I really like the attempt at command friction, but I don't know that the actual implementation feels right.
What does C&C do really well, as far as Napoleonic battles?
To seek simulation is chimerical. It's why I've largely given up on the excesses of La Bat, Empire, and similar.
One must imagine oneself not commanding actual armies -- that's really just the KS and one or two other games anyway -- but as Carracticus Potts and his Brigadier in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. The men are there, the terrain is there (it's almost always abstract anyway), the troop type variations are there (better here than in other games I could mention), and you have the challenge of shoving men about the field and getting them to do your bidding even when the cards tell you they, in fact, won't. The system is very clean, well tested, and gives battles that, curiously enough, regularly give decent results.
You can also play Borodino on a really big table, with lots of figures, in an evening.
It is, at its best, a doorway to the lovely spectacle of Napoleonic miniature games.
As for that particular mechanic, I rather like it. It's an elegant way of reflecting how forming squares cannot be done