First time using a mod in WH2 I don't know if I'm missing something. I activated the mod in mod manager but when I go into a battle in the campaign it doesn't show anything new.

During deployment phase before the battle, in a top left corner of the screen, beneath the help menu bar, there is supposed to be a round yellow plus sign button. If you look on the screen in the mod description it is called there "Add formation" button.
At the first use of the mod you will not have any formations saved yet, so there will not be any other buttons. As you add formations to your list the menu will grow downwards.
You can try it also in custom battles.
What is your screen resolution? I can check it at that resolution on my side.

It would seem sometimes, formations won't get saved, even without groupings. In my Gelt campaign, that's been the trouble especially. Worked fine in my Franz campaign. So, I am not sure what's up with it tbh. Are there some sort of limitations that's got something to do with terrain or... does the script not like the taste of gold?

Formations should be saved to "Total War WARHAMMER II\exm_formations.json" at the end of deployment phase or if you exit the battle before that. You can look at the modification date of this file to check when the file was last time modified. Also it is a text file where the units and their positions are written in open text for each army, so you could look inside and try to figure out if given formation was just added.

Terrain does not matter for this at all. Matching formations for given race should be displayed. Maybe the formations you are looking for are classified as non matching the army? Try setting "include_misfit_formations = true" in "Total War WARHAMMER II\exm_formations.cfg" to display all formations.

Let me know if that helps. I can also look at your exm_formations.json file if you want to send it to me.

I have just started Gelt campaign to check it and it seems to be nothing special about it. The formations as getting saved as usual for me.
One thing to be aware though is that the formations are not bound to campaign but rather to the faction. So you might see formations from your Franz campaign as they are empire formations still.
If you do not want that you can backup your old "exm_formations.json" file and the mod will start the separate new one for the current campaign. Then you can swap them or even join between campaigns as you please.

Mod does not show saved formations In next battles. It save them in *.json file, but dont show saved presets ingame.
No groups.

Do you see any formation buttons in the mod menu at all?
Is it possible that formations you are looking for are what I call misfit_formations in mod description and include_misfit_formations option is off?
The groups will not be saved. I did not find the way to do it. The mod will just save positions and facing of units in formation.

> >Do you see any formation buttons in the mod menu at all?

Only button "add new formation". Mod seems work at all - i can add new formations, can use them in current battle. They appear in json file. But next battle again all clear.

>>Is it possible that formations you are looking for are what I call misfit_formations in mod description and include_misfit_formations option is off?

No. I try now it, nothing change.


>>The groups will not be saved. I did not find the way to do it. The mod will just save positions and facing of units in formation.

i understand, I want say, that didn't use groups before saving formations.


So, now i load my game. First battle - 4 loadouts formations. 3 green, 1 yellow. all work.
Next battle - no loadouts, i can only create new. And next battles the same. All new formations write in *.json file, but ingame no loadouts.

Can you create a text file with name "exm_formations.cfg" and single line content as below:

include_misfit_formations = true

and put it in your "Total War WARHAMMER II" directory. The same one where "exm_formations.json" is?

Maybe for some reason armies in next battles are classified as not fitting the saved formations.
If that doesn't help can you tell me the armies composition in first and second battle?

Ok, this work. Thx.
But it's not good - only 1 unit changes, and formation become red.

So, in screens.
First battle. I create it.
https://ibb.co/M26ywgC

Second battle. Only 1 unit change. And it doesnt work.
https://ibb.co/VTZFggQ

I create cfg file. Formation appear with red color.
https://ibb.co/BKyqpKs

I think it shouldn't work that way. When changing just one unit, the formation turns red, and a change in the config file is required to display all the created formations in general. And if there are ten of them for different factions?

Can I make my suggestions here?
1. You can make it so that when the difference is 2-4 units, the formation is shown in orange by default.
2. Is it possible to make a division into factions? So that the formations of foreign factions are not shown at all.

Yes, from my experience I assumed that when there are in saved formation units which can not be found in army user my be better of not to use such formation.
But, from your example, I can see how that might be useful. So, I will make option "include_misfit_formations = true" by default, and it will need to be disabled in config file if required.

The colors are there mainly to ease finding different classes of formations and maybe they are not so important now that formations can be named. The red means just that there will be holes in formation in the place of missing units.

Now that you have a config file you may want to experiment with other options, like length of the name field if you like.

The formations are already faction bound and there will be only the formations for matching faction displayed even if the other are saved in the same file.

Thanks for the useful suggestions. I hope you enjoy the mod.

Nice, thx.
But the additional color, I think, would still be useful. To immediately distinguish the formations that can be applied (2-4 replaced units will not make the weather) from those for which you will need to change half the order of the units.
Names are good. But the color is always more striking.
However, if additional colors would be a good addition, but if for some reason it is difficult or impossible to do, the mod is already good.
Thank you.

@MiracleWhip. Do you see any buttons of the UI at all? I assume that formation list is missing from that completely?
Do you mean that even when you removed the exm_formations.json file completely it doesn't work?
I have had an issue before that eg. when I change resolution the position of the UI is not recalculated properly and it is off the visible screen. My gut feeling is that it might be something like that, but that is just a guess at that moment. Did you try different positions of the menu? How big your list of formations were before it stopped working?

The UI and buttons all work, it just doesn't show me my saved formations. Every battle I just get the "add new formations" button, but no previous formations to load. The add formations button is fully functional (I can make formations, name them, etc, and they do get saved to the json).

I tried deleting the json, and reinstalling the mod (loading and saving the game between uninstalling and reinstalling). I also tried changing menu positions from the top_left default to bottom_right, the menu position did change as intended, but it did not resolve my issue.

When it stopped working, I had about 3 formations from a previous campaign/race, and 4-6 on my current campaign.

I am playing with SFO. Around the time that it stopped working, I added Dwarven Engineers (the mortar squad units) to all my armies. Dunno if that makes a difference.

Ok, that's strange. I played Dwarf campaign without such problems.
How about include_misfit_formations option is it set to true? Maybe that is the problem?
Could you share with me the exm_formations.json and exm_formations.cfg? Like on TinyUploads for example.
As you probably know it contains just units names and program options so it is safe to post.
Then I could see if it causes any issues on my system.