There can be a number of factors that come up during an MP game from crashes to players dropping. There is an option that can allow the players to restart the game from the point at which it stopped. Here is the procedure.
1. The host will need to press the ~ key and type dumpscen. Then press the Enter key. On European keyboards, ~ may be a different character. You will see this displayed in an orange box in the top left corner of the screen. If done correctly, dumpscen will disappear after pressing Enter and there will be no confirmation that this was successful.
2. Go to the SOWWL\scenarios\ScenSave folder. There you will find the file, scenario.csv. This file contains the current location of all the units, their current size, morale and fatigue.
3. Open the file in Excel. Delete all units which have GFX_Surrender in the flags column, (column S). These are units that have been captured. If any units are removed, you must renumber the units in that brigade, (column F), so there are no missing numbers. If an entire brigade/ battery was captured, remove the commander and renumber brigades in the division, (column E), if necessary.
4. Remove routed units from the OOB. These will usually have a small number of men, (column V), and a Morale of 0, (column AD). Note that a morale of 0 does not necessarily mean the unit is routed, it's the combination of size and morale. You have to use your judgement. If any units are removed, renumber the other units as described in step 3.
5. Save any changes and replace the original scenario.csv file with this new one.
6. Open scenario.ini in a text editor. At the bottom of the file, change the starttime to the time to the new starting time. Change sandbox= to 0 if it is not 0. Note that if fighting the AI and not all the AI units are engaged, then setting sandbox to 0 will cause all AI units to not move until they are engaged by the enemy. In this case, it may be better to restart the scenario from the beginning. You'll have to make that decision yourself.
Very useful post, Uncle Billy.
I have a UK-layout keyboard and for me the key to action the dumpscen command is the @ sign key (but NOT uppercase).
Please note also that this is not a true save game; the game is not written to correctly do that and so all the units after the restart will be treated by the Ai as though they are fresh, new and at 100% strength.
There is also a graphical glitch where the limbered/unlimbered status of artillery is reversed. Our group hasn't be able to fathom out how to correct this - it results in limbered guns firing and unlimbered ones moving (so moving artillery is extremely slow).
Its better than nothing though.
We recommend only using this method if you are forced to resume a game due to players dropping or other crashes and not if, for example, you have run out of time in a gaming session and wish to carry on later - you don't get a true resumption of the battle; that is impossible with SoW.