Troops won't fire from walls?

[Stonechat]

When I place troops on the walls they just stand there and won't fire if the enemy is in range (unlike every other total War). Am I doing something wrong, or do you have to manually target everything if you want to fire from walls?

[Akboris]

Thats strange. Mine always do in range. Which unit are you using and how big is the fort?

[TallestDavid]

same here!! my melee units juist stand there not shooting!!

[Waxen]

There's no reason, other than the fact that walls in this game are unreliable in general. Maybe the enemy was deceptively far away and out of range, maybe you hadn't deployed your unit quite right, maybe it's just a buggy wall segment.

[Stonechat]

When place tropps on walls they line up looking to the right or left. They never face outward. I wish there was a "snap-to-wall" troop placement like medieval 2 and rome TW.

[Alison Wunderland]

Make sure they're not in Guard mode. (uncheck the shield button)

[Gilbert of Glockenspur]

hmmmm

[Black fang]

Originally posted by Anonymous Bosch:

Make sure they're not in Guard mode. (uncheck the shield button)

this works for me

[Mr.Person]

Strange, dunno why guard mode would affect it, that is only supposed to prevent your troops from chasing a routing enemy

[Alison Wunderland]

Originally posted by Mr.Person:

Strange, dunno why guard mode would affect it, that is only supposed to prevent your troops from chasing a routing enemy

I'm not the Oracle of CA, so I don't have a definitive "why". How the game handles walls though is full of inconsistencies--the ruptured walls bug being only the most obvious.

So here's my theory based on observations and trial-and-error: In the first place it's very difficult to get the troops exactly where you want them; very limited. When Line Infantry are in Guard mode, they stay put. You give them an attack order, they carry it out without advancing. This is fine for line troops in open fields. On walls, they won't advance to the parapets to fire over the walls. With Guard more "off", given an attack order, they spread out and advance to the edges of the wall and carry out the order... and begin firing.

Line infantry have Guard more "on" as the default. Militia have "off" as the default. My last campaign used only militia, and I had to keep engaging the Guard mode to keep them from scattering all over the place. lol.