Formations. We wants 'em!

So judging form the E3 trailer and some of the other things said (vlog #?) opposing units/armies will mix while fighting. That's not realistic but neither are war boars so never mind. But the reason thats not realistic is warriors learned very quickly that if they had a guy in front of them trying to kill them then they really didn't want another guy trying to kill them behind them, and would much rather have a dude on their team back there. This led to formations. A unit best able to keep formation would be called better disciplined and would most likely win. This led to battles being as much about breaking up the enemy formation as about killing their dudes.

I'm worried that as real battles evolved (very quickly) so our simulated battles might evolve. So this could be the most micro intense game ever. Where we need to coax individual soldiers back into a formation when they really want to wander off let themselves get surrounded and killed. Maybe some would like that level of micro and would call it skill. I would not like it and call it baby sitting.
Hopefully we will get some formation options, in the finished product. I only mention it because mob vs mob seamed to be the design choice at this stage (and I haven't seen anything to suggest it's a place holder, but they probably just haven't gotten that far yet.)|||I've noticed that to, but after Vlog 19, I tend to treat everything I see about the game as if its in flux. This is why I think a squad-based mechanic might be helpful|||IF they did a research points thing, then couldnt formations be researchable, with varying levels of discipline to keep them.|||There was a video blog where Chris and an engineer were using a formation painter of sorts.|||X-Cubed|||i remember CT saying in one of the Vblogs about how the formations would have an affect on combat, such as the soldiers raising their shields to reduce damage or something like that, or maybe i misunderstood what he was trying to say.|||I believe he was trying to reference the Roman testudo(or tortoise) formation.|||It will be interesting to see if they give shields their own collision boxes so that they can stop arrows in a simulated fashion, rather than an arbitrary buff for being in that formation.|||You could do that with SupCom right now. O made the comment a long time ago that you can give a shield a rectangular hit box if you wanted to. Just spawn a rectangular shield infront of the unit that blocks all arrows.|||seiya|||So, has it been confirmed that units are individual rather than squads? :)
Personally I find the idea of broken formations rather cool.|||please god no squads if you want a squad select a bunch of units at once and put them in a control group. i want to be able to select a single unit, tell it to go somewhere and actually have it obey my orders. squads dont do that|||If shields as such are possible, I hope to high hell that they won't be abused to make "weak spot" legendaries >.<|||Headless|||-The-Baron-|||Solar|||Solar|||You have to remember, the reason that breaking formations were so extraordinarily important were shield walls. Attacking a shield wall was suicide, unless your numbers were MASSIVE. To break up the wall, they had to break morale first. They'd charge with horses (knowing full well that the horses would almost certainly change course of their own accord to not run into a wall of shields), shoot arrows, etc. First army to call uncle would get massacred, in many battles.
In this game, it's less important. In a video game, if you break formation, all this does is make an army that's going to die, die slower. Formation is only extremely useful in video games by ranged units--how you line them up, etc. There was an in depth FA guide to this, showing how you want to line up your tanks to get the maximum focus damage out of them.