Historic Waterloo as Wellington

[mcaryf]

Having published a Historic Waterloo as Napoleon scenario, I am now working on Historic Waterloo as Wellington. Given that the Allies will eventually have had nearly twice as many troops as the French I would like to devise ways to make this a more challenging scenario for the Allied player and I would appreciate some advice as to methods I might use to achieve this in particular I have two questions:

1) Napoleon's Grand Battery did cause a fair number of casualties to the Allied units behind the reverse slope. As an example the Duke of Cumberland's Hussars suffered 12% loss without ever having passed over the ridge or directly confronting any French unit. I know that the game does not have an indirect fire capability as guns will not fire without a target but is it ever possible for a shot to damage a unit at which it was not originally aimed? That is does the game evaluate potential hits on other nearby units? If it does then I could look at ways of using that to cause more Grand Battery casualties. If this is not possible, I might have to consider moving objectives that are necessary for Wellington to gain the points to win onto the forward slope so some troops have to be positioned there.

2) In my Historic Scenario as Napoleon I have been able to create an effect whereby there is a chance that some of Wellington's units will withdraw from the battle if the French capture particular objectives, the Duke of Cumberland Hussar's were a real example who fled after the French captured La Haye Sainte. When Wellington is played by the AI then it is possible to take control of the units I want to withdraw, march them to the edge of the map and freeze and hide them when they get there. However if I did that when Wellington is a human player they could simply order them back to the battle before they got to the freeze/hide point. Obviously I could freeze and hide the units wherever they happened to be but that would not be very elegant from the watching player's perspective. Does anybody have a neat suggestion as to how I can achieve this withdrawal effect for player controlled units?

Regards

Mike

[gunship24]

For 2) you can still make units under your command unselectable. For what you want to do the script would look something like:
a) lock unit
b) detach unit
c) move unit
d) hide unit

[mcaryf]

Hi Gunship24

Thank you for your answer. What would it look like if the player happened to be watching these units at that point in time? I would prefer them not to just magically disappear.

Regards

Mike

[gunship24]

They will move like normal, no magic. By locking the unit it makes them unselectable, like having friendly units not under your control. By detaching it means that they cant be commanded at all, and you cant select them to re-attach them. So then you just script them to move around and do what ever.

[mcaryf]

Hi Gunship42

That sounds ideal - now that I have realised that Wellington should already have 6 more batteries as compared with WL20 scenario I shall probably have to script it so a load of his army decamps if the French capture any significant objectives!

Regards

Mike