Rows in combat

[San-A]

The Wiki mentions attack and defence in combat (although it is quite unclear how to make use of it, c.f. this thread). It also mentions rows, for example for artillery:

IN Only: Artillery can fight from the back row, doing half damage and lending half its defense to the unit in front of it. In doing so, you can essentially deliver more combat power and staying power in a shorter line. While artillery will never have a very powerful shock phase, the fire phase reaches a modifier of 2 at Land Tech 33, 3 at 35, 4 at 39, 5, at 52, 6 at 59, and 8 at 61 - at level 61, an artillery unit in the back row has nearly the same fire modifier as a cavalry unit in the front row!

My understanding of this is: during a shock phase, the back row artillery support the melee with half of its fire power. Is that correct?

More generally, what are front rows and back rows in battle? Does it have something to do with attack and defence?

Cheers

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Yes but in shock phase, artilery doesn't make any considerable damage, however it does give you quite considerable defense, if it own defense is high.

For answer what is front and back row - it is best to look at battle screen.

You do have some impact on battle - you can withdraw some units, bring reinforcements, withdraw bad general, and bring a good one into battle.

 

[San-A]

For answer what is front and back row - it is best to look at battle screen.

I know what rows are My question is functional: how do rows work during a battle? Do they depend on the unit type? on the military policy? (offensive defensive etc.)

 

[cywang86]

Only the units at the front row will deal and receive damage.
When artillery is at the back row, half of its attack and defense is added onto the front units. Though expensive, they can mean victory or defeat.

The game tries to fill the front row with infantry first, then cav, and art if the enemy still have inf/cav left, until either the front is filled with 30 units, or one side is out of regiments.
Then if one side still have the room and cavalries, it'll stick a maximum of 4 of them onto the front, which is what we refer to as flanking.

So when two armies collide, you can only have a maximum of 4 extra cavalry units at the front row doing free damage.



The game automatically rotates units to the front row, though it's usually better to just retreat a division with low morale and sub another one in.