Attacking?

[pdmeff]

Why there is no order to attack or advance? I can`t imagine historical generals to write an order "go to the end of village, deploy a line 200 meters wide, stand there and watch your oponents soldiers marching just near you.."

No offence but this is really strange. For example I placed line just behind Austrian line and what I expeted was properly executed advance of my troops. Other thing happend. Few of my batalions marched through the enemy line wihtout reaction while the rest of division was standing nearby and watching them to be cut to pieces.

Second example was when my batalion walked just straight on the enemy and stopped a few meter in front of them absolutly calm.

Is there some kind of "thinking in the sense of tactic" on the regimental or division level or is it just "go to the enemy, when you see them in your way stop and may be do some fire?"

Or am I doing something wrong?

Thank you

(sorry for my english)

[lodi57]

Why there is no order to attack or advance? I can`t imagine historical generals to write an order "go to the end of village, deploy a line 200 meters wide, stand there and watch your oponents soldiers marching just near you.."

"Deploy" is an offensive order ; knowing that it doesn't need "attack" or "advance" orders because it exactly means the same. Just a question of vocabulary.

Few of my batalions marched through the enemy line wihtout reaction while the rest of division was standing nearby and watching them to be cut to pieces.

Very strange indeed. I never noticed that in beta test.

[pdmeff]

I understand but I mean an order like "deploy line between village and river when in contact with enemy you are clear to advance (or to fall back)".

And the second thing I expected some kind of complex reaction when my troops spotted enemy between them and their planned destination e.g. flanking, concentrating and pressure. Nothing has happend. Just going forward.

[Gunfreak]

I tried a general assault right now, and the ai just won't they end up just standing around or forming square. very hard to actualy get corps to move

[Los]

Take Command: Second Manassas which in some ways is similar to HISTWAR has a nice feature where you can have your bde commanders adopt different postures such as Offensive Defensive probe etc which gives them general "intent" guidance when they get to a certain area.

I too was scratching my head at this but then again it may be  a matter of translation...

Los

[FranzVonG]

Aren't you supposed to draw the deploy line behind your enemies if you want an offensive posture for the column? Or so I remember from the manual

[Gunner24]

There's some funny stuff happening, which is hard to believe it happened in testing, so, we have to assume "something" went wrong with the demo compared to the full game that was being tested.....there is no way on earth the testers could have missed the strange things that are happening, a few examples :

Two Regiments in a 10+ minute (short range) minute fire fight - after some early loses of men in both Regiments, they get down two 2400 v 2100 men and no more men are lost in either Regiment ?.

Artillery batteries go miles ahead of their Corps and deploy to open fire, is this right ?.

Cavalry fired on by artillery - Cavalry vanish.

Enemy units very close to each other and neither side take any kind of action.

But the main frustration I have so far is with the orders being delivered and/or cancelled....why do so many Corps orders not get carried out ?.  Anyone solved this yet, I know there's a BIG delay in getting from the CiC to the CC but sometimes they NEVER get there and sometimes the orders appear to have been cancelled as they are not there any longer.  If this is a game "feature" it's too many to be sensible.....but even with all that LG looks like it can be the great game we want - but it's needs to work better than the demo !.

[FranzVonG]

But the main frustration I have so far is with the orders being delivered and/or cancelled....

this has never happened to me, strange. Sooner or later all my orders are carried out. What I really hate is when after 1 hour of pure awesomeness (marching of troops, drums, cavalry scouting, early artillery exchanges) units begin to disappear... it's the only game-broker bug for me now.

[pdmeff]

Take Command: Second Manassas which in some ways is similar to HISTWAR has a nice feature where you can have your bde commanders adopt different postures such as Offensive Defensive probe etc which gives them general "intent" guidance when they get to a certain area.

I too was scratching my head at this but then again it may be  a matter of translation...

Los

Yes I know it very well There were also many problems but I did enjoy it. But the best one is ANGW I think, it has AI control and "orders" too.

[Hook]

Artillery batteries go miles ahead of their Corps and deploy to open fire, is this right ?.

It probably is.  You might want to put an infantry unit or two supporting them as was done in the first tutorial.

But the main frustration I have so far is with the orders being delivered and/or canceled....why do so many Corps orders not get carried out ?

This is the main feature that sets Histwar apart from other wargames.  And we're not even getting order delays yet.  Even without delays I've noticed that it may take a while for an order to update on the F8 screen.  If you think it's bad now, wait until you start playing the real game!

Hook

[Gunner24]

And we're not even getting order delays yet.  Even without delays I've noticed that it may take a while for an order to update on the F8 screen.  If you think it's bad now, wait until you start playing the real game!

There are order delays in the demo, in the battle, on Grogs mode.......there is a place that says how long the order wil take to get to the Corps, the further you are away from it the longer the delay is.....so if you send an order at 10am and the delay is 1.5 hours the order should get there at 11.30am......but even at 12 or 12.30 it still shows NO orders.....this is not an isolated case, it happens a lot.  Sometimes the orders vanish, someone has said it might be to do with that Corps Commander not wanting to carry out that order, but if that's right we need to know that !.

You might want to put an infantry unit or two supporting them as was done in the first tutorial.

If the arty unit is a part of the Corps and NOT detached, you would expect the Corps to defend it in some way - no ?.

[Hook]

I wasn't aware that we could change the fog of war options.  Early reports were that it would cause the game to crash.  Now that I know I can, I'm going to.

I think we need some indication that a corps commander hasn't received an order.  Normally the aide-de-camp would return with a receipt telling you that the order was received.  If we don't get that receipt in a reasonable time, then our chief of staff should let us know and offer to resend the order.  That's what the chief of staff is for, after all.  This might already be done automatically.

I'm not sure how to handle a corps commander refusing an order.  It's not like Soult is going to send a note back to Napoleon saying, "Are you out of your mind??"

If you've ever played Turcan's Waterloo, we had the same problems with orders not being delivered or being refused, with no indication that it happened.  It could be quite frustrating. 

I don't know about you, but I expect a corps to send its artillery forward to begin a bombardment before the corps advances.  Napoleon would form grand batteries to begin shelling the enemy before the battle started.  I'm not aware of these batteries being supported by other troops.  It might be nice if the corps sent out a couple of units automatically to support them if they were moving too far away from the body of troops, but even if they don't you can detail a unit or two to support them.  Cavalry would be good for this, for obvious reasons.

Hook

[von Döbeln]

I have also noticed that artillery units tend to deploy well ahead of the rest of the corps. That is not a big problem if you are advancing since your corps will catch up, but when you tell the corps to defend a line and the artillery sets up all alone in no-man's land 100-200 meters in front of the rest of the units there's something wrong IMO. In the Montobello battle I have seen this on several occasions. Of course one can manually order the artillery units to a certain spot and unlimber, but it would be really nice if we could trust the AI commanders to deploy in a decent manner without micro management - there is enough to think about!

LvD

[Gunner24]

the artillery sets up all alone in no-man's land 100-200 meters in front of the rest of the units

Yes, a bit annoying, it would be better if they kept a closer to the Corps units they are part of.

Artillery does appear to get "picked" off by Cavalry easier than I expected, from the flanks, as they are so far ahead of their support troops.  They don't seem to get any protection.

[Gunfreak]

My problem is that corps don't keep togeather, not even divisions.

When I order a corps to attack, 80% of the brigades just stand 500 yards from the enemy why they send 1 and 1 brigade at the enemy numbering 10 000+

The attack is VERY disorganised, and often units end up miles from their corps commander or other units in the same division or corps.

It makes it very hard to actualy prefrom a corianted attack, I can order and order all day long for sevral corps to attack, but in the end only tiny fraction attack and they always attack alone