Dispositions of troops

This evening, I decided to test some methods to change the disposition of Brigades within a Division.
I only worked with Infantry, but I assume that Artillery and Cavalry will work the same way.

For example, I would like to take Brigade A, deployed on the left and have it deploy on the right, then stay there in movement.

So, I TC'd the Brigades and moved them to the arrangement I wanted. I then un-TC'd them and moved the Division on the Command Map
by moving the Division commander. The Brigades returned to the original disposition and formation.

I tried this with both Move formations and Combat, with the same result. I did not have time to work through all the stances to see if that made a difference.

Is there a way to rearrange a unit, either in the configuration or on the fly?

Thanks!

What I would do, if I understand your question right, is select the brigade commander, not the battalions.  For basic maneuvers I don't bother with TCing.  There is a manual PDF in the mod folder somewhere that might help shed some light on the way to move troops.  Give him a move order where you want his brigade and then click a formation.  For the sake of practicing, it doesn't really matter what formation you choose. He will be roughly the center of the formation so leave room for him to deploy his troops.  He will generally deploy in two lines regardless of what formation you choose with exception of the move column of course.  He will move his men on his own to the location you desire in the formation you desire.  It's worth just selecting the brigade commander and clicking the formation buttons to see what kind of footprint they will take up.

So far, the basic method is
1.) Select brigade commander
2.) Right click to give move order to brigade commander (he will start marching to the location alone as at this point you have only given him personally a move order)
3.) Click a formation button (this is the button that will tell the commander to move his brigade)
4.) Optionally click the Use Roads red button if you desire the men to reach their location using roads.

That would be for basic maneuvers in the field without any enemy near by.  When enemy are around it becomes a little more difficult as the brigade commander may try to fight or defend his command from the enemy.  If he is on the Hold At All Costs stance he will almost completely ignore the enemy, only responding to enemy units that are immediately close to him.  This stance can be helpful if you want to have a brigade close, but to stay in reserve and not engage the enemy.

TCing things can be quite useful, and some of us prefer TCing any fighting battalions.  I personally only TC battalions if I want to make a very specific push that I don't trust the AI to manage, or if I absolutely need a unit to stand still and so as I say.  An example of the former would be perhaps if a battle was taking place near a particularly deep river and the AI was walking units through it I might TC a few battalions on that side to manually fight near the river without going into the water.  An example of the latter might be if I have my guns in a precarious spot I might TC a battalion and keep them near by so I can react quickly to any danger.  The dangers of TCing are those battalions will not form square if cavalry comes close unless you tell them to, and they also won't turn to fight a flanking enemy on their own.  I find the AI is competent enough for some tasks and the skill in commanding is understanding what situations to put your AI commanders in so that they are the most effective and thus allowing you to keep your attention where you want/need it. Many times I have seen the AI commander doing something that I wasn't immediately satisfied with but by the time I move and 'fix' his battalions he has already corrected his mistake and now me also trying to correct it has caused unneeded chaos.

Thanks very much for the reply. Your answer helps with much of what I am trying to find out about how to manipulate the AI.

Here is an example disposition:

Inf Bde 1...Inf Bde 2......Inf Bde 3...Inf Bde 4
..........................General
Cav Bde

Let us say I expect contact on the right as I move up and I want the best Infantry and the Cavalry on that side, so I would like to change the march and combat order to:

Inf Bde 1...Inf Bde 4......Inf Bde 3...Inf Bde 2
...........................General
...................................................Cav Bde

The disposition is obviously defined for the Commander in the config, but I was wondering if the march order and arrangement could be changed in play and have it hold.

The AI changed the Bdes to Column for the move, regardless of whether I chose Move or Combat. My understanding is selecting a Combat formation should cause the move to be done in that formation, so there is still something I am not doing correctly ( like maybe TCing the Commander, designating the Combat formation at his level, rather than TCing the individual Bdes and doing it ). During the move the Bdes march back to their original disposition and deploy.

After my initial attempts to play scenarios with the resulting normal reaction of "WTF are those guys doing?", I decided I needed to better understand the basic tendencies of the AI. There is good information in Youtube videos and in the manual, but I did not see this particular issue addressed.

Thanks, again!

Hi Glenmorangie and welcome to the KS forums.

Unfortunately the division layout is fixed, so brigade 1 will always deploy on the right, first line, with brigade 2 on the left, first line and brigade 3 on the right, second line and so on. The only way to change this is to reorder the sequence of brigades in the division in the scenario.csv.

Yes, Digby is right. Each formation has it's own 'template. You can get an idea of how the templates are set out by opening the formations.csv files with Microsoft excell or similar.
A way round this could be to have a variety of formations available on the GUI, where the order of Brigades has been changed but that would likely be only possible for playing Divisional Command.
There are already some variants in the KS mod. The KS scenario Generator has several starting formations, such as cab leading.

Ah, I see what you mean now. Digby and Grog are correct as they say you won't be able to get the AI commander to rearrange his brigades order. Though in the case of the cavalry shifting them to the right side for support is do-able, you just need to give that cavalry brigade a manual move order to where you want it, their position in the divisional formation is like the infantry set in stone. I typically only use the divisional scale formations for big movements in this case.

The men moving in march column is strange though. If you click the movement order for the brigade commander and then click the double line formation they should be moving in line. Likewise if you use the column of brigade formation they should be in assault column. It does depend on what nation's army you are commanding though. Some armies make use of some formations and some don't. So that might be part of what you are experiencing? As far as I know they should be moving in the formation you clicked.

Thanks to all of you for the kind and informative replies.

I have the 1.32 mod. I will look for other mods and the Scenario Generator.

I have played two small scenarios, repeating until I have gained some understanding.

The one that elicited my question on dispositions is the first user scenario playing the Austrians.
It is my first attempt with a Corps and I am still working on Infantry tactics.
I have pretty much ignored the Cavalry and Artillery so far and let the AI handle them.
I will keep playing this one scenario until I get a handle on maneuvering and how stances and commanders affect things.

I was getting pretty frustrated a couple of days ago when the battle slowly and uncontrollably became a large train wreck, but then I happened to think, "Ah, this is exactly how a commander IRL loses control!", and how all those un-explainable things that Historians argue about a couple of hundred years later happen.

Thanks for all your hard work on the mods and for your help and explanations. In a couple of years I may have a handle on things...

Do any of you have any tips on moving when you have no scouts?
All the Cav in this scenario is heavy, and the screen and/or scout buttons don't seem to appear.

I was getting pretty frustrated a couple of days ago when the battle slowly and uncontrollably became a large train wreck, but then I happened to think, "Ah, this is exactly how a commander IRL loses control!", and how all those un-explainable things that Historians argue about a couple of hundred years later happen.

Exactly. All those idiotic things commanders did weren't so idiotic when viewed from there perspective of the situation as they saw it.

Do any of you have any tips on moving when you have no scouts?
All the Cav in this scenario is heavy, and the screen and/or scout buttons don't seem to appear.

There's really nothing you can do short of modifying the scenario. The early scenarios were written before we introduced scouts into the mod.

Do any of you have any tips on moving when you have no scouts?

From the divisional level you could try making sure your heavy cav is in the front screening for the infantry. It's not really their job but it can help you get an edge when having an meeting engagement battle where both forces walk into each other. On the Corps command level it might be hard to get your AI to put their cavalry in front without manually doing it, though if they're all close enough together you could probably manually screen all three in some instances.

Maybe we could just upload the Pat folder as a sort of living database of scenarios. I mean they'd be a collection of painfully brutal scenarios but at least the most recent ones would be designed for the current version of the mod.

"All those idiotic things commanders did weren't so idiotic when viewed from there perspective of the situation as they saw it."

I clearly remember standing where Sickles was ordered to deploy at Gettysburgh and thinking, "OK, now it makes perfect sense!".
The place he was told to hold to extend the line is along a stream bed. It is maybe 10 meters below the surrounding terrain and has a visibility forward and behind of maybe 150 meters. The position he moved forward to is on top of the rise, with hundreds of meters of visibility to the front. Of course, it did expose his flank, which he did not pay attention to, but I understood the immediate desire to get up out of the hole he was in.

"There's really nothing you can do short of modifying the scenario. The early scenarios were written before we introduced scouts into the mod."

I think I need to go methodically and modifying the scenario might be justified, but I am learning a great deal slogging through the mud, as it were. Limiting my options gives me time to work out issues as I go. I will probably try it later, after I know enough about the game to make an intelligent judgement.

"Maybe we could just upload the Pat folder as a sort of living database of scenarios. I mean they'd be a collection of painfully brutal scenarios but at least the most recent ones would be designed for the current version of the mod."

I would enjoy having any additional scenarios, no matter how 'painfully brutal'. It will take a long while before I am ready for HITS, but that sounds like the most realistic game play I am likely to find...

Again, I really appreciate the responses and information.

I would suggest (sincerely) that you try HITS from the start. It really changes the entire game, plus the use of couriers to brigade level. I am not aware of any other army/corps level military simulation (outside of the actual military) that fixes the players camera position to (pretty much) first person, and uses digital horsemen to convey every order beyond a few yards. It makes a whole new level of fun, immersion and tension.

Our online MP games are played exclusively in this format, and we have also learned how to keep all the trees and vegetation fixed on for all players so now you can't even toggle off the woods you are in to check on where the heck your regiments have blundered off to.

If trying to get more inside the heads of the how and why the horse-and-musket era commanders behaved, it really is a step towards that.

In our MP games players often take a division and while on your little bubble of the battlefield you may think you've achieved a resounding victory, its only after watching the replay that you realise your army was crushed everywhere else in ignominious defeat (or the reverse).

Ditto what Digby says

HITS also challenges your ability to translate your horseback view onto the game map. It can be very easy at times to get a little “directionally challenged” and even “spatially challenged”. I have more than once tried to squeeze something into a space that looks bigger or move something thru poor terrain that looks much more forgiving in a map.

Just in case there weren't enough suggestions to get in the saddle I would also suggest it.  It combined with the mod really transforms the game into something worth the genre of simulation.  And you might be making it harder or your self by using the helicopter view and getting yourself accustomed to having more information than you otherwise might if you were in the saddle.  But the more important reason is it's way more fun in the saddle and the more time you spend in it the more you'll be used to it.

If you can acceptably maneuver a brigade sized force and you're probably effective enough to come join us for a multiplayer game.  A brigade under a player controlled division is a good place to familiarize yourself with things and being so integrated into a division you can witness how other people play divisions and pick up some tricks, or learn from their own mistakes.  We're not a very competitive bunch and we don't mind mistakes.  In fact messing up is one of the best parts of this mod.  It's always fun to hear about and share the silly things we did that game as we watch the replay and wonder if someone ever made the same mistake in the real wars.

Thanks for the encouragement!

The reason I backed off is I did try HITS in one of the simple Scenarios, but it was really frustrating because I had no basic understanding of how to operate the game. I will go back to it, once I understand the basic formations and movement. Then the action from the saddle won't be a complete mashup. Maybe...

Hi famous Whisky
I'd suggest you just run some test - not the real battle... with unrestricted camera and AI off - it's setting in SoWWL.ini file.
When you see what formations brigades actually form into by checking all the buttons in UI for both "Move" and "Combat" tabs you'll be ready much quicker to implement this in HITS mode. For some things in combat you'll need to play actual battle, to get better grip of, but I think the basics is to know what to expect when you click the certain formation button.

Slange Var

Thanks very much, Miko! I will look at the ini file.

I have found it very instructive to ignore the battle and just watch the movements. Turning the AI off will help a bunch.
I tried to fight a battle, but the lack of knowledge really limited me.
Trying to figure things out while trying to manage fighting, *and* having no understanding of the movements is not productive.

I have been restarting that first Austrian scenario, just making the initial moves, until I can get my stupid subordinates ( there, I have the makings of a fine commander ) to understand what to do and then do it... one of these days, I will figure that out, then work on how to respond meeting the enemy.

Also, taking the time to go through the OB in detail was very helpful in understanding the deployment and in how units and commanders react to orders. Amazingly enough, I discovered that better troops move better and faster.
And they don't wander around the countryside in all sorts of formations when you clearly told them to move in column, using roads.

For some reason, I began my single-malt career with Glenmorangie, maybe because of the first Highlander movie (gasp!). The lesson learned there is that French actors cannot pronounce whisky names correctly. I have stayed with that handle, although these days, I prefer Lagavulin or Laphroaig.

Slàinte mhath dhut cuideachd
( thank you Google translate )

One thing you'll discover is how better factors in the stats section of the OOB or scenario file affects how troops perform. One of the critical ones for artillery is horsemanship which at first sight seems irrelevant but is used to determine how quickly gun teams limber up and unlimber. If you watch your average Austrian battery going into action and time them, then find a French guard horse battery and observe that you'll see a marked difference. I love having a cavalry division that has a French guard horse battery attached. Its like having a battery of German WWII Nebelwerfers, they smack everything down, really quickly and efficiently.

It just goes to show, you can always learn something new. Nebelwerfers de la Garde. I had not heard of them before.

Do they have distinctive uniforms ( outside the normal drab French Imperial Camouflage )?