Enemy troops slipping through my corps

[Technopiper]

This is frustrating. Routed Austrians were able to slip right through my encirclement and retake cities. I had this happen many times at Augsburg. They are unlikely to slip by if I am sitting between them and a bridge, but not if the bridge is between us. They would move into my hex then move out right behind me, and run all the way to Munich! How is that possible? We are talking about corps-sized units and each hex is about 70 sq kilometer in size.

I suspect it is partly because of the limitations of WEGO, and partly because there's no "hexside ownership". Any suggestion on how to prevent the sneaky enemy from running away?

[Rasputitsa]

First of all I don't know how the game manages this, but here are a few thoughts.

The game does not have hex ownership, many units of both sides can occupy a hex at the same time over several turns, which is why it is necessary to shuffle stacks, or mouse-over to see the hex stack count and see if enemy units are hidden with your own.

You can't see the strength of enemy units, Thelen infantry could be a full division of several thousand men marching in formation, bands playing, or be at low strength having had stragglers and wounded, which only represents a few hundred men left fleeing in panic. It's only in the battle stats that you see enemy strength, so I take screen shots of the battle panels to keep record of the action.

In Napoleonic warfare you don't dominate the terrain as in modern warfare, you only dominate where you stand and control those men who can hear your voice. A division of infantry could pass a unit of enemy cavalry and provided both are in formation and under control there is not much either can do to each other.

Units are only effective when in formation and under control, able to deploy the tactics for which they have trained. The day is 24hrs long and units cannot stay in formation continuously, especially at night, there are many opportunities for units to slip through a hex sized area of country.

Men who have thrown away their weapons and equipment are always going to run faster than men still in command and waiting for orders.

Units with 'engage' orders are more likely to intercept enemy units.

Basically you are not holding ground, but attempting to disrupt and break enemy units so that you can then drive them to destruction, provided your own units can stand the pace as stress builds up on both sides.

From the horse and musket era, after defeat at the battle of Gettysburg the whole Confederate army, 10,000s of men, many wounded and 1000s of wagons, including guns, were able to leave the battlefield and depart, whilst the victorious Union army was not able to do much to impede them.

Mass encirclements don't seem to happen much in Napoleonic warfare, sometimes maybe as at ULM in 1805 there was a mass surrender, but that was because they were trapped in a town, mostly when things start to go wrong each unit, or man, makes their own decision to bug-out and become 'shattered'.

The trick is to have fresh units available to drive routed enemy forces to destruction, but difficult to do.

Don't know if this helps, because there is no straight answer, except to consider detachments to hold bridges and towns, they will be swept away by large enemy forces, but they might delay them and may stop routed enemy units.

[Technopiper]

Thinking more about it, I guess hexside control would make it too easy to capture enemy units. Annihilation should never be easy. I've found that you can better trap the enemy by placing one corps behind the other along the road. Don't tell them to "march to the guns" or they might leave position.

[Rasputitsa]

The game does sometimes permit 'encirclement', in the AAR when playing as Coalition, the corps of KOLOWRAT was trapped when the AI occupied all the road exits from his position. The whole corps was lost, although it took several turns to finish it and the AI did that.

I think it's different for shattered units essential running away, they seem to pass.