Dec Update: Empire and Revolution
As the armies of European warfare became larger and more complex, there arose a need to reduce these masses into more manageable levels of organization.
In Empire and Revolution units will mostly be organized by the following:
- Companies of 100–120 units. A company can be of varying types such as grenadier, fusilier, line infantry, pike-men, etc. A company is the minimal level of organization. They can occupy 1–4 grids depending on their formation depth.
- Battalions of ~4 companies (480 units). Battalions have unique formations that they can form such as square or dense attack columns.
- Regiments of 2+ battalions (1000+ units). Regiments composed of multiple battalions can have high level orders such as attack, defend, maneuver, etc. Regiments are the minimal organization at the campaign level, and so at the end of a battle, any XP stats will be assigned to units at the regimental-level. Regiments are operationally independent and can be shifted from one corp army to another on the campaign map. Players will organize their army via regiments before the start of the battle.
Side note: Since battalions can be composed of say 2 companies of line infantry and 2 companies of grenadiers, this opens up the question of whether a battalion can reshuffle its companies after having sustained casualties. Can a line infantry turn into a grenadier if the grenadier company in the battalion is much smaller? Since companies cannot have both grenadier+line infantry in the same company (due to game engine restrictions), its uncertain how battalions in the game will re-organize themselves to maintain an even distribution of units in the formations.
An excellent article on column formation tactics reveals why units in the Napoleonic age would want to move in such a dense formation. It seems suicidal to our modern warfare sensibilities, but moving battalions in a dense multi-line formation gave several advantages:
- Strong cohesion and morale boost as humans naturally feel safe when in large groups. This was necessary for the revolutionary wars in which armies were composed of fresh low-experience soldiers.
- Fast mobility. Moving a long line can be very difficult across varying terrain. Decreasing the frontal width of the formation into a column allows for faster pace.
- Easy to form square formations against enemy cavalry.
- Concentrates melee and fire power against the enemy. Especially useful in a melee charge or a oblique formation strategy first made famous in 371 BC at the battle of Leuctra.
When moving a large body mass of units in column formations, battalions can also lead the assault with skirmishers at the front. The skirmishers can protect the column formation from enemy skirmishes, since otherwise the column formation can be “picked off” by enemy skirmishers before it reaches its attack destination.
The tactical grid system of Empire and Revolution allows for efficient field of vision calculations, which allows for more strategic decision making. Ambushes can occur with enemy units hiding behind a forest line, or units can unexpectedly encounter each other in dense forests with low visibility. Even more interesting is the idea of using cavalry to screen army movement. Theoretically enemy cavalry can block line of sight, allowing for hiding troop movement behind cavalry. Cavalry thus become not just important for scouting, but also denying enemy vision of the battlefield.
Most historical battles have a large element of unknown in decision making. When the player has a top-down vision of the entire battlefield it can too easily make the decision-making too easy. Fog of war adds back in that level of uncertainty that commanders faced in their day.
