There are a lot of things that affect which side wins a battle. Generally you need to kill a higher proportion of the enemy than they kill of you. How do you do this? The following articles should be helpful.

Some general principles:

• Never fight a needless engagement that doesn't benefit you. Suppose you are attacking. The enemy has a battle line on a ridge, and you have a force of equal strength. If you walk into range, deploy your line directly facing his, and start shooting, who's going to benefit more from this engagement? Assuming things were equal, the defender is going to win -- higher ground, the first volley, and having the stand ground bonus from the start give the defender the advantage.
  
• Avoid having any troops close behind the front line. Suppose there are two battle lines facing each other, delivering volleys. If you have extra troops behind your line, they cannot fire as there are friendly troops in front of them, but they will still take bullets that miss the front line. This results in needless casualties.
  
• Avoid having troops packed together. The only time you want to have lines packed tightly is when you're doing a bayonet charge and need the extra strength to win the charge. Packed troops take much more losses and are more likely to rout, so spread out. If both sides have equal strength and all men are firing, the side that is spread out more has the advantage.
  
• When attacking, always look for situations where you can face the flank of the enemy, such as a corner in the enemy line. If you attack a corner of his line, he can't stay in that position without taking enfilade fire and heavier casualties, so he'll want to pull back and straighten the line out. This may open a new corner elsewhere, and you can keep the pressure on this way.
  
• If you are hit on a corner, pull the line back to straighten it out. Sometimes you'll be forced to do a lot of withdrawing in response to the enemy attacking maneuver. Being able to withdraw promptly and at the right time is as important as being able to attack properly. If you withdraw from fights you won't win, and then make sudden, efficient attacks where you will have the advantage, you will be more effective.

Economy of Force, and Teamwork:

• Once you are fluent in managing your actions on a small scale, you want to know how a battle is best fought on the large scale. The tried and true principles of economy of force and divided and conquer come into play here.
• If you outnumber the enemy at any point, you have an advantage there. While at the places that they outnumber you, you have a disadvantage. It follows that you want the engagements where you have the advantage to escalate quickly, and get them done with as fast as possible so you can bring your left over troops to other points on the field. However, when there is an engagement you won't win, you want it to drag on as long as possible -- if the enemy closes in to attack you should withdraw in front of them so they can't finish your men off. It is always better to fall back and fight again where you can win, than stand to the last and lose more than you kill.
• It's a good idea to take into account how well the enemy commanders are coordinating. If one of the enemy commanders has most of the troops under his command, and he isn't working together with the others, you could probably concentrate your forces on the weaker of the two opponents and crush him, and then have an advantage in the next fight.
• It's important to watch what the enemies are doing and react appropriately. If your teammate isn't flexible enough to come to your aid when you are attacked by far superior numbers, you may want to fall back close to his position so that he is aware of the danger and will help. You can't control what your fellow commanders do -- all you can do is ask for help.
• Always be aware of the danger your teammate is in. If he not flexible and is being attacked by huge forces, and you have spare troops that aren't doing anything, either attack the enemy where you are and keep pressure on to draw attention, or move to help your team mate.

How to make a charge most effective:
Suppose you need to break through the enemy line somewhere. They are deployed in a normal battle line. To get your best advantage, you want to get your maximum combat strength into melee while spending as little time as possible under fire. So instead of preparing for the charge while in range and under fire, set up your attacking force back away from the front. When doing a charge, you need to have more men than the enemy when you reach them in order to be able to win, so unless the enemy line is really thin, you'll need to stack your attacking line. A good rule is never to stack more than three lines on top of each other. If the defending line is stacked already, you probably should not charge it, instead just focus artillery and musket fire on it and wait for it to fall apart.

Once you have a neat line formed up, all muskets loaded, and all men in place, disable their attack (D) and order an attack move (A) to a spot behind the enemy line, like this:


You won't need to give them any more orders until they are quite close. Make sure they are not set to stand ground after you order the attack move. The line should move straight forward, with muskets leveled -- through the whole attack they will not have to shoulder their muskets:


Once you are very close (you could go closer than this diagram), enable attack (E), and immediately after the volley set them to melee only (T):



Having twice the enemy strength in a smoothly carried out bayonet charge will quickly destroy the defending line, especially if they don't have reserves nearby to plug the gap and drive you back. After breaking the enemy line, form your men neatly in its place and set them to stand ground so they can resist a counterattack. You probably want to have your own reserves coming up -- these charges are costly and in order to be useful need to be followed up by exploiting the hole, go in and cut off enemy troops or capture a battery.

Remember the important points:

• Only do a charge when your force will be stronger than the defending force by the time you reach it.
• Take time to set the charge up out of range and let it be carried out smoothly -- never spend time doing unnecessary maneuvering while under fire.
• Once the enemy line is taken out, quickly reform your line (and use stand ground) so it doesn't scatter or get wiped out by a counterattack.

What to do when you get charged:
Suppose you have your battle line, 2 ranks all along, and the enemy is closing in with superior numbers. If he reaches you with enough men left, your entire line might be wiped out. So there are two courses to take when you get charged.

1. If you can weaken him enough that he won't win the melee, you should stay there on stand ground.
2. If you are not able to weaken him enough, withdraw before they kill your line.

1 -- Remember that the stand ground bonus makes your men take nearly twice as long to kill with bayonets. It is absolutely necessary to use this when repelling a charge. If your men aren't in formation or are mostly routed, you probably aren't strong enough to hold.
2 -- Withdrawing is a very, very important issue. In real life, your colonels will pull back their regiments or the men will fall back on their own, when they are charged by too much. But in the game, they don't do this -- you have to do it for them.

If you withdraw from an attack and reform some distance away, preferably with troops on the flanks as well as artillery constantly hitting the enemy attack, you've just saved a lot of your men so they can fight again, and the enemy attack has accomplished nothing but gain some ground. Now they have a lot of troops in a small, partially surrounded area, they'll take heavy casualties.

This is the same principle Fight only where you gain from it. Yes, of course the charging side will win if they have enough men. That's why they're charging. You have to be flexible and react. The risk involved is if you have cannons at the front and they are unable to fall back in time with the men. Well, when you have cannons at the front you should expect the enemy to want to capture them. You either need a strong enough line to hold the position, or you should pull the cannons back as soon as you see the enemy charging.



Artillery

Using artillery properly is important. The goal is, of course, to maximize your kills. Since ammunition is limited, you want each artillery shot to kill as many men as possible. Artillery is going to kill more men when it is fired at packed or deep formations. Cannonballs explode, killing anyone close to the explosion, and they also will kill troops in their way while they are flying. Shells will land closer to the target when the range is shorter.

When using artillery:

• Place your artillery in places where they will be closer to the big targets.
• Shoot at closer, denser and deeper targets.
• Enfilade (shooting the side of the enemy) turns a thin line formation into a deep formation, so you're likely to get more kills.
• Use all your ammunition during the battle, otherwise it is wasted.
• Time your ammunition usage with the enemy strength, remember that as you kill more men, there will be smaller targets to shoot. Use more ammunition when the targets are bigger.
• Protect your artillery -- they can be captured.

When confronting artillery:

• Don't pack your troops, spread them out. You want to give your enemy no good targets to shoot.
• Place your reserves behind hills, and far enough from the front line that they won't be hit.

Common Game Mistakes

There are some things everyone does, sometimes without knowing they're doing it, and sometimes because they don't know any better. Here is a short list of mistakes, their causes and consequences:

Having friendly troops out in front of your line. This could make your main line unable to fire, so it'll be taking hits and losses without doing anything back. This can really ruin a battle if you don't notice it and move the obstacle troops back out of the way.
Leaving troops not on stand ground. You should always set your men to stand ground after moving them (unless you are charging). This will become a habit, and it is very important. Troops that aren't on stand ground are more vulnerable, especially to bayonets, and if their formation is hit by something they'll advance on their own, which you don't want.
Giving a move order, and then having enemy troops get in the way of your moving troops. If you order a formation to move, and a couple enemy troops get in the way, moving troops that bump into these enemies will stop. And until these stuck troops get back to their places in the line, the line won't fight. So watch for these situations, in most cases ordering an attack move is the right thing to do, then the stuck troops will bayonet their way forward.
When using artillery, right clicking the ground instead of the enemy troops. Instead of ordering the cannons to shoot, you've ordered them to move. If you don't stop them, they'll get captured. Embarrassing.

Great read!! those are great tips indeed!

Added a little section about teamwork, and how to exploit a lack of teamwork.

An absolute MUST READ for any player wanting to do well in HDN, or HEW for that matter. Very succinct and effective delivery of the golden rules of combat.

Cavalier, after you read this, you doen't have to study anymore, (there's no point, its all there). You can just start playing now. Besides, the more you study in preparation to become the "perfect" player, the more embarrassing it will be when you get totally wiped out on your first few battles. The Field is the only place to learn.

Added a short piece about what to do when you get charged, as there's been some concern that charging might be too effective in some cases. I've not reached a conclusion, but it's likely I'll up the stand ground bonus a little bit soon to try that.

If you only stay to hold against a charge in the situations you'll win, it won't be a problem -- you just pull back from the charge and then shoot at it while it's packed there -- no loss to you.

Can most of these principles be applied to HEW as well as HDN?

Not most of them as far as I know. HEW has much more accurate muskets that don't hurt packed or thick troops more, for instance, and that's a central part of HDN strategy. A lot of things are different: shooting, cannons, melee, morale, and cavalry, etc.

Basic stuff like economy of force and teamwork can be applied to almost any wargame.

Oh Ok

Yeah, most people consider them to be completely different games (including myself) and it shows in the game play. Universal tips, however, include such things as making sure your troops are standing ground and other small things that could break up lines and formations.

If you look under the HEW tab on the main page, there is also a short strategy guide for it.

Well both game are diff, and both are Interesting, but the rules here I feel do not apply to HEW, but can be used as a pointer for both games.

Just have fun folks

Cheers Foxy .

besides the low lying areas, were would be the worst place to moove your troops?

Putting troops in the middle of a swamp is pretty bad, as well as any other area that breaks them up into tight clump making them easy target for rifle of cannon fire.

That was REAL helpful Garnier! Thanks for the tips.