Line of sight battles don't work

[Games Guy]

Whenever I start a line of sight battle as either army, all the units are set as tactical reserves and nobody moves. I tried waiting but both armies just stay in their starting positions. I have set three objectives and a point score to reach but nothing happens.

[LHookins]

I've done quite a few sandbox line-of-sight battles. The enemy is out there and probably moving, but the game is set to show only enemies within a certain distance, 1000 yards on Normal difficulty, and you don't see them at first. I usually encounter the enemy army by moving straight forward.

The enemy army seems to ignore objectives for their initial move orders.

Hook

[Games Guy]

I waited two hours and there was absolutely nothing happening does it take that long?

[Games Guy]

Sorry I meant to say as well that I play as a brigade commander. Do I have to play as higher up the chain for things to happen?

[LHookins]

You have to move your troops. The enemy is not moving toward you. The enemy may never come into sight if you do not move.

Try marching straight ahead in the direction your troops start off facing. This is how I've always found the enemy.

Most of my sandbox games have been brigade level.

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[Games Guy]

Will the rest of the army move as well if I come into contact with the enemy?

[Didz]

You need to scout for the enemy, and order your troops to move in whatever direction you think they are. The maps tend to be quite large and even with a full Corps it can sometimes be hard to work out where the enemy are. However, they do move. I think it depends on the way the scenario has been set up.

In my D'Erlon's Corps scenario i found the British marching across the map and managed to outflank them.

In my Prussian Corps scenario my orders were to act as the army reserve and the French found me.

However, in others I've had to scout all over the map to try and find them. So, it does vary.

Originally posted by Games Guy:

Will the rest of the army move as well if I come into contact with the enemy?

If you are not the army commander then you need to be conscious of your orders, as the other formations will be obeying theirs. You can't just shoot off in some random direction and expect everyone else to disobey their orders to follow you.

Hence having been given orders to stay put and wait in reserve, in my Prussian game I did exactly that, and made sure I conformed to the movements a of the formations to my right and left.

[Games Guy]

Ah ok thank you for the detailed reply!

[LHookins]

Trust me on this, in a brigade level sandbox game, the ONLY thing you need to do is move straight forward. If you've checked Balanced Forces there is no rest of the army.

A brigade doesn't have enough forces to scout. Anything you send out will weaken your force, although you might use skirmishers if you don't want to move everyone.

If you're playing a larger sandbox battle, then Didz's explanation is useful.

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[Games Guy]

Thanks for the replies folks!

[LHookins]

Always glad to help. Please let us know how it works out.

I had the same problem at first. No enemy. Sometimes I marched directly to an objective, sometimes I tried marching to the green destination marker (which kept moving). Sometimes I didn't see an enemy for quite a while. Then I noticed the enemy seemed to be directly in front of me, so I started marching straight ahead from my starting location and always found them after that.

Once they were marching across (I think this is one time I went for an objective) and not getting any closer, so I sent out a couple of skirmish units to bait them to my location. This can be done but skirmishers used this way have their morale go down quickly, and they get fatigued from all that running.

Objectives worth 100 points per minute are too powerful for a brigade battle. If you use them, make them worth 100 points every 10 minutes, at least after you learn to win the fights consistently. I finally stopped using objectives and have both won big and lost big. The last battle I had to retreat to the castle at Ligny, and at least two of my battalions were totally out of ammunition.

I finally had to turn off auto display of courier messages to prevent courier spam from my boss, who kept wanting me to go somewhere else. "The officer you have reached is not available at this time. Please leave a message..."

Hook