Questions and Observations

[Trilogy]

I'm playing and replaying the Corps tutorial for practice and to make sure I understand all game commands. Also for sight-seeing.

Questions I have on the Corps tutorial itself:

--I'm told to send one division up to assist the 11th Corps. I do so, and a little later I notice that my artillery commander has also gone up (along with all the guns) to support XI Corps. I never gave him orders to do so. Is he acting in accordance with a hidden scenario script, or is he just taking initiative? If I want to restrain his initiative, is there any way to do so with orders, or is it necessary to Take Command?

More general questions:

--When I give orders via clicking on the ground (but with couriers enabled), how many orders does one courier carry? Let's say I give a divisional commander an order to go to a location, face a direction (although I can't see the arrow yet), form his division in double line, and use the roads. It seems that sometimes all this is accomplished with one or two couriers, sometimes with three or four. (Sending so many couriers makes me feel like Groucho Marx: "And anotha thing!")

--Speaking of this, might it be possible to have the arrow and footprint appear immediately upon giving the order? Right now it won't appear until the courier reaches the officer, and I invariably wind up having to adjust the facing with another courier.

--I notice that the "footprint" for various formation orders is inconsistent. Giving a "column of divisions" order always lines up the troops behind the commander's location, while ordering "column of regiments" lines them up ahead of him (or maybe it's vice versa). Is it possible to standardize the leader's location as "middle front" of all formations?

--By the way, am I right in thinking that the "divisions" in "column of divisions" are each half a regiment? This has always confused me (because of the larger meaning of "Division"), although I know the terminology is correct for the period.

[GShock]

Even if you TC an AI general, if he has scripted behavior he will revert to UnTCed and ignore your orders. Arty is quite tricky even without scripted orders. Make sure arty leaders have no strategic orders or you really will find out you can't move them at all.

Courier sends one order at time. That's why I asked 1 courier to send all orders to recipient. You build the order (I counted up to 5 different instructions) and then hit on the courier button and off he goes. You can't see the formation lineup because the ghost flags appear only after the recipient has received the order for example... this means if the formation is wrong, or you wrongedly clicked somewhere else, you'll have to start all over again. This feature needs a bit of tweaking before it can be fully exploited.

[Jim]

In terms of a regiment subformation, a division is two companies. So a regiment of the standard 10 companies in a 'column by divisions' would be in five lines stacked up behind each other, each line being two companies wide:


Co 1 Co 2
------|-------
------|-------
------|-------
------|-------
------|-------

In practice this was somewhat flexible as illness and casualties depleted the unit strength, different commanders adapted in different ways.

-Jim