Any tips on controlling where archers shoot.

[beechboywa]

I am playing as the Scythians and so my armies are composed primarily of mounted archers. My frustration is arrows are limited and they pick their targets at random. So instead of concentrating their firepower on the charging civ cav that will destroy them, they fire at the routing mob thats at the very edge of their range. If I turn off fire at will their rate of fire goes down and they still won't concentrate their fire. They just stop shooting all together. Any Ideas?

[Knox]

My best advice is click to attack again and again and again and again and again. As I remember this is a bug that lasted from rtw1. Archers just don't listen.

[L3TUC3]

Keep on kiting and hope they have anough ammunition.

[The Gerbil]

The problem is if you issue an attack order, they'll continue to target that unit even if it is no longer a threat and fleeing.

I find it best to just put your missle units in position to fire on the advancing enemy, leave on fire at will and let them pick their targets. If you have a specific target that they aren't attacking, just issue the atatck order, but be sure to put your units back in fire at will position once your high-priority target is taken care of. This is easy to do on the fly if you keep your missle units hotkeyed to the same group formation.

[Bjørn]

I've only played as Romans and don't have that problem with Cretan archers.

However I do have that problem with sea units. They attack whatever is in range wether I set them to 'Fire at will' or not. It's very annoying.

Sea units seem to have unlimited ammo though, but it's still annoying that they attack anyone without my consent.

[Fizz]

I havent encountered this, on the whole Ive found archers to be quite well behaved. Although in previous total war games I remember there beong some issues with grouped units not doing as they were told. maybe try ungrouping them or using halt and then get them to target the required unit ?

[beechboywa]

Originally posted by Knox:

My best advice is click to attack again and again and again and again and again. As I remember this is a bug that lasted from rtw1. Archers just don't listen.

Thanks for the heads up, I've done this successfully with civ cav units that just can't resist a phalanx of pikes. I will give it a shot. Thanks!