This was a design decision on my part. For instance some of the battalions in an Austrian regiment have the ability to detach one company. You must know that the Austrian army was still not into individualistic actions by its men and being in light formation was of course the height of that at that time.
Even the great Grenzer units were rarely used in Light formation which was ridiculous as they were well versed in fighting in open order in the Balkans vs. the Turks. They "cut their teeth" on such fighting. Napoleon felt that they were the best warriors in the Hapsburg army.
The Tyrolean Jagers mainly fought in line (2 rank too). The grenadiers and line infantry mainly fighting in line or battalion masse or a couple of other formations.
When you see a Restricted unit, thus, it means that I am putting the historical limitations on the Austrians.
Contrast this with Davout who had entire divisions trained to fight in open order.
Now here is the drawback of open order - no offensive punch. Thus if the French does deploy in open order in Clear terrain just get a brigade of Austrian Dragoons and run them down. If in the woods, just ignore them. Stay out of the woods with the Austrian army if you can help it. That is not their strong point anyway. Their artillery is useless in the woods too. And they have tons of guns.
If you MUST fight in the woods then grab your 3rd Divisions and use them in that element keeping some big battalions handy to exploit openings.
More often than not you will find that you can do pretty well with your light divisions if you keep the battalions in command range of your leaders. Therein lies a problem: the lights are always groups with cavalry. So if you fight in the woods you wont need the cavalry anyway - just keep them back for now. If fightin the open though you will have a decent one-two punch. The infantry of the light brigades can take villages, the artillery can support the attack and the cavalry can charge for emphasis.
But the light brigade concept is not very good for the Napoleonic wars. Much better for modern war where you need a good combined arms group. But still terrible for city fighting. Armor in the city is at best a liability and I am speaking of European towns and not so much Middle Eastern villages.
|
