Gunpowder Artillery

There seem to be alot of people in the Total War community who are very keen on realism and historical accuracy. While I find historical accuracy pleasing when it occurs I am prepared to ignore innacuracy for the sake of a good game.
It surprises me that AFAIK no-one has mentioned the innacuracy of having the gunpowder artillery on a wheeled frame, cannons of the period for M2 were carried by handles in the field and had no wheels. Does this bother anyone? Does anyone have any intention of modding more realistic cannons in? As I said this doesn't bother me but I am surprised this has not been mentioned already and am curious as to the view of those in favour of accuracy and those not bothered by it, with regard to this area specifically.

Thanks.

This may in fact be because late in the period covered artillery was, contrary to your assertions, carried on a wheeled frame.

As it is said here: http://www.middelaldercentret.dk/cannon2.htm

"cannons did not seem to be introduced until the 15th century, although some late 14th century manuscripts appear to describe trunnions (small solid wheels) fitted on smaller weapons"

It seems to me that it is not that innacurate in MTW2 as probably most of us will not get cannons until late 14th century in the campaign.

We shall see soon enough.

" We know from manuscripts belonging to the city of Ghent that some form of ordanance existed as early as 1313; that in 1324 cannon were used at the siege of Metz; and that in 1326 Florence ordered a delivery of iron balls and brass cannon for the defence of the city. The first known illustrations of ordnance also occur in 1326 and 1327."

"There were no gun carriages in the fourteenth century and the guns were simply secured to wooden beams by ropes or iron straps...They were transported from site to site on ponderous carriages with iron-shod wheels...static mountings remained in use for the larger guns until the sixteenth century."


" Some heavier bombards of the mortar type appear to have been mounted on carriages since at least the 1450s but these could not have been much more than beams into which the bombard was sunk and fastened by straps, with an axle and two crude and clumsy solid wooden wheels. Such a carriage was quite adequate for transporting a gun from one siege to another but not advanced enough for field artillery. The French had wheeled guns by 1461 but these do not appear to have been used as field artillery either."

Terrence Wise, Medieval Warfare, pp94-101,Osprey Publishing 1976.

My point is not that they did not have wheeled carriages for transport, more that they were not mounted on them when used in the field and in screenies they clearly are.

Well then you had better send your book back in time to Barnaert van Orley so that when he makes the Pavia Tapestry in 1531 he won't make the mistake of depicting the French cannon being fired from wheeled carriages.

Well is not the only issue...

I am no expert but is it not the case the the rate of fire of at least the earlier Medieval cannons incredibly slow? I mean like shots per hour kind of slow?

I remember being told at some show that the once loaded the barrel was sealed by clay and they had to wait for that the drie to get any kind of real range??

The battle of Pavia is a Renaissance era battle right? To what degree had cannons developed at that point?

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Originally Posted by Bob the Insane

Well is not the only issue...

I am no expert but is it not the case the the rate of fire of at least the earlier Medieval cannons incredibly slow? I mean like shots per hour kind of slow?

I remember being told at some show that the once loaded the barrel was sealed by clay and they had to wait for that the drie to get any kind of real range??

The battle of Pavia is a Renaissance era battle right? To what degree had cannons developed at that point?

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You're right on the first point; bombards took ridiculously long times to load, and you'd have to be very lucky to get off, say, 5 rounds a day with the things. However, that's generally referring to the really jumbo ones that the Turks carried around and so forth; smaller bombards might have had a slightly better rate, but TBH I don't know what that would be. In either case you can see how the gameplay would suffer if this was implemented, so hopefully CA still made bombards very powerful and very slow to fire, but sped up a wee bit.


You'd be surprised at how quickly true cannons developed. In fact, the Italian Wars (in which Pavia was fought) was where they appeared, IIRC.

When the French invaded, they tried using newfangled "cannons" with metal tubes on wheeled carriages. The shots fired were much smaller, but also much faster... and they were absurdly effective. Finally, like uber-catapults, shots could be fired with great speed at low angles, thus using the mass of the walls against themselves. In an instant all castles in Europe were obsolete; I know that there was one siege the French conducted against a city (can't remember the name...) that had withstood a traditional siege once for years, and fell to the French cannons in a few hours.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Well then you had better send your book back in time to Barnaert van Orley so that when he makes the Pavia Tapestry in 1531 he won't make the mistake of depicting the French cannon being fired from wheeled carriages.

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The Italian wars and Pavia is about as late as the M2 setting goes, its like the extreme end of the spectrum, I'm talking about everywhere else they appear in the game. I know that by Pavia time in the game we are basically talking pike and shot era so wheeled carriages seem fine but before that during the campaign game it would have been different.

Its like you're using the fact that they had tanks right at the end of WW1 as evidence for tanks being present the entire war.

p.s I'm not trying to flame I'm just trying to explain my thoughts on this.

I saw in the Battle of Pavia that the cannonballs of the French exploded, which is historically inaccurate seeing as how cannonballs rolled at that time instead.

Ah well, it looks cool. :D

Medieval 2 does not generally force the player to conform to some strict chronology in terms of the development of technology. Just because a certain sort of cannon appeared in some particular year does not mean the player can't develop them sooner than that if they are willing to invest the necessary resources as represented by buildings. That is the way it should be- it increases the element of strategy by allowing the player to develop weapons before their rivals. Any other way of doing it would be just plain boring.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Medieval 2 does not generally force the player to conform to some strict chronology in terms of the development of technology. Just because a certain sort of cannon appeared in some particular year does not mean the player can't develop them sooner than that if they are willing to invest the necessary resources as represented by buildings. That is the way it should be- it increases the element of strategy by allowing the player to develop weapons before their rivals. Any other way of doing it would be just plain boring.

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I agree. It's an alternate history game, after all (Turks invading MesoAmerica... can't wait to see that!).

Does anyone know if the development of more advanced weapon tech is limited only by an assumption that the player will take a long time to reach city or castle sizes, where the buildings are possible? And then you get it, regarldess of "year" or number of turns? Or is it based on a turn timer... i.e. you can't get wheeled cannons until a certain number of turns have passed, like the Marius reforms timer in RTW? I've only come back to the forum here in the last few days, to check on the game status, so I'm not up on what's currently known about the game design.

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Originally Posted by Amon_Zeth

I saw in the Battle of Pavia that the cannonballs of the French exploded, which is historically inaccurate seeing as how cannonballs rolled at that time instead.

Ah well, it looks cool. :D

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that is only the cannons special ability.
The normal ammo is regular cannon balls that are almost more devastating then the exploding ones.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Medieval 2 does not generally force the player to conform to some strict chronology in terms of the development of technology. Just because a certain sort of cannon appeared in some particular year does not mean the player can't develop them sooner than that if they are willing to invest the necessary resources as represented by buildings. That is the way it should be- it increases the element of strategy by allowing the player to develop weapons before their rivals. Any other way of doing it would be just plain boring.

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Good point. Although it does still seem strange in the sense that with most of the units in total war games you have simpler versions to start with and later more complex versions, for example; you get archers before you get handgunners, catapaults before cannons, mailed knights before plate knights etc. so it seems a bit odd that there's a sudden jump from no cannons to late 15th century carriage guns with no basic cannon inbetween.
But yeah I agree with your statement.

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Originally Posted by Amon_Zeth

I saw in the Battle of Pavia that the cannonballs of the French exploded, which is historically inaccurate seeing as how cannonballs rolled at that time instead.

Ah well, it looks cool. :D

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Yea, the exploding shells are waaay before their time, about 400 years if i remember correctly. It would be like having machineguns in the thirty years war. :thumbsdown:

However i like the animations and sounds with the gunpowder units. Its an improvement.

G

Maybe it was the mud :) I think exploded shell was at Napoleonic war and may be a bit earlier? They had to light the fuse of the shell.

Wish they turn the effect off though. Major lag contribution :)

Anniep