Still don't get this formation combat

[Jonah]

Ive read the tutorial, I've read advice in the discussions, and...

I still don't get it.

For some reason I'm just taking monstrous front and cohesion damage I've no idea why.

Im keeping my imbalance in check, at one point the enemy had +11 imbalance and was still smashing my legion. This forced a rage quit wont lie lol.

[griemly]

i am invested now my guy, sent you a friend req, if you eu we can make something work over discord

[flori2412]

I will try to explain briefly how to keep up cohesion:

Your formation (and the enemy's) start at an imbalance of 0. As long as your imbalance is somewhere between -5 and +5, your formation will not suffer any penalties in combat.

Your approach will determine how the imbalance changes each combat turn:

Very cautious: -2 per turn
Cautious: -1 per turn
Steadfast: +1 per turn
Fierce: +2 per turn
All-out: +3 per turn

Every other turn or so, you will be allowed to change your approach, but you should try to do it gradually. For example, you can easily change from steadfast to fierce, or from steadfast to cautious, but if you skip at least one step by going from fierce to cautious, for example, your formation will take damage.

Imagine this: You are standing in a crowd of soldiers trying to move at the same rythm. Your commanding officer tells you not to move forward and to fall back if needed, so you will anticipate that the soldiers around you will move in a certain way. Then, all of a sudden, your centurion changes his mind and yells a "CHARGE" order. Guess what happens: The soldiers will be confused, trip over each other's feet, stumble, fall, hurt themselves... and the charge will not work very well. The game models this, so you need to try and change your approach gradually and carefully.

Keep your formation within the range of -5 to +5. even if it means that you might need to be cautious and disengage at times (if both formations are cautious or very cautious, no clash will happen). The more defensive you are, the less likely enemy attacks will be to kill your men, but cautious formations will generate less momentum. Momentum is needed to attack the enemy and lower their cohesion.

When fighting the Gauls, I tend to start with a cautious approach as they like to charge at you right away. This slowly lowers my imbalance while their imbalance quickly increases. Once their imbalance is more than +5, they tend to quickly change to cautious, seriously weakening their formation by skipping several steps, or sometimes they just keep attacking, going far above the +5 threshold. That's when I gradually change from cautious to steadfast and then fierce and start counter-attacking. If my imbalance approaches the +5 mark, I make my legionaries slow down again by going from fierce to steadfast and then cautious.

You will often suffer some cohesion damage when they first charge at you, but that's okay. The defensive approach will minimize the danger of losing soldiers, and once you pull off the counter-attack while they are off-balance, you will have a good chance to kill them.

Once we get to the civil war, I imagine fighting fellow Roman legionaries will be a very different experience, but so far this strategy has worked great against the "barbarian" enemies for me.

[☭ Người Cộng Sản ☭]

Go with history. What roman do is they go in slow. That why they have big shield.

Go in cautious, or very cautious, then increase it each turn.

[flori2412]

This guide is excellent. Read it if you still feel insecure about the formation combat in this game:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3442586973

Thanks to the author! This has clarified a few questions for me, too.