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Save your formation

This mod allows you to save army formation during deployment phase. Saved formation can be applied to similar armies in subsequent battles. Direction of the formation matches the army direction. Formations matching closely the army are prioritized and marked.

Applied formations assume the overall current direction of the army. That means that units will be on average facing the same direction before and after applying the formation. It also means that you can control direction in which you want the formation to face by dragging out units in line in that direction and then applying the formation. That works similar to when you use standard formations from the game.

Formations are categorized to a few groups depending on their overlap with the current army. These groups are color coded for easy recognition during deployment.

• Formations which match army perfectly, that is, all units and characters in formation are found in army and there are no out of formation units left in army, use buttons colored green. The first perfect match formation on the list is what I call default formation and can be applied automatically at the start of the deployment phase.
  
  
• Formations which have been saved during current deployment are also perfect match formations, but for easier recognition of them they have been colored blue. In subsequent battles with the same army they will become green.
  
  
• Formations which match the army, such that all formation units have been found in the army, but there are some extra units or not matching characters (lords or heroes), are colored yellow.
  
  
• If some units expected in formation, not counting characters, are missing from the army the formation buttons are colored red. Applying such formation will result in empty space in the places where the units missing from formation are supposed to be. I found that such formations were of limited use to me, so there is an option to not to display them at all in the list to keep it shorter.

In all the cases any extra units in army not fitting the formation will be placed in line in the back of the applied formation.

You can give your formations a short description or name making recognizing them later easier. The names that are put in the text boxes next to the formation buttons will be saved and remembered in subsequent battles. This feature can be disabled in the config file. Through the config file you can also control the width and opacity of the formation name text boxes. If you like long descriptive names make your text boxes larger. If you think that the less is more, shrink them.
If you like to reuse formation names the optional Replace Formation button might be useful to you. It allows to substitute the current army configuration for any existing formation keeping the existing name. These buttons can be removed using the option in the config file.

By default the mod UI is placed in top left corner of the screen and expands downwards. It can be moved to right side or/and bottom of the screen by config file options. In the bottom positions the menu expands upwards and in the right positions it is a mirror of the left positions. The top_right position can be lowered to mid_right to allow unobstructed expansion of the radar map, if anyone finds that useful.

Mod menu is getting hidden with UI toggle hide buttons. If mod menu is hidden when it should not ESC button will make it visible again.

Any changes to the formation list are saved at the end of deployment phase, or quitting the battle, whichever comes first, to the file "Total War WARHAMMER II\exm_formations.json". Only formations matching the army race will be displayed, so you can store formations for different races in one file, or you can swap them for different campaigns to prevent the lists from getting too big.

There are a few settings that can be changed to your liking. The default values will be used if no config file or no settings in the file are present. If you would like to change the default options you will need to create the file "Total War WARHAMMER II\exm_formations.cfg" and put there any of the below lines.

apply_default_formation = true

• This option controls if the first perfect match formation is going to be automatically applied to the army at the start of deployment phase.
  Possible settings true, false. Default setting: true.

move_out_of_formation_units = true

• This option decides if the additional units, which did not fit the formation are going to be moved and placed in the line behind the formation or left in place.
  Possible settings true, false. Default setting: true.

include_misfit_formations = true

• This lets you to display and use the formations which are not completely matching the army. The units which are supposed to be in formation are missing in this case, so there will be holes in those units' places in applied formation.
  Possible settings true, false. Default setting: true.

ui_position = top_left

• If for some reason the position of the UI buttons does not suit you, you can move it to the other side of the screen and change the vertical orientation of UI. The left setting is equivalent to top_left and right is equivalent to mid_right.
  Possible settings top_left, bottom_left, top_right, mid_right, bottom_right, right, left. Default setting: top_left.

display_formation_names = true

• You can enable and disable displaying of the user created formation names with this setting.
  Possible settings true, false. Default setting: true.

formation_name_width = 150

• This controls the width of the formation name text box and in consequence the number of visible characters.
  Possible settings natural number in the range [50, 300]. Default setting: 150.

formation_name_opacity = 150

• This sets the opacity of the formation name text box. 0 means transparent, 255 opaque.
  Possible settings natural number in the range [0, 255]. Default setting: 180.

show_replace_button = true

• This option enables and disables the Replace Formation button.
  Possible settings true, false. Default setting: true.

Creating a formation from current army setup will not work if there are any groups created. You will have to ungroup units to save the formation. You can group them afterwards though.

Changing the screen resolution during battle setup will confuse the mod menu UI and scatter it around the screen. In the subsequent battles in the new resolution it should be ok though.