can kind of work like what you describe (but wedge generally sucks in video games in comparison to line due to wierd contact of cav with enemy infantry etc), we are kind of doing that already in our mod with cavalry and so does vanilla to certain degree (I am talking about delegating command not hitting charge).

 

[Rossa]

I really like the changes you have made with the AI module of RBM, for example, the way batttania uses archers to flank. i'm assuming it also makes use of the delegating command. it's possible to tie that kind of behaviour with party composition and lord traits, for example?
I downloaded the source code and will take a look, but i have no programming experience, any pointers or good starting points?
Thanks

 

[Dejan]

I was recently trying to use different formations and since talewords broke the square and circle formations before the "Full release" the only usefull ones left in my opinion are shieldwall and line.

Sorry what do you mean by "broke"?

 

[Allias]

Sorry what do you mean by "broke"?

I believe that it refers to the new behavior of the square formation, I dont remember which patch was that changed it, but before troops would stand in a square formation, all of them holding shields in their respective side (front, back and sides), and it was almost impenetrable by any ranged unit. The units were also tightly packed, which made cavalry charges against your troops a suicide mission .Now the square formation turn their shield to their "direction" instead of covering all four sides, and the units in there end up as porcupines, arrows all around except their front. Also sometimes they will create a hole in the middle for no reason and become even more squishy against cavalry charges, which was the only effective use left for the formation. These 2 changes have made it quite useless. This has been the case for quite a while and I havent actually checked to see if you guys fixed it or not, but havent read anything in the patches mentioning it.

 

[Rossa]

I believe that it refers to the new behavior of the square formation, I dont remember which patch was that changed it, but before troops would stand in a square formation, all of them holding shields in their respective side (front, back and sides), and it was almost impenetrable by any ranged unit. The units were also tightly packed, which made cavalry charges against your troops a suicide mission .Now the square formation turn their shield to their "direction" instead of covering all four sides, and the units in there end up as porcupines, arrows all around except their front. Also sometimes they will create a hole in the middle for no reason and become even more squishy against cavalry charges, which was the only effective use left for the formation. These 2 changes have made it quite useless. This has been the case for quite a while and I havent actually checked to see if you guys fixed it or not, but havent read anything in the patches mentioning it.

Yes, and it's not fixed yet. Same for circle formation.