How do you deal with a friendly fire in war

[Coocoodas]

How do I deal with friendly arbalesters head-shotting my tanks from behind?

I cannot win a battle without getting involved in the fight immediately once the great battle(noble war) starts.

I would have had a perfect victory, had it not been my ally arbalesters who killed off 3 of my guys, including my ace two-hander companion I had from day 1 to day 154.

So in this battle I lost 3 brothers all to my ally arbalester who shot to the front line from 3~4 hexes back. This is expert ironman and I'm♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥beyond limits.

What can I do to prevent this from happening again save avoiding fights? I thought about avoiding the centre but it's really hard to manuever around.

[13obo]

Ouch, this hurts.. Never had people die but regularly get shot indeed.

My cure for this when it happens is to mutter tonnes profanities, click incessantly on the ally marksmen when it's my turn and visualising in my head how I am decapitating them with my 2H, and finally to position my 2H in such a way that I AOE cleave ally billmen/footmen (that's the most rewarding bit).

[Galik21]

Usually i just back few steps. Enemy fight with ally units and then i engage to fight when battlefield is full of dead people.

[The Mighty Mulletman]

When you have an unreasonable ally let him take the front. Might as well use him as a meat shield.

[13obo]

Actually my problem with friendly fire from ally marksmen occurs towards the end of the battle when we have the enemy surrounded and the marksmen try to 'pitch in'. At the beginning of the battle, the marksmen shoot at enemy archers/backliners and thus have no trouble with them.

Alas, there is no strategy to avoid that unless you are willing to disengage with you frontliners, and wait for your allies/use your backliners/archers to finish off the last remnants.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

My experience in that one huge battle was surprisingly good. I thought the allied AI was deliberately avoiding risking my mercs.

Looking at this thread, it seems I just got lucky.

[13obo]

They do seem to avoid your mercs until they have no alternative targets left. That's when the (potential) butchery begins.

[Pringles™]

They should patch this so that arbalesters or marksmen that are allied only shoot at targets near allies when there is only one guy in between the shooter and the target and the shooter is right next to the friendlie.

[erictred11]

Umm By being careful?