FINALLY! A challenging battle!

[Prussian to the Iron]

hey everyone,

i just played a battle as Russia against Prussia, being forced to sally forth from Brandenburg to break the siege.

most of my infantry was elite marines, i had 2 units of blunderbuss shotgunners, 3 units of hand-mortar regiments, a cuirasser unit, a general, a dragoons, and 4 6-lber horse arty.

oddly enough, the prussians had only 2 men less than me upon starting the battle.

i had trouble maneuvering my cannons into a favorable position, and they ended up doing barely anything the whole battle.

so, i advanced with my blunderbuss shotgunners in front, with a expandiing line of marine elites, and my hand-mortars behind. there were few real maneuvering tactics, though they tried to outflank me twice with hussars. honestly, they could have broken my cuirassers and general if they had concentrated their hussars at once instead of on both flanks, one after the other.

they were entrenched ona hill, and i was forced to try to fire up, until it degenerated into a melee. i probably would have lost if my marine elites were'nt so good in hand-to-hand combat.


so, i ended up killing about 700 men, losing about 500; a fair ratio considering we are using guns.

this is great; i finally have chaotic and fair battles, and can have some real fun now.

P.S: for those of you confused with the 'blunderbuss shotgunners' and 'cuirassers' for russia, i am using the AUM mod, located at TWC.

[Lemur]

I've been tempted to play with mods, but I wanted to wait out some patches for compatibility reasons. How does this mod fare with patching? Any experience thus far?

[Prussian to the Iron]

well, once i downloaded it, i turned off automatic patching; that way i dont have to wait for the mod to be updated.

its a pretty cool mod; compatible with terra incognita, darthmod, and another one i forgot. it doesnt change much gameplay-wise, but it adds some interesting units.

[Megas Methuselah]

Man, if those shotgunners are anything like grenzers, then there's no way you can lose. You just gotta know how to use them.

[Prussian to the Iron]

shotgunners are ok, but i think they're glitched or something.

in the mod, there is a british unit called knocks volley gunners, who are infantry. who fire canister shot.

but the shotgunners i have yet to see any real shotgun blasts. i tried to mod it to the same as the knocks volley gun ammo, but it wont use it no mater how many times i save the file.

[Marquis of Roland]

Well, a nock gun is a seven-barrelled musket; it shouldn't be the same as the blunderbuss.

They should decrease the nock gun unit's ammunition to 1 volley only, since everyone would be sporting broken shoulders after the first volley lol.

[Prussian to the Iron]

lol i read that.

but, couldnt you just hold it slightly under your armpit? i mean, in large-scale line infantry battles, accuracy would be about the same.

the point is the blunderbuss shotgunners are supposed to be shotgunners. i expect to see 8-12 shots coming from each blunderbuss.

[Marquis of Roland]

Sgt. Patrick Harper from the Sharpe series uses a nock gun; he usually fires from the hip. Come to think of it, I don't remember him firing it from the shoulder in the TV series.

Does that nock gun unit have a long reload time?

[Prussian to the Iron]

i'm not sure; i'll test it out on sunday if i get a chance.

[Matteo123]

In reality that could lead to you breaking your arm from the kickback...

[Prussian to the Iron]

dude, check the above posts; you break your shoulder when fired from the shoulder from the recoil.

[Matteo123]

Right...if something is powerful enough to break your shoulder and you fired it without support, your arm would pop back from the recoil because there is nothing to stop the gun from moving backwards.

[Prussian to the Iron]

aha, touche!

but what if the fire-er(?) took a stance where, when the gun kicked back, he would just flow with it and jump back? maybe if he was on his heels and hopped a little as he shot?

[Daveybaby]

That would work about as well as if the person you were shooting at jumped back so that the bullet didnt hit them as hard.

[Ethelred Unread]

"(Harper) was loading his seven-barrelled gun, a weapon of extreme unorthodoxy. Each of the barrels was a half inch wide and all seven were fired by a single charge that punched out a spray of death. Only six hundred had been made by the gunsmith, Henry Nock, and delivered to the Royal Navy, but the massive recoil had smashed men's shoulders and the invention had been quietly discarded. The gunsmith would have been pleased to see the huge Irishman, one of the few men strong enough to handle the weapon, meticulously loading each twenty-inch barrel. Harper liked the weapon, it gave him a distinction similar to Sharpe's sword, and the gun had been a present from his Captain; purchased from a chandler in Lisbon"

from

http://www.southessex.co.uk/weapons/nock.htm

I think it's fair to say the sharpe series took a bit of artistic licence with the nock gun - as the slightly ahistorical unit does.

Least it's not flaming pigs.

[Marquis of Roland]

I wonder if the inventor of the gun ever tried firing it himself :oops:

[antisocialmunky]

Right...if something is powerful enough to break your shoulder and you fired it without support, your arm would pop back from the recoil because there is nothing to stop the gun from moving backwards.

Pretty much this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCHb3XWCNYU

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_4aqpIaCM

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5-WUmu7NVY

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SajB5NbBiM&feature=PlayList&p=A464E1D59250F8E2&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5

or any of these:
https://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A464E1D59250F8E2

[Belgolas]

Pretty much this:

or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_4aqpIaCM

[/url]

shoulder mounted cannon. lol. It isn't an RPG like the title says but it is a cannon probably from the 18 century.

[Sheogorath]

It seems to me that while the campaign AI is now insanely aggressive, the battle AI is functionally retarded. Not only does it send units in piecemeal to be slaughtered by musketfire (or launch everything into a single massive assault against your front like in MTW2), it's completely useless in a siege.

I was playing as Russia, facing a siege by Courland who suddenly declared war on me after I had attacked Prussia. Courland besieged Konigsburg and assaulted.

In the course of the battle they sent their three infantry units to scale the walls. All of these were subsequently destroyed inside the fort and forced to retreat.

Being the clever fellow that I am, I had put those anti-cavalry stakes at all the fort entrances, leaving the AI's cavalry to stand around outside the fort with nothing to do. Meanwhile, the AI had cleverly positioned its artillery behind a hill, leaving them to shoot the traitorous Russkie sympathizer geography to bits for the duration battle.

After its infantry was annihilated in the first ten game-minutes of the battle, it proceed to sit outside the fort, withdrawing its cavalry and remaining infantry unit to stand beside the artillery, which then shot into the side of a hill for 50 game-minutes.

All I can say is 'thank God for fast-forward'.

[Marquis of Roland]

Hey, I think the AI did pretty good in your battle.

Right now, AI artillery can't analyze the ground layout that well, so forget about that. Given that they have no working artillery then, the only way for them to attack the fort is to scale the wall with their infantry. They saved 1 infantry unit from the assault so the battle won't automatically end when all their infantry were routed. This forces you to go out and clear the rest of their men out, does it not? If you went out to end the battle, then they have succeeded in tactics; even if you had annihilated them, that still gives them a chance to inflict more casualties than withdrawing completely.

I just fought a few full stack vs. full stack battles last night. the AI advances in a battle line much better than before and doesn't just charge in suicidally, or funnel every unit into the middle to attack your general/artillery. Even when the firing starts they keep their linear cohesion and attempt to redress holes made in their lines. So if not very imaginative, at least it improved IMO.

I actually like how they use their cav: have an infantry unit screen it in the advance and charge in after the enemy has unloaded its 3 volleys into the infantry. Of course, the speed at which square can be formed negates this, but it gives their infantry an extra volley or so at you square infantry (and the cav unit is basically sacrificed).

[Sheogorath]

The problem was that if my fort's cannons had been working properly, they would have been annihilated. The fact that the AI itself is exploiting bugs in the game seems a bit cheesy to me.