Unit Formations

I would like to see them being used more or at least in appropriate situations.
Currently the only formation I ever see is speading out the units to take less damage from mangonels or nest of bees, any aoe effect really.
Maybe the line formation sometimes to cut off enemy units.

But right now I don’t see any downsides to spreading out units, am I overlooking something here?

What about some value changes like:

  • Wedge formation: +10% melee damage / -2 melee armor
  • Line formation: -2 ranged armor / -20% reload speed for bowmen or +2 melee armor / -2 ranged armor for melee units
  • Spread out: -2 melee armor / +2 ranged armor

Changing formations would be on cooldown as to not just change formations after a flank went wrong,

Of course I am just using examples here, but there would be a lot of ways to make it viable.

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The line and spread formations are both very useful. It’s just the wedge that isn’t. I think they should replace that one.

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My main issue is, that it currently feels like spread formation is mandatory for melee units.
And of course it makes sense when approaching ranged units, but I feel like it should also come with a disadvantage.
Maybe there is a drawback to spread formation I am just not seeing yet. But having one all purpose formation (except for what line does) feels off.

u should only use the spread formation vs aoe like mangos, nest, or trebs ever. The reason being that other melee units will easier surround single units and kill ur army much faster. A ball of archers is much less vulnerable to horsemen surrounds than spread out units since the surface area for attacking is much smaller. The same goes for melee vs melee units, if u have the same amount of units but one uses the spread foramtion and the other keeps them close, he will always win the fight because of surface area.

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Okay that makes a lot of sense. That only leaves the wedge formation. Maybe it offers some benefits to charges as to not use all the charge damage at once?

Wedge formation for cavalry should have knockback effects or even penetrate enemy formation line. This of course should come with a drawback that cavalry charges can’t be canceled if they are already on charging animation whilst on wedge formation.

Interesting to note that the mehter actually has an impact on formations (albeit all of them)

That being said maybe the Devs are going to implement more interaction with the wedge formation (the only one currently irrelevant)

Even if this only applies to the next civs , like maybe Byzantine could have it as part of their civ uniqueness, that cav perform differently between formations ( Eg higher charge damage or charge from further away when in wedge)

Manipulating stats is a pretty smart way to make formations relevent in a controlled and workable way as opposed to trying to mimix more irl physics.

I agree with the basic concepts but i have a few tweaks about the damage taken/given to make the effects allround more consistent for all any units a given formation.

Consider this:

Wedge formation - +15% attack speed for melee, -10% melee damage taken for ranged, + 10% ranged damage taken. The boost to damage is really also good, could be either way. Just felt attack speed buff is a bit closer to the model. Ranged damage cuz wedge is a pretty tight formation which was usually good vs melee but the large singular blob was also open to volley fire.

Line formation - Attack rate for ranged units is good. Armour bonus/penalty for melee is changed to -10/15 % melee damage taken and a -10% movespeed reduction. Rescaled armour into percentage damage taken - works more smoothly with large numbers of units. Defence depended mostly on armor and was less blobbed up than wedge but the formation was slow to move in the same step and still vulnerable to arrows, hence the added kitability.

Spread out - +10/15 % melee damage taken, for + 0.2 flat movespeed. The flat light infantry and cavalry would go wildin with a percnetage boost here and slow units wouldn’t even notice. This is an effect you can feel with all units with hopefully minimal balanve probs.

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