Massed Courier Behaviour

Had another single player HITS practice tonight, and manged to get a couple of screenshots of the weird courier behaviour I noticed yesterday.

This time it wasn't just me causing it, there were massed French couriers charging about triggered by the AI.

Massed Couriers Player:

You can see a long stream of them leaving my position and heading to the Guards Flank Companies. Every time I hit W another one was generated, (Not sure if W is a Hot-Key for something.)

Massed AI Couriers:

What looks like a enemy cavalry regiment in full retreat turned out to be a mass of French couriers generated by a single French General who had managed to get himself behind my lines. They died instantly when they ran into my units and flooded my inbox with duplicate captured messages.

That behavior will happen when a battery commander ends up well away from his guns. Usually they have been scattered by a cavalry charge. The only way to stop it is to kill off the guns if you can.

That would explain it, as the practice session I was playing was generated at random and consisted of two opposing brigades.  Mine was Maitland's Brigade of Guards, and the French got a brigade of artillery.  I wasn't quite sure how to deal with them so I had ordered the Guards to make an all out attack and the guns had scattered rather than try to hold their positions and fire, so it's quite likely my infantry were between them and their officers.

The whole battle turned into a bit of a farce with Maitland's guards running around trying to catch various guns before they could escape, but being unable to catch them. In the end I quit the game at about 3am, and decided I'd at least gained a morale victory and massacred hundreds of couriers .

I feel your pain. The courier system is one of the most awesome parts of the game but when it goes wrong it goes wrong awesomely too!