Are their any House Rules for Tactical Battles?

[Greyshaft]

I bought FOF as a Christmas present for myself and am having a wonderful time with it. I play all battles as Detailed Battles because that's the way I like it but I'm finding that I need to develop some House Rules to limit my own shameful tactics. Here are some things I do that I really shouldn't do:

• Although I try and keep a Division together on the Battlefield I will still move a Brigade away from the rest of its Division to plug a far-distant hole in my line or exploit a gap in the enemy's line. In reality the Division commanders would not have split their division like that and they would never have had the God-like view from 30,000 feet to realize where the gap was.
• When the enemy is on the run I will try to surround a brigade on six sides to force it to surrender and I will even use a supply unit to cover an open hexside. That is just plain wrong - supply should be behind the battleline - not part of it.
• If the Advisor tells me that there are 13 units in the enemy line and I can see them all on the board then I know that my flanks are secure and in reality I shouldn't have that knowledge

So those are some of my underhand tactics against the AI. Has anyone worked out their own House rules for limiting such unnatural behaviour on the battlefield. If there is an external set of rules I'll have no problem in following it but I find it hard to set my own.

Thanks

[Jonah]

I'm a little confused by what you mean as 'house rules'. But as for those incidents brought up there are easy ways to explain it-

1. With the first ones, brigades were 'temporaily detatched' quite often. At the Battle of Gettysburg for instance, two of Hood's brigades were under temporaily service of McLaws, Anderson's entire division was under temporary command of Longstreet for a day, two of Rodes and one of Early's brigades were under Johnson etc. In general, divisions even in FoF stay together, but like the commander on the field, you have the liberty to detatch them, which is entirely up to you.

2. This is a bit of a weak issue when it comes to the supply wagons, something I would generally like to see changed.

3. You can stop the third problem by adding the Fog of War feature.

And all in all, FoF is not a simulation, it's a tactical war game, which prevents certain realism features by the nature of the game, such as possessing unrealistic knowledge and views, ditto, ditto, etc, etc.

[Randomizer]

I stick to my tactical combat house rules even when it hurts.  Sometimes it hurts badly.

1.  Only detach brigades from their parent division at the start of a battle or during night turns.  Therefore a division that might be getting its flank turned or positioned to exploit a golden opportunity is on its own.

2.  No independent brigade or brigade from another division may be placed between brigades of a different division except during a night turn when it will then be considered attached to that division for all purposes and no longer part of its original division.

3.  Corps troops (generally cavalry or artillery but sometimes sharpshooters) must remain within their corps area but may be attached to other Corps or divisions within the parent Corps on the first turn or during the night in a manner similar to brigades.

4.  No effort is made to surround enemy brigades by moving units from more than 1 division.  Only where a single division can surround an enemy brigade by pinning it using impassible terrain is surrounding attempted.  {Needless to say this does not happen too often in my tactical battles.}

5.  Supply wagons are an Army resource and can supply any brigade regardless of command, they are never used to surround units and cannot enter yellow or red threat zones (although they can remain in them provided they do not move at all).

6.  Once the enemy WTF breaks only cavalry brigades may conduct a pursuit, infantry brigades will remain in place or move no closer to the enemy map edge until all are resupplied and adjacent to another brigade in their division.  Only when these conditions are met can they take up a pursuit.  {Up until the last year of the Civil War, with few exceptions the pursuit of a defeated army was inevitably poorly managed, late and generally ineffective.}

7.  When FoF deploys units on the tactical map divisions are grouped together but Corps are not.  Therefore the first order of business in any battle where multiple corps are present is to consolidate the component divisions of each Corps.  This sometimes means missing an opportunity to sieze tactically important ground or hanging a sub unit out to dry and that is just too bad.

Common sense needs to be used applying house rules but in general I will act (or not act) in a manner that seems reasonable for the era or that benefits me instead of the AI.

[Greyshaft]

Hi Jonah... I know I have the god-like ability to detach brigades and move them where I want them, but reality wasn't like that. I am looking for guidelines to make my actions more in line with the reality of war and randomizer has given me exactly what I wanted.

I will probably still allow adjacent brigades to flow around a semi-surrounded enemy unit and thereby complete the encirclement but the rest of your suggestions are excellent.

[Randomizer]

This is probably a blinding glimpse of the obvious but to facilitate command and control as it applies to my house rules I make sure that all brigades in a division use a unique flag that generally has little to do with its state of origin.  Due to the odd way the FoF manages unit names it can be at times confusing as to which brigade belongs what division and the flags can help to graphically address this.
 
Glad to be of some help.