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Formations need more love


kalizy
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Hi, It seems that formations are lacking some things and i'd like to suggest a few improvements

- Description on the formations and their respective bonuses like the turtle formation that slows speed but bolsters defense for example

- Shield dispostion ,that is present in Delenda est if i recall correctly, basically a toggle option where your battalion has their shields up or down

- Dynamism between the infantry types like, when I pick various combatants 20 cavalry, 20 infantry, 40 archers and 10 ranged siege, have infantry at the front, archers in the middle, cavalry on the bottom along with siege and have the same movement speed as the slowest unit in the group to ensure more strategical success.
 

on a side note it'd be great if it was possible to implement asian empires to the game

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1 hour ago, kalizy said:

Hi, It seems that formations are lacking some things and i'd like to suggest a few improvements

- Description on the formations and their respective bonuses like the turtle formation that slows speed but bolsters defense for example

- Shield dispostion ,that is present in Delenda est if i recall correctly, basically a toggle option where your battalion has their shields up or down

- Dynamism between the infantry types like, when I pick various combatants 20 cavalry, 20 infantry, 40 archers and 10 ranged siege, have infantry at the front, archers in the middle, cavalry on the bottom along with siege and have the same movement speed as the slowest unit in the group to ensure more strategical success.
 

on a side note it'd be great if it was possible to implement asian empires to the game

If you mean far Asian, Han dynasty its the only big empire...

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6 hours ago, kalizy said:

- Dynamism between the infantry types like, when I pick various combatants 20 cavalry, 20 infantry, 40 archers and 10 ranged siege, have infantry at the front, archers in the middle, cavalry on the bottom along with siege and have the same movement speed as the slowest unit in the group to ensure more strategical success.

Yes please!

When selecting a group, the entire group should move at the speed of the slowest unit in that group! This seems like a basic feature that's perhaps overlooked? It would help a lot with keeping armies together when marching a long distance, and would make the AI less vulnerable when attacking. 

When you're moving with siege-engines, infantry and horses in the same group, the group will move at the speed of the siege. You can easily select a subgroup of specific units from the original group, and when given a new move-order, would start moving at the normal movement speed for that unit. So horses would start moving at their original speed (a lot faster) when a move order is giving only to the horses, while siege and infantry keep moving at the speed of the siege-engines.

I think it's a tactical must-have...

 

By the way, a Han Chinese faction has been created and is fully playable. It juts needs some more vocal support to get in the vanilla game... A nomadic Xiognu faction is also in development and seems like it will be ready before the next alpha. It also needs support to be implemented in vanilla. Same story for the African Kushite faction...

Edited by Sundiata
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39 minutes ago, Grugnas said:

within formation.

I'm sorry, but I thought formations are broken? In my experience, putting units in formation right now is like sending lambs to the slaughter. The point of units moving at the speed of the slowest unit in a selection, is to make them less vulnerable, not more...

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26 minutes ago, Sundiata said:

I'm sorry, but I thought formations are broken? In my experience, putting units in formation right now is like sending lambs to the slaughter. The point of units moving at the speed of the slowest unit in a selection, is to make them less vulnerable, not more...

The key is to just implement the hard battalion system. Voila. ;)

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35 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

battalion system

I'd really love a battalion system, but I'd still rather see it appear only after researching a tech in town phase. Similarly, a tech in city phase could allow organising those battalions in to larger armies.

Disorderly bunch of morons in village phase  → organised battalions in town-phase  Battalions organised in to larger armies in city phase :) 

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1 hour ago, Sundiata said:

I'm sorry, but I thought formations are broken? In my experience, putting units in formation right now is like sending lambs to the slaughter. The point of units moving at the speed of the slowest unit in a selection, is to make them less vulnerable, not more...

Formations are bugged because units have problems into finding own position in the shape when near obstructions. This means that the whole formation wont move if 1 unit get stuck (i am sure this mostly happens when the members are reaching own position in the shape when forming the formation ) nor attack thus you are forced to delete whole units within formation.

I was thinking about a system like for control groups hotkeys where if you lock a formation through a button in the middle panel ( where u see the garrison, repair, deletr icons) , whenever you select an unit within formation, the whole formation will be selected just like a battallion with the flexibility to disband and modify it whenever you want ( but code comprension is quite nasty)

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2 hours ago, Grugnas said:

Units move already at speed of the slowest unit within formation.

what i meant to say was, the army moves at the slowest unit's speed, you got archers and a siege tower, you pick both, they should move at the same pace as the tower

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They already do as said, but you have to use a specific formation explicitly, not the default "None" formation, with that every unit moves at his own speed. You can set formation by clicking the icons between the minimap and the selection info (so sorta bottom left-middle).

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45 minutes ago, wraitii said:

This is most likely the direction we'll take. I'm pushing for also having a "walk together" behaviour that sort of mimics AoE 2 formations.

how so? do you mean remove citizen soldier thing and train units directly in battalion batches? the definition of "hard battallion system" isn't clear enough to let me think that it would be something better than BFME system.

There isn't any advantage into having a battallions only system that a locked formation can't perform except the better flexibility that the latter one has ( i talk from the player experience point of view) as long as units within in formation can behave differently from single citizen soldiers units which are able to also perform building and not military-oriented tasks.

Matter of fact having a formations with military bonuses would  discourage taking fights without using any formation thus keeping the advantage of micro management and the advantage of battallions macro management when needed.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello everyone, i am new on this forum and this is my first post. I just want to say that in my opinion there is to much micro management in  commanding units in the fight. I think that one of the best sollution of this matter was in the Cossacks II. There was a system of commanding by whole units with the morale system. Also 0 AD would be more transparent(especially fight) with a similar system. Now the units spread ramdomly when you send them to the fight, but if you have units like legionary, hoplites and more it will be better to operate them by a few independent formations(which doesnt spread, can be easily find on the map and distinguished from the others) . It wil be easier and I think better to deploy and giving orders to the unit not to every single solder. More over it's give a possobility to implement some tactics to the game (flanking by cavalery, use skirmishers to guard the flanks of falanga etc). I hope you could understand me, my english is not very good :)

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56 minutes ago, hassurbanipal said:

Hello everyone, i am new on this forum and this is my first post. I just want to say that in my opinion there is to much micro management in  commanding units in the fight. I think that one of the best sollution of this matter was in the Cossacks II. There was a system of commanding by whole units with the morale system. Also 0 AD would be more transparent(especially fight) with a similar system. Now the units spread ramdomly when you send them to the fight, but if you have units like legionary, hoplites and more it will be better to operate them by a few independent formations(which doesnt spread, can be easily find on the map and distinguished from the others) . It wil be easier and I think better to deploy and giving orders to the unit not to every single solder. More over it's give a possobility to implement some tactics to the game (flanking by cavalery, use skirmishers to guard the flanks of falanga etc). I hope you could understand me, my english is not very good :)

Welcome, you mean battalion system? for now is suggested but many things can be done before team start to work deeply in this.

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