What is the best way to get the AI to follow orders?

[Destraex]

I use the take command button after the AI fails to follow orders or ends up in a jumble. Which is 99.9% of the time. I just cannot get the AI to do what I want without it stopping half way through a move order or re-directing itself into a river or star formation instead of forming line. I have read the suggestion that waypoints would be better... but there is no way I am doing that for all my units.
I get that in real life units get stopped or suffer morale problems which slow them down. But
when my guys stop they don't seem to start again. They tend to mill around and forget where they were supposed to be going. There should perhaps be a "resume course" button.

Any suggestions? As you can see I tried a toolbar mod to see if it would help. If I was able to prevent the AI from stopping to fight skirmishers or for any other reason (is this the forced march button?) then they might have a chance of reaching the enemy and forming line. Or is the trick to use column first?

My units well formed line. After multiple attempts and the units ending nowhere near the indicators said they would be.


My cannon taking a dip and heading the opposite direction it was supposed to.


My line infantry also love to take dips

[Destraex]

Examples:

You press M for map. It would be logical that you would press M again to close it. However this is not possible you must move the cursor to the top of the screen and press the X.
You would expect to be able to zoom in on the mini map with scroll. However this does not seem possible either. I am not sure what zooms in on the mini map. Guess it is in the manual somewhere.

[Destraex]

Examples:
Where is the time compression X indicator when using + and - to compress time? Do I just mash the keyboard and hope for the best? Take a guess at what speed I am at currently?

[76mm]

All excellent points...too bad they don't seem to have found an audience...

[1annoyedgamer]

No, they are really not good points. A player not having the slightest idea how to play the game or how the game works is not the fault of the game, or means its a bad game. It just means the player doesn't know what hes doing.

His first post shows that he doesn't have a basic understanding of how the AI works. If you want to command at a higher level and issue orders to your subordinate commanders, its very simple, assign them an objective on the command map and give them the proper officer stance. The AI controlled officer will then carry out your command in the way the AI thinks best to accomplish the objective you set for it. The more you interfere and try to move the AI's units around while these units are still under AI control, the more you are just going to muck everything up. If you truly want to force the issue then you must TC whatever units you want to command yourself. Otherwise your orders will be discarded and ignored because units under AI control will always respond to the AI's commands not yours. Most of the time the AI is perfectly capable of carrying out an attack on its own without you interfering, and all you really need to TC for is maybe an officer and a few batallions to stay and maintain control over an objective once its captured.

The time acceleration is also very easy to use. Pressing + speeds up time in several increments. You can see how fast time has sped up just by watching the clock and seeing how fast it is counting through the seconds. Pressing - once always returns time to normal speed no matter how fast you have time sped up at the moment.