Scourge of War Waterloo - Formations, Transitions

Well, I've read it all about the I-take-everything-explicit crowd complaining about scale, conga lines and passages of lines in Norbsoft's Waterloo (check the Matrix official forums if you don't know about this). My turn now: what does the game can do right? Today's topic: transition between formations.

A battalion in a column by divisions formation (right) will take 25 seconds of game time to transition into a line formation (left).

As you know the line formation brings the most firepower of the battalion onto the enemy. A battalion will automatically deploy into a line formation when it is in range of an enemy formation, that's why I'm interested in these transitions (they will happen without my supervision most of the time).

A battalion in a column formation (foreground) will take 42 seconds of game time to transition into a line formation (background).

As you can see, if going into a line formation, there is a significant amount of time saved by having the battalion deployed into a columns by divisions formation, as shown in the first image of this entry.

Now, the interesting stuff happens at the brigade level, where the player can deploy his forces in a combination of formations, as shown below.

A brigade viewed from the left flank. The foreground battalion (left flank) is deployed in a columns by division formation, the center battalions are in line formation (one battalion has deployed skirmishers). 

And ... Before you go into a diatribe about how 500 men can change formation in just 25 seconds ... Time has a small share of abstraction/compression in Scourge of War.

Cheers,