Why would my archers ignore "Fire Closest" orders?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Try hold and attack for the archers. I _think_ they'll fire their weapons.

Oh, is it at all possible that you scripted the _commander_ to fire archers, and not the squad? The orders for the Warrior Maidens should be on the right side.

[SillyRobot]

I thought I may have screwed up the Maidens' orders initally, but the survivors did have "Fire Closest" orders.

"Hold and Attack" will fire bows twice before attacking -- I expected the combat to go more rounds than that and didn't want the Maidens giong toe-to-toe with the Barbarians.

[Foodstamp]

Next time bring arrows

[konming]

My best guess is that you have some melee only troops in your maiden group. Then the whole group will ignore the fire order and proceed to melee until the melee only troops are killed.

[Tuidjy]

Make damn sure that, amongst your maiden, there isn't an unit that is unable
to fire. One single guy without a range weapon will invalidate the whole
squad's orders.

[sum1lost]

If a maiden is missing a hand, she has no bow and will not fire.

[Sombre]

Yeah I'd guess you've got a couple with only one arm, or they've gone blind or something.

[konming]

Well, I do not think maiden missing a hand can be the cause. Because many times I have crossbowman losing an arm and the group fire just fine except for the poor one arm guy who rush to the front and get killed. It is when you mix units with bows and those do not come with bow the problem occurs.

[WonderLlama]

I've had ranged units lose arms, thereby losing the ability to fire, without invalidating the whole squad's orders. I kind of liked it actually, it gave me a couple scattered decoys without having to script them. The one armed guys ran out of the squad, while the squad fired their crossbows. I was playing LA Man although I doubt that matters.