The misunderstood wedge formation

[Esquidaz]

The misunderstood wedge formation

There were three major victory (or defeat, if you were on the other side) in history.

The first one is well known, the Hannibal encirclement of Roman army at Cannae. This battle is why we talked so much about flanks in this forum.

The second one is the Battle of Agincourt between Henry V and Charles VI, where the powerfull French knight was defeated by the "correct" type of weapon, longbows. This forum also talked much about this rock-paper-scissor theory.

The third one, that established Napoleon as a military genius, was the Battle of Austerlitz, which I will talk a little longer.

The wedge formation is seldom mentioned in this forum, and when it was, usually with negative tone, ".. want to kill your bad general? Give his unit wedge formation and charge right into the enemy ...". There, you have the wedge formation usefulness yet a wrongly applied one

But refer to the Battle of Austerlitz, and you will see how it could be a usefull weapon in some battle situations.

Napoleon marched into the battle with an army that both lesser in quality and quantity, yet he emerged victorious. He could not beat his opponent as Hannibal. By then, every general in Europe already aware the peril of encirclement, so there were no way they (Prussian and Austrian) will fall to the same trap. And he cannot use Henry V advantage, too. Their weapon type and doctrine were just about the same.

So Napoleon devised a plan that would draw one part of unexpecting Austro-Prussian army to one side, and when he saw a gap in between, just a few hundred meters, he sent his center to wedge it, and broke them into two.

The advantage of doing this is there were four Austro-Prussian flanks against French three. That enabled the French army to move more freely to encircle and crush one part of their opponent, then moved the winning part to sweep the other part.

And that is how wedge formation should be applied (and I think that is what the designer had in their mind when offering this formation). To charge BETWEEN enemy units, not right into it. The delicate part is to decide which kind of unit to be used as the wedge.

[henoch]

wedge-breakthrough. me done so also, but what is the +3 att/wedge for then. (..in translation to the "CA" coding)

[derF]

Very interesting. Ill give it a go.

Mostly i use wedge for charging cavilry into swordsmen.

For extra massacre, head-wedge-charge 40 Kataphraktoi into 100 peasants. Always makes me cry.

[Mithrandir]

Wedge works well in a shock (Ghazi f.e.) vs. spearmen battle, units also move faster in wedge formation.

I used wedge in the end game with depleted (cav)units to increase the damage they initially did.

(on a historical note : The french lost at agincourt because they were heavily armoured, which sunk them in the mud. Too many french, they trampled eachother).

[Mithrandir]

The other responses have been split to a seperate thread in the Monastery, here :
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=40745

[Ludens]

It has been mentioned (and forgotten again) before that the wedge works really well against holes in the enemies formation. The problem with wedge is that though it gives a powerful +3 attack and a push-back bonus, it gives -3 defence making the unit very deadly and very vulnerable at the same time. I never use wedge, but I understand that is is very maneuverable and cannot be flanked. It is not faster than close formation (at least not when I checked it in S:TW) but it can turn more easily. For me, units in wedge die too fast to make it worthwhile. If I want to exploit a chink in the enemy formation I use a column.

BTW, the tactic you mentioned as being invented by Napoleon was already used by Alexander the Great at Gaugemela. Nothing's new .