Guns and cannons...

[vlad_demstra]

When I can, I produce a few army's of Guns and cannons. I'm working on cogs to take control of the sea, and invade the spainish. I was wondering what do you think of gunpowder. do you use it? if so, how much? you have any spaical tatics?

[cutepuppy]

When you have to assault citadels or fortresses, you just need culverins (christian) or cannons (muslim). The other siege equipment just doesn't do it.
Also in field battles culverins and serpentines (both can turn) can be very useful. Culverins can cross the whole battlemap and serpentines can be very handy for bridge battles (both attack and defense).
I don't like arquebusiers and handgunners, but I'm sure there are people who do like them.

[Xiphias]

A high valour serpentine or culvern is great but getting it can be a pain.

[katank]

I find even demiculvs to be very good.

if you use gun powder, mass it. 6+ cannons in defence can be enough to make the enemy rout upon contact if they have been taking shots all the way across the map.

culvs are just devastating rangewise and serpentines are accurate with good reload times.

since the crews are small, they gain valor quickly form just one head on hit.

shield them behind your spear wall, preferably on a hill so the guns have clear LOS over the spears.

I like handguns too due to their melee abilities which aren't too shabby and can be comparable to FMAA.

first pin with a spear unit, swing your handguns behind them and fire a few volleys, then charge into them with your handguns.

the bullets are armor piercing and can actuallyl kill knights etc.

arqs are less versatile but have more range.

position them upon your flanks and swing it out to fire at engaged enemy troops.

think of them as flanking with bullets instead of cav. they can flank the enemy without needing to actually be there but the effect can be equally devastating.

I like armies of 2 chiv sarge, 1 CMAA, 2 CK, 6 cannons, 2 handguns, 3 arbs.

note: go heavier on arbs and melee if facing high morale enemies.

the idea for gunpowder is to scare the hell outta low valor inf marching slowly across the map.

if they have 16 lancers rushing you, you beteer bring more melee and less guns since those elite cav aren't going to be scared easily.

[vlad_demstra]

thanks for all of your imput... I got another qustion, who on this earth hellish earth attacks a prov withh guns with peasents.. mind you, it was the POPE....

[katank]

they all do.

I'm always shocked to find slav warriors and peasants in a late game and the AI pretends that it's their elite corps.

a gundpowder army like I described held off 5k enemy rabble easily.

mind you, they also used a 0* against my 9*, what were they thinking? pitchforks will save them?

[soibean]

I have yet to find a reason to use siege equipment when attacking enemy provinces...
I usually dont manually play the siege but it seems that even without the siege equipment my men can take on a citadel with towers and whatnot and get a number of casualties well below that with which I could with the siege equipment... maybe its because of the low valor of the siege equipment or whatever but hey Im new to the game so any advice would be nice.
Also Ive found that the gun powder units, well they just dont cut it. I used hand gunners and their upgrades, I cant remember the name, against a rebel army and I guess its low valor again, but they basically walked right up and smashed through them...
I have a bit of trouble with these more technologically advanced units it seems

[gaijinalways]

The range on the handgunners and the arbqs can be frustrating. I myself have charged them and you can get them to run if they don't have time to fire off a volley. That is why it was sugested you pin the attacking unit first and then roll your gunpowder unit behind them and fire into their rear flank, beofre charging them into the enemy's flank. I don't find that this always works as gunpowder units tend to be slow (nust be the weight of the rifles and their armor), sometimes instead I have them engage and then have xbows or albs (or even archers) fire on the enemy. Your more armored troops usually take less casualties (always friendly fire problems whenever you fire into a crowd) and the attacking units often rout.

[katank]

@soibean, siege is very important in sieges.

I have no idea how you avoid heavy casualties without siege equipment.

have your first wave be pure culverins and see the citadel get ripped wide open, then send in some shock cav reinforcements and they can smash through the garrison easily.

siege in battle is great.

however, they are just like archers, they need protection. sending a lone handgun isn't enough.

BTW, you need to mass them to stack the morale penalties. look at my previous post in which I included 2 chiv sarges which buy you so much more time to fire the gunpowder boys.

once you have 6+ gunpowder weapons firing and then they contact your melee units, they almost instantly rout and that's when your cav rides them down.

BTW, handguns are best used in rank 3 as then they can do a rotating rank firing system and have the least accuracy penalties.

[vlad_demstra]

yea seiges are fun.. unless your enemy has cannon towers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif then bepwepard for a long or short battle and alot of dead people hanging about.

[katank]

I never say an AI with cannon towers and will simply starve them out as if they have cannon towers, the downgrading from starvation wouldn't actually decrease castle tech level and I find no reason for assaulting in that case.

If you really must assault that, then autocalc it or be prepared for a bloodbath

[roysparky]

I enjoy using the cannons, as many of you have siad, to destroy the enemy from a distance. By the time they reach your line they can barely stand up to you. I haven't used guns to much, but my expeirience with them tells me there not that great. I've hear good thing about the handgunners melee capabilitiers though.

[vlad_demstra]

they are more of a fun thing to use.. if you just want to relax and not stress the brain :).. cannons can cause a blood bath.. i had 6 cannons lines up on a fill. Pumped lead balls into their army quickly.just my art along killed 357 people out of a 500 army..

[Cazbol]

I've repeatedly stated that arquebusiers are my favourite unit. I prefer to have one unit of them in every army.

As Katank has pointed out, handguns (especially arquebusiers) are there to demoralise but not to kill. The fact that they kill some too is just a little bonus. Therefore, measuring their worth by looking at their kill rate will give a very wrong impression.

I do not use arquebusiers for flanking as has been suggested, since I usually don't have the time and often not the space to do so. Insted they are the center of my skirmishing line, which looks something like this:

Arbalesters - Arquebusiers - Arbalesters
Infantry - etc. - etc. - etc. - Infantry
Flankers (cav.) - General - Flankers (cav.)

- Low morale attackes will usually turn tail before any melee takes place as a result of fire from my skirmishing line, due to a large extent to my arquebusiers.
- Medium morale attackers will sometimes rout without any melee and even when they do get to fight they'll usually break soon after if the ranged units keep on firing.
- Target the enemy general with your arbalesters and kill him, after which even high morale units like knights can be persuaded by aquebusiers that running for their lives is a viable option. (Mounted units make for large targets which suits the arquebusiers especially well.)

Bring arquebusiers to bridge battles and line them up with a clear line of fire to the side of the bridge (put one unit on each side). When the crowd of attackers on the bridge gets dense it becomes hard not hit... a lot. You will quickly win that battle.

As for sieges, try the muslim siege cannons. I had 15 units of them in my siege train in my last Almohad campaign and they were in constant use. That's enough to almost totally flatten every tower and every wall of a castle, possibly leaving a couple of keep towers which are hard to target. The only time I faced a cannon tower in siege it got pulverised after a few seconds. Ordinary cannons just can't compare to siege cannons in sieges.

[Silianat]

Gunpowder units, especially culiverns and arb. are usefull in bridge battles.
The culiverns beat up on the enemy as they approach and as the buch up near the bridge croosing, massive causalties, and the arb. fire or anyone still brave or stupid or powerful to cross. Since they all casue 'Fear' most units route. but have a unit or two of spearmen to cover the bridge exit.

[katank]

gunpowder is meant to stack morale penalties.

if looking at the logfiles, I see my cannons racking up maybe 30 and at most 50 kills a battle but you cannot underestimate their power.

the arbs are better killers and that's why I included some in my lineup too.

they can get 200+ kills easily and compound that with gunpowder, the enemy isn't going to stick around.

that's why only a few units of melee inf is necessary and I go with CK who can melee well in a pinch and also are useful for chasing routers.

they can rack up something like 4-500 catches per unit in a fairly large battle and that's plain awesome.

[soibean]

@ Katank
just like you said I dont know how I avoid heavy casualties without the siege equipment
basically Ive stopped starving out other armies because losing besiegers as well and then having half of a unit on the field got annoying... but I found if I just let the computer fight sieges for me and if they didnt have Cannon towers or whatnot then my chances of losing alot of men are slimmer.
For example I assualted a castle with say 200 men in there. The castle didnt have any defensive towers, cannon and whatnot, and the casualty list came around and I lose about 220 or so men... I can live with that if it will get my the province 3 or 4 turns sooner so I can rebuild my force
But if the castle had defensive towers in that situation then I would expect around 300 or 400 losses as a minimum, but I always am making back up armies to re-enforce my own men and theyre right back to 960 or so men.

[Sun Tzui]

I love gunpowder artillery (specially the kind that can turn)

Using them to snipe at the enemy General is a lot of fun, and if they are high valour units....eheheh....well...you know what I mean..... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-devilish.gif ....

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/medievalcheers.gif

[The_Emperor]

Gunpowder weapons are a great way to turn the tables on a few factions...

Target the Low Morale units (Byz Inf, all Spearmen, Militia) and most of the time the enemy will not have the stomach to fight you in close quarters.

[katank]

@ soibean, if fighting sieges and you want least losses possibel, have just enough troops assault to beat the defenders on autocal and autocalc.

for example, autocalcing same siege in Const. against 55 defenders.

assaulting with 4* king units 21 men and whole force there of 1400+, I lost 680 odd men.

only assaulting with king and unit of 100 slav warriors, I lost 89.

quite a difference, wouldn't you say so?

if you don't have siege and want to minimize casulaties assaulting with a small force is the way to go.

just have a troop count of roughly 3:2 advantage and you can win it. add more men to assault by autocal woudl onyl add to the casualties.

some sieges can be fun though when you assault full blown citadels using a siege train of 15 siege cannons.

it's beautiful to see your siege smash the defenses to pieces and not have any return fire.