I actualyl like it cause it is abit realistic. You dont let 5 groups of archers hammer down at a melee unit who is on close combat.

Can be annoying though and there is no way to tweak the AI.

So I guess you just have to use the Y(toggle fire at free will) and backspace to cancel unit commands.

Personally I have them on fire at will aslong as the enemy are approching. If the entire enemy line crash with mine I keep them on fire at will aswell. Sure, they will cause some friendly fire, but you will make the enemies rout faster, witch in the long run means less casualty. I only turn them off when its time to charge in with my cavalery to mop it up.

In MTW the missile units would stop firing their missiles once your units were in teh vicinity of the "arrow fire" and would not fire unless ordered to.

This is not in RTW and friendly casualties are at an all time high.

The worst part is having your archers too close behind your phalanx. After a couple of vollies, you notice you're suddenly missing 300 of yoru prized silver shield pike. Not nice.

Quite often, especially in city streets, your archers will quite happily shoot themselves aswel for some strange reason.

Well, when the mellee starts its more then logical your arrows and javalins may hit friendlies. Its quite brutal to fire on a spot where your troops are fighting...

When I have a line of archers or velites in front of my battleline I usually retreat them manually and switch skirmish off. If in danger I, I swith autofire off, retreat them to behind my battle line, reogranize them and, switcht autofire on again.

If the battleline is engaged I switch autofire off again or make sure i set the archers to attack targets not engaged directly. Often I bring my archers and velites to the flanks when my entire battle line is engaged. Especially the velites can do nice outflanking manouvres and when they start throwing those javalins from behind the enemy the friendly fire is acceptable.

Something just occuered to me while reading this.

In battles that begin badly for me, it's not uncommon for me to regroup my broken first line with fractions of full strength. This could provide the optimal chance for archers to do mass casualties as the larger number of enemy engulf my 7-10 men troops. It's also, unfortunately, pretty much guaranteed to finish off my already injured line. I'll have to try it...

The prob with velite isn't that bad,
their range is still in control...
...it's the damn ARCHER !!!
My equite usually charged from behind enemy and rout them.
Those archer just too bowstring(trigger)-happy to kept firing at routing enemy.
And OMG, those horse r arrow-magnet or what??

so the end result?, a routing enemy and a field full of horse meat.
seriously, i like archer in MTW a lot more,
at least they show some mercy when enemy rout..

Can't you tell them to fire at another target? Or, if there are no other targets around, turn off the auto fire?

And it makes sense that horses are struck more than infantry by arrow fire. They do have a much larger area as a whole.

Is their a way to have your Hastati (or Pricipes) charge in with their swords and not throw their javelins first. It's annoying when they hit a whole bunch of your own guys because another unit has already engaged the enemy.

yeah, fire-at-will can be turn off
but in the heat of battle, it's kinda tedious to do

and for Hastati to charge directly
press ALT+ right mouse, that would push charges,
but with charge bonus +2, don't see why bother to break formation n charge..

As you Can see here, with Cretian Archers you can pwn yourself - you barely need the computer's help.

it is funny indeed, how ever they didnt get pwned by themselves or other archers, it is the slingers that killed them.

slingers are different than archers, their projectile is more a straight line instead of a rainbow kind of parabol line. that means if there is ur own troop between the one they are shooting at, they will kill them .

so try to put slingers on the flank next time and try send them out to skirmish

I have no problem with archers, or velites killing also my soldiers when they engage in close combat. But i have a problem with archers behind hestati firing at a distant enemy and killing my hestati too when the enemy has not even reached my lines. Ok, 1 or 2 arrows can be, but not halft of my hestati down by friendly fire. If they were velites i could understand this, but archers should be able to fire over the heads of my soldiers.

the worst time this happened to me was at the end of a battle when i had the last few enemy cornered in a town square and just as i killed the last one some of my hastati decided to throw a volley which landed right in the middle of the cavalry group i'd just used to mop up not too many casualties luckily

omg, that annoys me sooooooooooo much. I lost an entire legion to my own heavy onager.

I hardly have any trouble with friendly fire.
Just micromanage your archers or keep a close eye on them.

If you ask archers to pour hell on your own men, and that is basically what you do if set on autofire when your infantry is engaged, do not start yelling friendly fire. You did it yourself.

Pull back your archers behind the frontline, manually direct them to fire at non engaged enemies.
Archers are not suitable to get involved when the melee starts. They are intended to disrupt non engaged enemies.
After the initial skirmishing phase I often bring my archers behind the line but on the flanks. This way they can disrupt any enemy flanking movements.

Also if you are an the back of a hill or even a slight elevation make sure there are no men in front of your archers as they will stand in the arrows arc...

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The reason why I'm annoyed by it is because this was never a problem in MTW - the archers would stop firing automatically when the enemy got in melee with your troops, you had to tell them to attack them to get friendly casualties like this.

i used to do that with greeks and flaming arrows from the cretan archers. i won the battle but it was so not funny that they took out the last two ranks of armoured hoplites from the back. now i just move them to the side or behind the spear points in front or pepper from hills. storm of death!!!

One thing I noticed, when you order archers to do something they will first fire on something else, then follow your command (happens when you have free fire mode on).

Very annoying and stupid, why didn't they just export medieval's amazing AI or something lol...