Sunday battle - CinC notes

I had several instances near Smolensk on Tuesday where someone's infantry would march through my gun line and then halt and form square right in front of them while I was trying to shoot at some enemy cavalry. Quite frustrating!

, who's infantry would that be? (for the lack of woods, proximity of warm cannon barrels is a good substitute, maybe?)

Kevin - the game mechanism that makes units surrender when they are isolated and near large numbers of enemy - can it be looked at in any way?

That's a game engine decision. It is very likely due to the cavalry wanting to retreat, but there is no clear path for them to take. As Mike said, this is almost always the result of a single unsupported regiment getting carried away.
A historic analogy would be the cavalry charge, (walk really), at Eylau. They carved a path deep into the Russian position. However, because it was so slow moving due to the deep snow, the Russians could mostly move out of the way. When the cavalry passed by, the Russians closed the gap. The cavalry was effectively trapped. It took a second charge by the guard cavalry to reopen the path and allow Murat and his troopers to escape.

"That's a game engine decision"

Can it be modified? Can we convert the surrender option to a retreat? Can we override the surrender option entirely?

The Eylau example isn't really relevant since the French cavalry didn't surrender. I don't think there is a logical equivalent in any Napoleonic battle - remember the cavalry in question is usually winning and winning easily, both time it happened to me in that game my regiments had racked up huge scores. Its sometimes not practical to send a whole brigade in to such an attack since our brigades are based as regiments and one often only has two such units, so that would mean committing entire brigades - everyone's cavalry would need to behave as though they were British!

Remember we also have a lot of 1-regt brigades.

Can it be modified? Can we convert the surrender option to a retreat? Can we override the surrender option entirely?

actually we could live with cavalry not being able to surrender, but to rout instead... the worst what would happen if cav unit is really trapped it would be cut down to zero...

Can it be modified? Can we convert the surrender option to a retreat? Can we override the surrender option entirely?

No, no and no. It's game engine code.
Eylau is relevant. If the guard cavalry hadn't rescued them, many if not most would have been killed or captured. My point was that even a very large mass of cavalry could suffer such a fate. A single regiment charging deep into an enemy formation would be even easier to cut off and destroy. It might not surrender, but at the very least it would be completely dispersed. Whatever we choose to call it, the unit would be combat ineffective for the rest of the battle.

Okay Kevin, but in our games we never have situation like Eylau, when infantry blocks the way of retreat...
remains being over-cautious with cav and sending retreat order to them if they are going after enemy too far away from friendlies...

... except of course when I might be doing something stupid with a cavalry unit....

Glad to see this group is still together. Wish I had the free time but you know how it is once you have a young one even getting 30 min uninterrupted is challenging. Maybe someone with a fast computer could twitch stream it would be fun to watch the battles play out in real time.

Your wish is our command...

https://mixer.com/DumpTruckGames

Now you can bounce bubby on your knee while watching us virtual generals all make idiots of ourselves.

BTW, great to see you again Baldwin. There are babysitters you know! Once a week for 4 hours would do it!