1776 - 2nd attempt to understand the game

[rahamy]

I don't have time to wade into this series now...nor for many months to come most likely, but did want to make a couple of comments:

John's over all design philosophy was not to overly restrict players - outright preventing them from doing things, but rather impose penalties within the game systems for non-historical behavior. So, it's not prevented from meleeing in Column formation, but units in Column can't fire. Also, once a melee is conducted all participants are Disrupted, which gives them a lower movement value among other negative impacts. So if you melee in Column then you are placing your forces at a serious disadvantage for following turns, especially if they don't return to good order immediately.

Indians are represented as essentially loosely formed skirmishers. They are generally armed with "small arms" = limited range, but with melee benefits. They also operate in either column or extended line - which means they aren't intended to stand and fight toe to toe with regular line units, but rather move quickly and harass flanks and the rear of the enemy... extended line is very good for this.