Scourge of War Boards

If u order ur troops to lie down,

a) are they harder to see?

b) can cannon fire through them?

I believe they are harder to see, yes. They are certainly harder to hit!

Friendly cannon can fire over them, yes.

The main reasons to lie troops down is to reduce casualties from incoming artillery fire while their brigade is holding a position, and to recover fatigue.

Note that if their morale is low, they rally more slowly when lying down due to it being harder for the officers to communicate to the men I presume and because scared men might be more prone to crawl off and hide if they can!

ok, tnx

As far as I know, when laying down:

They take less damage from artillery.
They recover from fatigue faster.
They cannot rally at all.


I have had no reason to believe they are harder to see, harder to hit with rifles, or less obstructive to friendly artillery. Is there evidence that any of these are true?

They certainly do not get the rally icon when lying down. I've never left a low morale unit lying down long enough to see if they will gain morale. I, like Garnier, believe they will not rally while on their bellies.

Good questions - afraid I dont know the answers! Maybe one of the other guys can enlighten us because it would be good to know for my own games.

Ive also noticed the green rally flag doesn't appear when lying down - you usually have to decide, fatigue or morale! I usually go for fatigue unless they were about to break.

I know for sure that 'Lie Down' is not near as effective as it should be in protecting troops from cannon or small arms fire. I'll put this issue in our Future Depot bug/feature list, but it will not addressed in the next patch, 1.5, apologies.