Battle orders and commands guide?

[Carface Is My Spirit Animal]

Is there a good guide out there that better explains what the different orders do like charge vs engage vs F6, what unit types (infantry/cavalry/ranged) do better with different commands and formations. When are certain formations like shield wall or loose, square, circle, etc. useful?

[ShadowFox]

Your best bet would be to read or watch things involving medieval battles and warfare. Like if you watch Rome or Vikings it can show you most of the formations and in what situations they are used. As for the commands some of it is best to just play around with and see what they do. I'm sure there is a youtube guide out there somewhere but that would take some digging :)

[Arkew Von Greffer]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924194659 for the F6

[kristianjakob]

First of all, Its a game.

There are some roles for formations. E.g. a shieldwall is good at protecting against arrows and loose formation is better for archers, to avoid having their LOS obstructed.

But, good battle tactics mainly boils down to playing your unit-types to their strengths.

Archers are obviously best used for dealing damage, without getting in harms way. If you are archer heavy the best tactic is usually just to split your archers into more than one formation, so if a formation is targetted it can fall back, while your other formation(s) provide flanking fire.

Infantry is essentially the opposite. An infantryman, in the game, rarely does well when outnumbered. If you are infantry heavy you really want to concentrate you infantry and try to achieve local superiority. In practice it rarely matters what formation you would be using, as long as there are more of your men able to hit something compared to how many enemies are able to hit your men.

[Stray952]

Originally posted by Boner Death Spider:

When are certain formations like shield wall or loose, square, circle, etc. useful?

Loose formations allow your units to quickly move through one another so that you can quickly put your skirmishers in front of your infantry and then recall them. It also makes sure all your archers can fire, without creating a solid target that enemy fire/cavalry can focus on.

Square for pikemen repelling cavalry charges from odd angles or maybe escorting softer units into a position?

Only use Ive seen for circle is when dealing with those f'n Pecheneg horse archers. A circle of shields will absorb a lot of arrows and give your archers in the center more time to take them out.

Personally, I don't like F6. Maybe in a fight you know you'll win but don't want to take unnecessary casualties, or for something the computer just does better on autopilot like cav archers. Maybe I just don't use it correctly, but I've seen my skirmishing lines run away from looters they could easily wipe by sitting still.

[Stray952]

I should say I LOVE skein (wedge) formation. I don't actually know that it makes any difference but it feels like its bad ass, lol. My infantry would probably win either way, but you can condense the enemy against the skein and brake through formations or better they wrap around and expose their flanks to your support units.

There's a Youtube video were a guy puts a bunch of heavy infantry in a little square and then just stations fians on a hill nearby and they mow down like 10x their number or something. Using skein does the same thing but feels more legitimate and less like glitching the AI.

[Carface Is My Spirit Animal]

I found this but I don't know how relevant it is being over a year old and it seems this game updates frequently-ish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTxrRzv0ncw