Hey all! Love love love the game! Can't stop playing it!
I had a few suggestions/features that I would love to have in the game if they are possible.
The ability to man fortifications with more than one unit at a time. I avoid putting troops in at least half of the fortifications in the game, even when defending the ground around them. It is often more efficient to just stand in the trees next to the fortifications, unless they are really good. It always seems that they spread one infantry brigade out to cover about 3 brigades worth of space on the front. This often leads to that one brigade being focused by 3-5 enemy brigades while only able to dish out 1 brigades worth of damage. The result is that your unit breaks relatively quickly and deals less damage to your opponent than he does to you. If it is possible, it would be cool to be able to man a specific fortification with 2 or 3 infantry brigades. Maybe you could just select several infantry brigades and right click on the fortification with them and the game would place them appropriately along the fortification? That way you could maintain a somewhat equivalent amount of firepower and your units would not be subjected to fire from up to 5 enemy brigades at once, instead spreading the damage out among several units.
It would be nice to have more control over when your cannons hold fire and when they open up. What would really help me in my cannon control would be having perhaps 3 buttons on the action bar of a particular cannon brigade. They would be something like 1) Enable/disable grapeshot 2) Enable/disable canister shot 3) Enable/disable round shot (or something like that... not a big expert on the types of cannon fire). This way, I could tell my parrot guns and other long range cannons to only target brigades at medium range and longer and tell my howitzers and napoleons to never use round shot, as it isn't a very good use of ammo and time.
It would also be nice to be able to tell at what respective ranges each cannon starts using a different kind of ammunition. It could be something simple like when you hover over the enable/disable round shot button (from suggestion #2), a portion of the cannon's arc of fire shown on the map would light up as red, corresponding to which section of its fire arc would use round shot or whatever shot type you hovered over.This would primarily help me to learn the nuances of each cannon and use them more effectively. I find myself having to look up artillery guides online a lot, as I cannot figure out how far/close to place cannons to the front line.
Anyway, just a few (albeit long winded) suggestions that may or may not be practical. Again, love the game! =)
