Don't know, but I guess the reason might make me cry if I learned it...so I don't want to know.
As for the other question regarding the battles, whether or not it looks like that...
Yes, but not entirely.
1. it will be messier, including more units
2. the line will break at many places due to the casualty and units squishing eachother to get a shot
3. the soldiesr won't just shoot straight forward (I know, historically it works that way, wall of bullets and all.), instead they will aim for a specific target as though the muskets have sights...Heheh (they're quite accurate too.)
4. Also, most of the time they won't be shooting one target per soldier, instead a bunch of soldiers will concentrate fire on a specific one. (so the pretty wall of bullets aren't usually seen...Unless you want to lose.)
Still, the shooting is pretty, so is the cannons (the balls literally blow people away.) the physics engine makes things very nice.
Edit: at point 1, more units, as in a bigger variety, mostly light units. (those don't look as impressive.) Not a large amount of units...often the battles are small. (5-10 is the usual attack group size, unless you've got money to burn, so 20-30 men battles?)
[This message has been edited by Kultz (edited 10-04-2006 @ 07:11 PM).]