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1) What are good ways to employ firearm infantry units?
2) What fraction of a stack should be firearms?
3) What is the proper depth for firearms?
4) If the enemy closes with your formation and the flanks are unsafe, do gunners have to sit in time out?
. The best way to use firearm armies is to incorporate them with pikes. Normally you should have 2 pikeman units for every 1 firearm unit. Some cavalry is needed if the enemy has other range units. If the faction has no pikemen, spearmen or hvy infantry works fine too though they are more susceptible to cavalry charges.
. Fireams units should be deployed in 2 deep rows to maximize their firing rate.
. Deploy firearm units in the front of pikemen at the start and only move them back behind the spear wall when enemies close in. Put your gunners in f.a.w off and micro them to snipe any the units who are not engaged yet or better yet, snipe the enemy general.
. Never engage your gunners in melee, even if their defense and melee are good, they will still sustain heavy casualties. Use cavalry to take out flankers and retreat your gunners or better yet, place pikemen on your flanks and rear to form a box.
. Hope this helps.
Depending on the situation, i've used gunners very effectively as an 'enfilade' group on the wing - especially if the enemy is keen to charge you - you can keep a continuous fire rate into his flank as his infantry units move forward to charge yours. More often than not a couple will route before they get there. Take skirmish mode off. You need to have some backup for your gunners, I usually use my Heavy Cav to ward off any enemy cav charges. If individual enemy infantry units try to charge the the gunners, often as not they will think again and run the other way before they get to engage.
One thing I've done in forest battles is to place the army in a |_| formation before the battle. IE: Arqebustiers or musketeers on the sides and your main infantry in the middle rear. This way, your gunpowder infantry stays hidden when the enemy approaches your inf.
The enemy will most often rout when you tell your gunpowder troops to stop hiding and start firing on the flanks/rear of the enemy army.
This is also very effective if you don't have/like cavalry, becouse when the enemy runs your gunpowder troops can just "fold" in and take the ones fleeing as POW
It seems they fill a very niche role, and one or two units is enough for the rare times they are helpful. They're main role being standoff, out of archer range and compel the enemy to advance. Certainly they would be great defending walls or bridges, but offensively?
Yes they can do well on the flanks, or out of ambush. But so can woodsmen and just about everything else.
I've tried custom battles with 8 firearm infantry in a "thin red line"... the sort of tactics that were common from 1700-1900 AD, and this doesn't work. It's possible to beat a similar value AI army on open terrain, buts it's definitely a phyrric victory.
In my own experience, firearms cause a lot fewer (perhaps none at all) friendly fire deaths. I think it's much safer with firearms to have them firing over top of other units, which is counter-intuitive. (The only thing I'm not sure of is if there's a damage penalty for this, but it seems effective in my experience.)
This means that you can deploy with spears/pikes/heavy inf in front of your gunners. It also means you can deploy gunners behind other gunners with good effect.
Generally though, you have to deploy firearms units in lines of two or the reloading can get screwed up.
Also, the better musketeers, such as Russian Cossak Muskets and Turkish Jannissary Muskets can even hold their own in a cavalry charge, definitely long enough to bring in support cav from the flanks or rear. You'll take losses in this case but the units won't rout instantly when charged like many missle units.
Having said all that, I find that a setup like this can destroy most armies, even holding it's own against Timurids:
LHH--IFFFI--HHL
---GFF-I-FFG---
------AA-------
L = light or missle cav
H = heavy cav
I = Heavy inf/spears/pikes
F = firearms
A = artillery, ideally with range advantage
G = General's Bodyguard
Of course, this setup relies on engaging the enemy from a distance. It's cavalry heavy which becomes useful in destroying other enemy cavalry or missles that separate from the enemy's main lines. If the enemy decides to stay grouped and wait for your attack, it can be very effective to pull the left or right firearm "linebackers" out to one of the enemy flanks to provide enfilade fire.
Your own mileage may vary. There are some situations where this setup will not be effective, however, such as attacking uphill through a forest, or assaulting walls.
I tried an experiment. I set up a custom battle with 3 cossack musketeers +1 spearman, vs 3 crossbowmen.
1 musket unit was in default formation.
1 musket unit was 5 ranks deep.
1 musket unit was in default formation but blocked by a spearman.
The unit blocked by a spearman did not discharge arms directly into the backs of the spearmen. In close zoom you could see the guys on the edges with LOS fire, but the guys in the middle who were blocked held their fire. About 20 spearmen died, and almost all of them were near the edge. This unit of musketeers spent much less ammo than the others.
The unit 5 ranks deep gave a great performance. It had a higher rate of fire than the default formation. I'd say the time between volleys was about 30% less. The total amount of ammo expended was less. And the kills were about the same as for the default unit.
In my experience, firearms are useless once you get over their novelty value. A few units of good archers behind a line of spears do a MUCH better job, and you can switch them between morale damage (fire arrows) and death dealing as needed.
Guns are useless.
Not at all.
They shine the most in defensive battles when you have a big hill or a bridge to defend. For example, I got 180+ kills with an arquebus sitting on a big hill. Admittedly you can get roughly the same number of kills with a LB or with a genoese xbow but few factions have access to these units. ~;) Of course, even a peasant archer or a peasant xbow can get high kills sitting on a nice hill, like around 60, and 90 respectively; but then you can get 2 or 3 times the kills with a gunpowder unit.
Also guns cause fear, low morale militia units will never reach your lines, or will break on charge.
Of course you cannot stop a cavalry charge only with guns, so deploying your musketeers or arquebusier in a "thin red line" formation vs a french cav heavy army is bad idea. ~:joker:
On strickly flat terrain they are less useless indeed, as they wont fire into the melee so they have to sit out the battle unless you can deploy them wide out on the flank.
However the map is such that it is very rare to fight on strcikly flat terrain (except in russia) so IMO you can always find a good use for your musketeers/arquebusiers.
Admittedly they have a supporting role, so I dont have more than 2 or 3 in my armies, but the bigger hill (the steeper slope) you defend the more gunners you can take.
And then there are the camel gunners ...~;)