Quote Originally Posted by Sheogorath View Post
The column was favored by the Russians, mainly for the obvious reason that it gave both strong mobility and more 'punch' in bayonet combat, allowing more weight to be put on a single point. Since the Russian army favored the bayonet over the bullet (as noted in the previous Suvurov quotes), they generally sought to get into melee as soon as possible, allowing their artillery to do the 'softening up' in place of muskets.
Remember this is the ETW era which is the 18th century. There was really no use of columns as seen during the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars.

The basic fighting formation was the line and the whole army was deployed from large march columns quite some distance from the enemy. Just look at Frederick the Great and his maneuvers in his SYW battles.

The concept of attack columns(or perhaps it should be termed "maneuver columns" as the word attack implies they were meant purely for charging) was introduced in mid 18th century but rarely used. It was not forgotten though and was the basis of French discussion and reforms just before the revolution.

Suvurov actually used battalions in line formation and his basic tactics still used multiple platoon firings before advancing closer. His army did run out of ammo on a few occasions during his Italy/Switzerland campaign so it was not all about the bayonet.

But it is all pretty moot. Army/unit movement in Total War has never been realistic anyway, so there is little need to worry about columns except for some special uber attack formation, if that is included in ETW at all.


CBR