Scourge of War Boards

This question arises from the 4th tutorial, Division Combat. In this engagement you appear to have a choice between:

a) Leaving the artillery battery in it's excellent position and ordering one brigade to take up an advanced position on the right flank to protect it then committing both the other brigades to the defensive line (as one is not nearly enough to cover it).

b) Retreating the artillery battery to a safer location to the rear, forming a line with two infantry brigades and leaving one infantry brigade in reserve to counter flanking attempts.

I decided to go with option a) because I decided the position of my battery was so good for raking the advancing US regiments. i think this was the right decision because the Louisianas (assigned to the right flank near the battery) and the battery decimated the US left flank and proceeded to make a devastating flanking attack on the US central positions leading to a major victory of 550 pts.

However the Virginians, assigned to my left flank were badly shot up by a large US force flanking them from the woods to my left. Now before this actually got too bad, but after the Louisianas had routed the US left flank and were piling into the US centre, I wanted to move the Carolinas from their central position where they were no longer needed to take up position to attack the US flanking forces on my left and protect the Virginians.

The problem is they wouldn't do it, or made a complete mess of it. Admittedly the US AI tried it's best to make it difficult including making a suicide charge to try to pin them down. I tried a number of things like issuing fall back orders, simply ordering the commander round some way points in column in preparation for redeployment, but to no avail really. In the end I had to leave the Carolinas in position while the Louisianas finished off the US centre before I could belatedly get them into action against the US right flank and finish the battle. Unfortunately the Virginians suffered greatly as a result of the delay.

Now the manual says:

When your fighting units are within range of the enemy, they will fire on their
own. Once engaged, your units may not obey an order to move, since the
overwhelming tendency of a regiment is to stay and fight it out once it is face
to face with an enemy regiment. Keep these limitations in mind when you
approach the enemy. Once the men start fighting, it will be hard to disengage
before one side or the other runs away.

Hard, is says, but not impossible. I would like to know what sort of sequences of orders might have enabled me to successfully disengaged and moved the Carolinas in this situation much earlier

To disengage with the stock version you have two choices: retreat button or TC button (TC unit and run them away from the action).

There are more effective methods with the commands getaway (short retreat), attackmarch (like TC, but requires less micromanagement since it disables automatically once the unit gets to it destination), and justrun (like retreat, but you can assign the destination). However, these must be manually assigned to your keyboard.

Once you are playing scenarios that can accept mods, you'll find toolbar mods that include these commands, B&F for one, or, you can mod your own toolbar to your specifications.

I didn't try retreat as I thought that might rout them or something. By TC I assume you mean "Take Control" - I have a little trouble determining if that button is on or off to be honest. What exactly tells you it is on or off?

Thanks for the reply BTW.

I didn't try retreat as I thought that might rout them or something. By TC I assume you mean "Take Control" - I have a little trouble determining if that button is on or off to be honest. What exactly tells you it is on or off?

Thanks for the reply BTW.

When a unit is TC'd the TC button will highlight. It will stay lit until manually clicked off. This is critical, TC off, for units TC'd can't defend themselves adequately.

Sometimes units will rout when manually retreated, this is why the suggested other options are usually preferable, from my playing experiences, and if initiated correctly. Sometimes nothing will help, engaged units become very vulnerable once they turn their backs from a firefight.

Whoa, totally forgot Withdraw, probably because I don't use it much. My preferences are attackmarch and getaway, depending on the situation. Withdraw is slow and your firepower wains, but it's usually preferable to retreat.

I just noticed your title says brigade, duh, I've been talking regiment level. :unsure: So, all the commands I've been speaking of are misrepresented some. They'll still work at brigade level but for keyboard assignment brigade or above level an 'A' must be added; i.e., Aattackmarch,etc.