First and formost, a skirmish is a small fight and so skirmish units are units that do supposidly not much damage. THey are for confusion of the enemy in my oppinion. Skirmish mode is pretty simple, it means keep your distance. If enemy come, you run a bit, then when you are far enouch away KAPOW shoot em! If used on infantry place said skirmishers in front of the line, shoot and when enemy come they run behind the line to safety.

In the game, skirmishers are javelineers untis for the most part, but skirmish mode is for lal missile troops, it has them withdraw before an enemy.

Skimishes are actually generally just small battles, but they are often just as hard fought, and just as important. In real life, at least.

What is a good situation to put units on shirmish mode? Thanks in advance

Basically you want skirmish mode on any time you missile unit dosnt need to stay put. When defending walls, or on high ground behind your line.

50% of the time, (at least on my game.) Skrimishers don't skrimish. The just stand there and refuse to move. Then they get killed by heavy infantry. I even manually tell them to retreat and they STILL refuse.

It is good to use them for horse arechers. But I generally place foot archers and slingwrs behind or amongst my troops, so I turn it off.

Skirmish mode is good when you want to get from corner for example, as you can flee from enemy even there mostly, while in skirmish mode, they stop and get killed.

It is good thing mostly, as those units take care of themselves and you can concentrate on other areas of the battlefield.

And one thing - not sHirmish, but sKirmish.

Also, remember that when that by holding down the alt key and attacking an infantry group with your skirms, your skirms will get out their swords (or knives, lol) and charge, even if they still have ammo left.

Also, you may encounter units called peltast or heavy peltast (they may be mercs, or you can train them if you are a Greek-related faction). These units are awesome at not only throwing javelins, but hand-to-hand fighting. They are strong and they will not get slaughtered like some other skirms do.

Heavy Peltasts and Illyrian Mercenaries are excellent. The only problem is that Heavy Peltasts aren't available until Large City level, which is a pity, since they are not available early on in the campaign, when they are most useful.

Personally, I rarely use skirmish mode because they never run the way I want them to (like behind my Armoured Hoplites for example). Units in Skirmish mode act as individuals rather than reacting to the situation as a whole as far as I have been able to determine. They run directly away from the enemy, when in some cases they would be safer running at an angle either into trees or to a position where a friendly unit could intercept the enemy.

The problem most people are describing about the skirmisher not retreating behind our lines is that if you manually choose the skirmishers to attack a certain enemy unit, the A.I. for the skirmishers will only make your unit fall back if the enemy unit they're attacking gives chase. Therefor, if another infantry/cavalry unit tries to chase them down they will not retreat until you manually command them to do so(Which unless is caught early is often too late), as you gave them their orders in the first place.

Solution: Just set them to Fire at will, and any troops that get within the danger range of the skirmishers; will cause the A.I. to automatically make your skirmishers retreat.

Is if just me or do skirmishers rule on bridge fights. I faught Egypt and they attacked across a bridge where I had militia at teh other end and my skirmishers had over 80 kills each from firing at the enemy coming over.

Yes Sardonic, Skirmishers as very effective when attack the rear or flanks; they are useful when combined with fire archers raining on phalanxes, then they pepper with javelins from the flank or rear.

All very good points but he is asking about SHIRMISH not Skirmish so the points are all moot

How does fire arrows help agaisnt phalaxes?

Skirmishers are awesome. I let them use about 2 or 3 javs then turn off fire at will so i can use them for flanking later in the battle when morale is low and being the only ranged guys with ammo left and running behind troops adds together to make it killer.

The only real affect fire arrows have on troops is they lower morale, however they are also less likeley to hit, so they should realy only be used when morale is already wavering to cause a rout.

Who are the Shirmish? Are they like the Amish? (sorry!)

Cavalry Cmdr, the reason I said to use Fire arrows against Hoplite is because of their tight formations. Arrows have a decreased damage effect on hoplite/Phalanx formations from both their armor and the spears pointed upwards that make the damage less. Therefor causing a loss of morale plus a quick flank attack will ensure a quick route then a chase and slaughter by Light cavalry,