Army initiating combat and special abilities

[WhoCares]

If I am not completely mistaken, in AACW an Army stack could not initiate combat itself but just support friendly forces or defend itself.
Is this the same in RoP?

Thinking about giving Fritz some extra experience by staffing his stack with some serious combat power and sending him for some easy victories against isolated enemy forces.

Which brings me to my second question: with increasing experience the special abiilities of the leaders sometimes also gain a level, e.g. I had Keith already with a Level 4 "Brave" ability.
Which abilities actually benefit from such an incresed level? Just the ones where this is explicitly stated, e.g. "Gifted Commander"? Or are there others as well? For "Good Subordinates" it's explicitly excluded but others...

[arsan]

Hi!

Not sure about the second question, but regarding the first, as long as the Army stack don't has any other friendly corps in the same region it will initiate combat normally.
Its only when accompanied some other corps when he acts as a "reserve", not initiating but committing himself in support of the corps.
Cheers

[caranorn]

This combined with the changes to "march to the sound of the guns" leads to quite a few changes. So far everytime I've played the 56 campaign as Austria I've seen old Fritz charge ahead with his HQ, engage combat and call the slower moving corps/columns from the neighbouring region for the rescue...

Maybe Armies calling corps/columns for "march to the sound of the guns" should be tuned down a bit?