Well it's a mixed bag.
Pros!
1. great maps, while scaled slightly down, it does give a great feel of the battlefield. The other maps while not historic feel right.
2. Huge battles, in standard size the full waterloo battle will have 35 000 sprie soldiers. I play at 1:4 so that would be 47 000 sprite soldiers.
3. great ai, challeing, expolite weakness, always looking for ways to flank.
4. Real chian of command.
5. on seasoned deficulty all orders are by currier, so the battle I play as wellington trying to control 191 000 soldiers is hard.
6. also on seasoned and above, only line of sight, I still have no idea were part of my army is. I think I've found about 80% of it. it looks like the rest is converging on the action by it self.
7. most uniforms are there(some are missing like gendarmes of the guard and mameluks. the empress draoons and chassaurs of the guard use standard cav uniforms.
8. good skirmish system, the ai will deploy and recall skirmishes.
9 ai persnoalities. some are agressive other timid, giving a defend order to an agressive ai may not work that well(attack beeing a great defence ect)
Cons.
1. Horrible fps, one thing is getting bad fps in a battle with 77000 sprie soldiers representing 331 000 soldiers. it's worse when the fps is just slighly better during the waterloo battle. the biggest problem is the developers dont think it's a problem…. They came the ai is so good it takes up all the cpu power, thats their excuse and they are sticking to it, with no intention to fix it. and I have a good pc.
2. clutter, like a wargame on the table it does get clutterd, in smaller battles it's quite easy to make good brigade formations ect. But in big battles, they ai seem to prefer to just show all troops straight ahead. with brigades and battalions all mixed up. Instead of the ai holding back in reserve or trying to spread of the frontage, they all seem to attack a single point, then from that point they start to try and flank around the enemy.
3. some balance issues(artillery rearly do much damage unless it uses canister, 50 guns can hammer at a enemy corps for an hour and do like 30 kills. )
Cav do very little damage to fleeing infantry, (and infantry seem to be able to run away and form square even if the cav is in their back)
That the main pros and cons.
Weather it's easy to use? well I've played the series since before it was called scourge of war(the first game was called History Channel Take command First bull run.
It much easier then say game like Europa universales or Crusader Kings 2. It's much harder themn Call of duty..
Controlling a single brigade is quite easy. Controling 70 000 men is hard, controling 191 000 is more of a feeling of chaoes.
My main job is this current battle is simply concentrating my troops- I had 2 fronts. North of town and East of town, North seemd to be the main battle, so I moved here to be able to give orders as fast as possible, I started moving troops around, giving orders to divisions to move up roads for big flank manouvers.
Here you can see the start of the battle north of town.
Blücher feeds in Prussians,
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It's a bloody job..
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I force the enemy in square with Cav.
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The battle north has lasted an hour, this has given my time to move my British light cav brigade to the north of the french(their right flank) thats 1500 cavalery men, ready to charge.
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The cav chanced of the artillery and cut down a few french units, the french are now infantry only, while I have all 3 branches, they now mostly stand in square and die[URL=http://s418.photobucket.com/user/Gunfreak23/media/Pc%20spill/north%20of%20town8_zpst23wcday.jpg.html]
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Making the french day worse, From the south(french left) I send in Picton, he wants to get stuck in![URL=http://s418.photobucket.com/user/Gunfreak23/media/Pc%20spill/north%20of%20town9_zpsxvqjre7p.jpg.html]
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I've destoyed or chanced of about a divison of french infantry, a second divison is still there, all in square, like breave tin soldiers.
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And they break, a few try and retreat and set up new squares, but they are getting murderd, there Anglo allied and prussian cav advance, some 4000 cav in total.
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Only thing more melencoly then a battle lost is a battle won…
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But While this was going on, this was happenig eat of town.
I took the town and my cav continued, hit the french right out side of town.
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It quickly escelated….
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And well got kinda out of hand….
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And then HOLY !!
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As you see they all concentrate on point.
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I also saw the french try and flank(attackig the town from the south. I'm not that worried, the town has like 40k troops in it, so I just sent my belgians and some prussians to meet, them, so far the french road column is mostly cuirassiers.
So naturaly I had to meet them on the field on honor, I found some Dutch carabiners, and sent sa currier…
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My karabiners got the best of this single squadron of Cuirassiers, Dutch honor is satified!
Thats the battle so far.
As an army commander I move brigades, divisions and corps, I just hope my subordiants do as they are told, I can give them "all out attack" "attck" "probe" "Defend" "Hold" "hold at all costs" How well they do that is up to the ai personality.
You can also "take command" this disables the ai of a unit(unit beeing anything from a single 6pdr to a corps)
Then you can place them exactly were you want them ect.
I normaly only do this with artillery batteries(they suck at getting close to the enemy)
So if I want my artillery on a hill just 150 meters from the enemy, I take command and place them there, as the artillery commanders are general happy "as long as they can fire" So if they have a target 800 meters away they will not move closer.
It's easely the best pc wargame about this period(mabye any period)
My big gripes are the Frames pr. second and the bunching up of units..