Cover?

[Didz]

Can anyone explain the benefit of taking cover behind a wall on the map?

The trick I found was to use the cover without becoming attached to it.

The observation you make is perfectly accurate. If you allow you men to cower behind the wall, they will do exactly that. They will cower behind the wall and hardly ever pop their head over to fire at the enemy, they also seem to be reluctant to reload after firing. So, any benefit you gain from the wall is lost by the fact that your men become little more that targets in a shooting galley.

The other big disadvantage I found was that using the wall to cower behind forces you to use a standard 'lets all hide behind this wall' formation which is not always the best formation for the unit involved.

My preferred approach now is to form my troops behind the wall, without actually attaching them to it. This allows them to use their full firepower potential (e.g. Volley fire, Platoon Fire, etc.) whilst still gaining some protection from enemy fire which will still hit the wall in front of them.

It has the added advantage that if the enemy try to charge into close combat, they actually have to climb over the wall to get to you. Not too much of a problem for infantry, but cavalry can get themselves in a terrible mess trying to jump and fight at the same time.

One word of caution however, be careful about the placement of artillery in this position. You either need to make sure the gun muzzles actually protrude through the wall, or make sure that they are far enough back from it that the trajectory of the shot will clear the top. If not then at best you will be firing into the wall and never hit the enemy, and at worst you can actually destroy your own gun with an exploding shell (I've actually managed to do this with a bale of hay, too, so beware of deploying artillery in hay fields). Cannister fire will lose some of its effect when fired from behind a wall, but not enough to notice.

The only troops I actually attach to the wall now are melee troops who are being used in a defensive or 'speed block' strategy. They can't fire back anyway, so hiding them behind the wall tends to preserve their lives longer.