 When you move a group of units, have you ever noticed how they sometimes assume a less than perfect formation, with weak units on the outside and slow but strong units on the inside? Well, in this tutorial we exaplain how the game works out formations and armed with this knowledge you can create some amazingly successful group formations with relative ease!
Submitted by KoenFrancois, Text by Aubergine
We've all done it - in the heat of battle we've selected a random selection of troops and ordered them to move to a location and then cursed them when they order themselves in to a very poor formation on arrival at their destination. Take a look: 
Have you ever seen such a rabble? The Lord is so disgusted with this mess that he's walked away in despair! Troops are all over the place and most of the strong melee units (pikemen and swordsmen) are in the middle rather than the outside, etc. It's just a disaster! In Stronghold 2, the game automatically arranges troops in to a relatively good formation with strong melee troops on the outside and light ranged attackers in the middle. Unfortunately, Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader don't do that for you but with an understanding on how grouping works you can take advantage of it... So, here goes... Taking Control of Group Formations In Stronghold 1 and Stronghold Crusader, the layout of a group of troops is determined by the order in which the troops were recruited, nothing more, nothing less! That's it, that's all you need to know! The troops you recruit frst will go at the center of the formation. As you create more and more troops, they will spiral around the center of the formation going ever outwards. With some careful planning in your recruiting, it's therefore quite simple to get a superb formation like this: 
Here's how troops were recruited: - The slow ranged attackers (crossbowmen, catapults) were recruited first so they are in the centre.
- Then a protective layer of swordsmen and shields were recruited - those catapults and crossbowmen cost us a lot of money and we want to protect them! The shields protect not only the swordsmen but also help to protect the catapults and crossbowmen.
- Next, some archers were recruited - they're faster ranged attackers and we want them nearer the outside so they can start attacking any approaching enemies sooner.
- For the outer layers, pikemen, knights and more shields have been recruited.
The further from the center of the formation, the more troops of a given type will be required in order to have them fill all four sides of the formation. As you can see from the picture above, we didn't recruit enough knights to go all the way round the formation. Recruitment Order is Crucial If you get the recruitement order wrong you could end up with a disaster like this: 
Those archers would be easy targets for any enemy melee troops! Design Principles The best design is always to have ranged attackers in the middle and melee units around the outside. Any enemy melee troops will have to fight their way through your melee troops first giving your unharmed ranged attackers more time to fire at them. Another good tactic is to put some knights in the center of a formation - they can be quite vaulnerable at times but their speed allows them to charge out from the formation (if set to agressive) when required to help defeat enemy attackers: 
You should do some practicing with your preferred troop types in order to perfect your formations. once you know what order to recruit your troops and how many of each type to recruit in order to make them go all the way around the formation, you will be able to quickly create your perfect formations in the heat of battle and will be far more successful in combat as a result. Group Formation Movement As you'll no doubt be aware, when you tell a mixed group of units to move to a location they will all walk at the speed of the slowest unit while they are all selected. As such, if you move them to a nearby location first, they will get in to their proper formation at which point you can move them to their final destination. Remember our formation with catapults from above:
If that formation moves while selected then the catapults would be well protected from almost any enemy attack. If the formation came under ranged attack, you could simply tell it to stop moving and the archers and crossbowmen would return fire. Afterwards, you'd just select them all again and get them moving again. In Stronghold Crusader, you can include Horse Archers in your group as they will be able to shoot at enemy units whilst moving thus avoiding the need to stop your whole group formation just to return fire. If at any time troops become unselected they will move at their normal speed - with the formation above, the knights and archers would race ahead with the crossbowmen and catapults behind them and then the slowest units, pikemen swordsmen, at the back. An enemy attack would therefore be far more dangerous because they could wait until the middle section of troops (catapults and crossbowmen) arrive before attacking, etc. An easy way to manage formations is to group them - select all the troops in the formation and use the "Ctrl" + [0-9] keyboard shortcuts to define them as a group (eg. "Ctrl"+"0" to define them as group #0) and then simply press the group number (in our example, "0") to re-select them at any time. Should a formation become unselected at any time or if you need to quickly change it's orders, the keyboard shortcuts make life a LOT easier! Well, we hope this gives you some new tactics to play with, especially in multiplayer games. Have fun!
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