I do not play with this rule ON.
The reasons were well summarized in New Settings Project:
“........we hope to find a number of players who want a more historical feeling for their battles: less blitzkrieg and massacres and more maneuver and morale breaking.
The main point is the low-morale approach. The current effective morale of units is too high, allowing the players to send decimated and highly fatigued units back into the fray, to kill and be killed. This (among other reasons) provokes battles with way too high casualties. Historically the men would abandon the field before reaching these high casualty levels.
One way to reduce effective morale is not using the morale-boosting optional rules: flank morale bonus and rout limiting. This makes massive assaults more dangerous, since one rout can spread to a whole sector. It also favors rest and reorder of your units: leaving them in the front line means risking a rout spread that can open a big gap in your defence.Another way is through OOB changes........ Soldiers too brave and stoic. The morale of units is too high and the control of the commander too tight. Decimated, heavily fatigued Bns. go back to the front line ready for more bloodshed.”
WillieD13 wrote: I think without it, you get extremely unrealistic results. I've had whole lines up and rout, simply from a couple artillery shots at one unit.
- Firstly, this is just pure numbers game – in terms of engine calculations, the chances that a whole division will rout due to an artillery hitting a couple of dozens of men in one battalion are extremely slim.
- Secondly, it COULD happen and there is nothing wrong with this situation occurring now and then:
“Panic gathered volume like a snowball.
The situation on battlefield was fluid and fast moving, men were under tremendous stress and troops could be overcome with panick in any moment. Often those who started the run, and thereby spread the fear, which started the panic, had a legitimate or at least a reasonable excuse for the action. For example, an officer was hit and the next he was running for a first-aid station in the rear without telling his own troop why he was getting out. They took out after him and the line broke. Others who hadn't seen the officer make his dash saw someone else in flight. They too ran. It all happened in a flash as fear is contagious. Other men nearby become stampeded by the appearance of flight. Only if the enemy was not in close pursuit there was chance to stop the flight.
- In 1814 at Berg-op-Zoom, the British 55th and 69th Regiment of Foot advanced in the dark then suddenly broke and fled in a wild panick. According to Geeorge Nafziger "not a shot was fired at them, nor was a single Frenchman seen." (- "Imperial Bayonets" 1996 p 164)
- Costello described panic in the British Light Division that occured during a siege. "Here a very strange panic occurred, that might have been attended with most disastrous effects. ... when a general alarm and outcry was raised in the division that 'The French were upon us'. In a moment I started up, and seized my rifle. The different regiments were assembling in the greatest disorder, while the general cries of alarm on all sides induced many to feel a terror that was, perhaps, never felt in battle. ... After a short while the panic ceased: we all looked foolish enough at the great ado about nothing, though some attributed the cause to French spies having got among us, others to some bullocks grazing by ..." (Costello - "The Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns" p 70)
- Chlapowski described panic among the French soldiers of Marshal Davout's superb corps during foraging. Chlapowski writes, "At midnight we were woken by a great uproar from behind Marshal Davout's corps on the right. The Emperor and all his staff mounted up and he sent some of us off in the direction of the shouting. We came back over the next half to three quarters of an hour with reports that many of our soldiers were running about without their weapons, shouting that Archduke John was upon us. But the Emperor was not disturbed by these stories ... It turned out that this nonsense had been started by French soldiers foraging for food and hay in the night, who had run across some Bavarian soldiers doing the same thing, and on hearing them speaking German had fled in panic spreading the rumor which had eventually reached us." (Chlapowski - "Memoirs of a Polish Lancer" p 87, translated by Tim Simmons)”
http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_tactics_2.htm#_esprit_de_corps
- Finnally, there is a fundamental deficiency in how HPS projects masses of men on space (terrain). For example, a player can mass a division in three-four-five stacks of 1,500 infantry in each (or 600 caavalry in each) in order to defeat enemy battalions of 700-800-900 men in line.
This is fundamentally wrong as it was not possible to pereserve formation of so many men in so limited space. This is not historical and massvie clashes of thousands of men densly packed on a mere a few hundred metres of the ground also contributes to excessive casulaties. Simiralry, a battalion in line of 800 men creates tremendous firepower in front of its 100m front, which is rather suited for battles of WWI. In reality a battalion of 800 men formed in three ranks should cover about 200 in line and hence have far less firepower projecting on 100m of the front.
Rout limiting ON aggravates this problem further by promoting a player to mass units in the same or contiguous hex for attack or line them up in contiguous hexes in defence (in line) to maximis fire power or melee potential. The more historical approach is to leave gaps in between unis to avoid massive routing, and also to rely on second eshelon and tacktical reserves rahter than on massive stacks of troop aiming to resolve the combat in one massive half an hour melee.
Napoleonic battles were about breaking the enemy morale - not about massacring half of the enemy army. Rout limiting ON is one more step towards excesive losses.
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