Oh, that sounds wonderfull and makes me rather greedy for more.
For exemple, as far as I could see, the attack-columns never fire in SoW - tell me, if I am wrong. Actually the first rank (and flanks) were able to do so. I think they fired a salvo before advancing or charging enemy lines. Or just having the opportunity to make an attacking move by columns, the units respond fire until ordered to advance, instead of standing still without responding fire and missing the chance to cause some damage in the meantime. Here by contact they seem to leave the attack column and change to line, which on the one hand takes away the opportunity to charge or push more agressive without changing back under heavy losses and on the other hand the front batallion(s) then block the fire of all the others behind. One more result was an extensive overlapping due different initial space calculation of brigades in lines or attack-columns.
Another aspect are line formations. In SoW the AI basically forms a kind of double line, but in reality the single line was a common formation, as far as I know, to cover fronts of higher width.
Another famous structure was the "chessboard-formation". Imagine just one color of the board, the batallions were composed like only black or white fields in 2 or 3 rows.
Greetings.
