Tactics Questions - Line and Column, Stacked or Not Stacked

[phoenix]

Before I started playing these games I had the (perhaps naive) idea that what Napoleonic warfare might mainly consist of was the enemy forming long lines opposite each other and firing away. Very occasionally there might be a close combat situation. In other words, the battles ought mostly to have been lines firing at each other. But that has NEVER happened in any game I've played, against any opponent. I never see opposing units marching to within firing range, forming line opposite each other then spending several turns actually firing at each other.

The reason why, as far as I can see, is that you almost always get a bonus - the bonus the OP is talking about - for attacking melee in column. (Perhaps the British troops are an exception here and get no such bonus, but instead get some kind of line fire bonus? Not sure.) And melee attacks are nearly always the attack of choice to shift units from territory, to disorder them, to cause large losses etc.

Plus, once you're disordered you can't change formation. So the last thing you ever want, perhaps, is to be caught in a line trying to do the Napoleonic thing with a column attacking into you. Because once your line units are hit and disordered they are going to be stuck that way for quite a while, in a disordered line, unable to move very rapidly (without continuing disorder too, if that option is selected), unable to effectively melee, unable to get much of a line fire effect because they're disordered.

So there is pressure, as troops near your own, not to form orderly lines to fire at them, but to get into columns before they hit you.

Am I doing things wrong, I wonder? Missing something?