Napoleonic tactics?

Has anyone tried if Napoleons real tactics and formations really work ingame?

For example, the French units moved in pretty tight formations, but if you do the same in game, artillery will annihilate your tight packed troops.

In my opinion, they dont exactly work, but they can be modified to work.

Are you talking about vs. AI?

Yes I have.

And no they don't - when you are fighting the AI defence is king - but in almost everyone of his battles Napoleon attacked.

Not true BTW about the French attacking in column - this like many other serious misconceptions about military history is the fault of Charles Oman who misinterpreted the evidence from the Battle of Maida and was copied by virtually every other historian until quite recently.

The fact is that the French followed the 1791 drill book which stipulated that marches were made in different width columns but when the column got into battle it would deploy into a line or into skirmish order - in fact the term used for a line was 'en bataille' which tells you that it was the default combat formation.

Even raw recruits who were barely capable of firing a musket volley were generally able to form from column to line before attacking (which challenges the myth that it was the untrained volunteers of the Revolutionary War that could only attack in column).

On occasion the French left deploying from column into line too late (i.e.after they got into musket range rather than before) and got badly shot up or charged in the act of deploying - this happened multiple times fighting the British due to their nasty habit of hiding invisibly behind slopes so that the French commanders misjudged where to begin deployment and were surprised when the British line suddenly popped up on top of the hill and fired withering volleys into them while they were still en colonne.

On even rarer occasions (at Wagram and Waterloo) they used massive and cumbersome division columns which were basically 3, 4 or 5 battalions deep formed in line one behind the other.

So real French tactics would involve advancing in columns to just short of musket range and then deploying into line, advancing, firing a few volleys and then charging with the bayonet.

However as in NTW there is no great advantage in terms of speed to moving in column rather than line you'd be safer advancing all the way in line.

You also can't really use the key Napoleonic tactic of massing mobile grand batteries and directing their fire at enemy weak spots to soften them up for the infantry attack as foot artillery can only move at a snails pace and so is rarely worth moving around.

And having a big heavy cavalry reserve massed for a decisive charge generally doesn't work with a 20-unit limit - having say 4 units of cuirassiers and carabiniers plus enough cannon for a grand battery, some light cavalry and maybe a unit or two of guards will leave you with too few infantry to attack with.

I'd have to disagree with the defence is king concept. You can also successfully attack the AI without firing any artillery if your cavalry performs well.

you can successfully attack the AI, but your going to take a LOT more losses than if you defend. If you just sit your troops on a hill and wait for the AI to send its units at you piecemeal, you can take a victory with virtually no losses.
while it is possible to beat armies in attack formation, its almost impossible to lose when defending.

As long as casualties are kept at acceptable levels (for me this is up to 300) I'm ok with attacking because I can end the battle in 5-10 minutes, whereas if I play defensively, it takes 3 or 4 times as long. Plus, the action is just more exciting.

@OP
Using cavalry historically works, but different countries had different cavalry tactics. French tactics work well, British I have some trouble pulling off consistently.

Thats true, i usually attack as well, just because it means the AI won't get killed QUITE so badly =p

and i can understand what clodius is saying about cavalry and arty as well.
the 20 unit limit really forces you to severely weaken one type of your forces in order to be strong in another.

As always difficulty level is key - at VH/VH most armies will suffer serious casualties even if they fight defensively - whereas an all out attack can leave you with a small fraction of your original army and stop your offensive dead for several turns even if you win.

Of course if your army consists entirely of howitzers you can probably beat those odds...

So I am not saying you can't win attacking a la Francais - even at VH/VH the AI are too stupid to defend themselves well - but that it is much more costly to do so in NTW than it was for the real Napoleon.

So if you are fighting to win territory rather than just enjoy random battles you generally need to take at least two stacks rather than one to be reasonably sure of having enough men left after a big battle to take and hold the province.

And another thing...

Strategically Napoleon's success depended on the use of the battalion carre - having 4 or more self-sufficient corps march deep into enemy territory in a roughly diamond formation with no corps being separated from another by more than a days march.

This meant that when a corps encountered an enemy army it was usually strong enough to hold it off alone for one day giving the other corps time to march toward the sound of the guns and outflank and envelop the pinned enemy.

And this can't be done in NTW - you can have your 4 stacks advance in a battalion carre but because reinforcements are broken its very hard to engineer it that an attacking army will get reinforced in battle by another army behind it - whereas defending armies will automatically reinforce each other if their stacks are within reach.

So just as the battle system favours the tactical defensive so the campaign system rather favours the strategic defensive.

Both mean that unless you are very good indeed you can only reliably succeed playing aggressively like Napoleon himself at easy or normal difficulty levels.

Historically, 4 independent corps also moved significantly more quickly than a single army 4x their size. The maxim "march divided, fight united" doesn't really mean anything in NTW ... or any other strategy game I can think of offhand.

But I still like dividing them to corps like the starting units in the grand campaign (but put all cavalry to Murat's stack), and closely follow each other to provide reinforcements. I just can't stand two generals commanding the same army.
I usually put my men into columns before charging if I had time. Because I notice columns will suffer less casualities to musket fire and charging line formation tend to go slower because they often change directions while charging (very annoying to look at, do you notice this bug??).