A fine night, despite our first game crashing for no clear reason at about the time the first artillery shells started to fall. Lots of great maneuvering on that map (both maps were custom and looked great, btw).
After studying the problem (with no clear results?), we tried a quick meeting engagement with the same teams, starting in line of sight, and with all players getting a division. As Prince Blucher, on this game, I decided my divisionals (the other three players) should operate on their on initiative since we were already in sight of the enemy. However, I was left with command of the reserve artillery, and I didn't start anywhere near the reserve which was, oddly, positioned on our far right flank The same was true for the French, on their far right diametrically, but the difference was that no Prussians chose to move upon the westward victory point (our left their right), and so the French arty reserve and a whole division just rolled up to sit on the VP the whole two hours!
Meanwhile, by the time I found my artillery (by sending them a courier to defend and following the courier), Sandman, Fabian, and Tadzio were already attempting to combine three divisions on an assault on two points -- which seemed like a good idea (although I never got messages about this -- or much of anything really.
Mostly for reasons I'll explain soon, I suppose.) But the French managed to rush the other two points first, and (based on the replay) took them before I even caught up with my arty. The western point (uncontested by the Prussians at the start of the game) was sitting out in the middle of a plain, but the central point was on the southern edge of a nice forest in which the French could fort up as much as they wanted; and the eastern point (nearest to me) was sitting on a hill, with a little copse on it, surrounded by creek on three sides. The French did not sit on their laurels, exactly, but prosecuted an attack forward (southward) toward our three divisions, plus a flank from the uncontested side of course, leaving basically some small reserves on the points. All game. With one (or possibly two?) slight and temporary seizure of a point by the Prussians at the end.
I might as well mention here that the Prussians never got over 850 points, as far as I recall, and we ended with something above 400, while the French ended with nearly ONE HUNDRED TWENTY THOUSAND POINTS!
...so, spoiler. They won.
Having finally found my reserve artillery -- basically its own brigade with four or five regiments each with multiple batteries, but not cav or inf -- I was stuck trying to figure out what to do (especially since my artillery were already shooting opportunistically at the French advancing down the east side of the map. From this position I knew nothing about what was happening anywhere else, of course.) Ideally I would have tried to bring my cannon swarm back to the middle of our thrust, but I had some rivers (with no fords or bridges) between me and the middle, and I couldn't be sure the French weren't already rolling far enough to intercept me if I tried slowly leapfrogging with bounding cover.
At the time, my best chance seemed to be to keep a fourth regiment back (he later refused to move, being too married to his decent defensive position) and hustle first two and then the third regiment upon a hill to the east of the battlefield. Here I parked two regiments of artillery where they shot at the eastern French division all game -- but the main problem was that between us in the valley wasn't only a creek system (helping protect me from opportunistic charges) but several connected wood copses which my arty was having a hard time shooting through.
At this point I could see a completely open path around the north side of the east victory point hill, so being divorced from my central support role I tried to chivvy my regiments in a leapfrog system around behind the hill. This is where my intransigent fourth commander refusing to move scotched my plans badly, as by the time I convinced him (by running back there myself, forgetting I should and could have simply "taken command" of the general directly) to re-position to support the leap-frog advance properly, my crews were too tired to safely try it.
I still tried anyway, advancing (eventually) one of my regiments down across the rivers into the woods where they could fort up and shoot out (somewhat) at French on the VP hill (and south in front of the hill). I even, eventually, crept a battery and a half up to the crest after the French had abandoned it -- and my efforts did keep them from scoring points on the hill for about half the game (off and on depending on how many they pulled back or kept in reserve). For about a minute we even held control of the eastern VP!
But I couldn't get my batteries ready to shoot fast enough at the cav regiment the French sent back onto the crest to retake the hill. And my artillery in the forest was out of position when I accidentally sent an order to the whole brigade (not just the other two regiments) to advance onto the hill, so they couldn't drive the French off (or prevent them from arriving).
Fortunately, by the time the French thought about sending some infantry to advance on us, we had recovered enough in position to blast them, but by then it was waaaay too little, waaaaay too late.
Overall we (I mean the Prussians generally, not my side of the fight) did score a few hundred more casualties than the French. But those VPs could not be denied. Whew.