Quote Originally Posted by Ludens
...and many STW players were not aware that there was such a feature.
Strange, it's there in the pop-up menu for a unit. You would have thought they would have at least tried it once, to see what it did.

I certainly use it myself. If I'm sending in more than one stack, it's the only way to guarantee that the reinforcements will make it onto the field.

If you've taken gun units into battle and it's raining on the day, they have to be withdrawn right away. Routing might get them off the map a little faster but I like to see things done in an orderly fashion. Also, there's no knowing what would happen if they routed through an Ashigaru unit, say, in the rear and caused them to rout too. Not sure if this happens in STW but I gather it's a significant issue in MTW.

I'm very wary of the rout command itself, preferring to let units rout spontaneously. There's always the risk of forgetting that I've got an entire group of units selected at the time.

You also have to watch it with the formation buttons for groups. An accidental double click on the 'square formation' button could be disastrous because the Rout button is positioned directly underneath it! And there's no 'are you sure you want to do this?' dialogue box afterwards...