Caravans and Big armies

[VitalyB]

1) Where can I see how many caravans I have and I how many I need? As it is now I can just lose a caravan and not even know that it happened.

2) In one of my games I manufactured a giant army consisting of something like 40 hoplites (which is 120 soldiers, since they come out in threes), and 20 bowmen. I got confused about how to handle such an army. I tried to arrange them in line formation, like I would in AOK, but that simply didn't work since the game just stretched the line forever (I was expecting to see less soldiers in a raw). I found no other formation that suits me here.

3) Which brings me to the formation, I find them somewhat cumbersome to use - I need to click a few time on the button to change the formation. Also, I am confused about when to use what, while the attacking formation (Line and Refused, if I am not mistaken) are somewhat clear, the Echelon ones and the Envelop (Could've mixed between Envelop and refused) are boggling me. How does echelon and envelop help me defend the flanks? Should I put only the infantry on echelon to defend the bowmen that go behind them?



Tips would be appriciated.

[albiedamned]

Re: Caravans and Big armies

Originally posted by VitalyB
1) Where can I see how many caravans I have and I how many I need? As it is now I can just lose a caravan and not even know that it happened.

I can answer this part. In the top left, where it shows you resources, there is an additional menu you can expand out (it's not expanded by default) that shows the number of gatherers and number of possible gatherers for each resource. For example, it shows number of farmers out of number of farms. For gold, it shows number of caravans out of number of possible caravans. It's extremely useful

[Mahdimael]

2. If you have a scroll wheel on the mouse, you can use it to adjust how wide the formation is, from a wide line to a column. Just keep your left button down and scroll through the sizes, then release.

3. The right and left echelon and envelop formations are good for attacking, while refused and line are good for defending. the echelon formations will focus the attack on a specific flank, while the envelop formation attempts to attack both flanks while exposing your center. The line focuses attack on the center, while the refused formation takes power away from the center to cover the flanks.

In general, fast units should be used with echelon and envelop formations, since infantry will probably be torn up before they can do much. A good general position is cavalry in envelop or echelon, infantry in refuse, and archers in line. In this formation, your fast units will attack the enemy's flanks, while your infantry will provide defense for your archers.

So, to summarize:
Line- basic formation. Bad at attacking/defending flanks.
Refused - defense. Good at defending flanks.
Echelon - the side you're using does well, the other side does not. So a left echelon has strong attack/def on the left, and is poor on the right
Envelop - Attack both flanks, at expense of the center. Good for supporting/fast units.

[VitalyB]

Good tips, thanks, will try it out.

Also, concerning formation, I just read that if you click LMB while holding RMB (just like when you scroll), it changes the formation. Much faster than using the button.