Effective tactics, who has em?

Interestingly the trajectory for cannister doesn't seem to be entirely flat. I only ever tried firing it when my cannon in the rear were distinctly elevated, but it looked like there was plenty of clearance. Not sure I'd try it without the elevation though.

It's not entirely flat, no, but never let your cannons fire at will when the enemy is close. Takes a lot of your men, too. And sometimes they won't stop firing even if you tell them to, so just limber them.

Or, put your cannons in the gaps between your infantry, with infantry behind them.

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Originally Posted by Subotan

Or, put your cannons in the gaps between your infantry, with infantry behind them.

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They will sometimes fire at the flanks, killing many of your own men, you really do have to turn off fire at will once the enemy gets too close.

It may be a little cheesy, but I usually line up my infantry so that basically only the cannons' muzzles stick out. That way the line acts more or less like a ship's side. Unless there's higher ground, of course.

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Originally Posted by Mister V

I've noticed my casualties are still always very high (around one to three). 'That normal, or do I suck at 18th century warfare? By looking at unit stats, I would say it's because the units are all similar (too similar if you ask me... the grenadiers are supposed to be elite melee units, the way they were used, and here they're almost the same as the line infantry).

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I average around 1 to 5 on VH - better in the instances were I forget to switch back on the VH battle difficulty (note that the battle difficult seems to reset to normal when you start up the game again).

The only times when I tend to suffer more casaulties than that ratio is if the AI either has a significant edge in number of infantry. This tends to results in lengthy shootouts (because of enemy numbers, it is usually impossible to outflank for a while, and this means my center units will get shredded before I chew up his flanks) or the AI charges my infantry, also resulting in huge casaulties.

In practice battles, I try to position my light infantry at the start of the battle where they can place stakes around the vulnerable sides of my cannons, to ward off cavalry.

Simple, I know, but effective.

I agree with the balanced stack approach - I don't really consider my general a "unit" though. In an emergency sure but they seem extremely fragile. I had a general die during the rout pursuit of the enemy and I don't think he was very near any hostile soldiers at all (I assume he failed to vault a fence or something and broke his neck! Not Heroic at all really!).

I have my general, 3 batteries, 4 cavalry bn, 12 infantry bn in a typical stack.

Yeah, I don't like how stakes are in TW games. They function more like a land mine than a stake. If I'm on the left side and I tell my cav to move to the right side, they don't have enough sense to avoid the stakes and get themselves killed. They'd get stuck on a stake and die.

Re-positioning a cannon on the enemies flank once the battle lines have engaged can be devastating.

Managed to get 2 batteries round the flank of a Mysore army that massively outnumbered my Prussians, each shot was killing 40-50 soldiers, they broke after a few rounds.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

Yeah, I don't like how stakes are in TW games. They function more like a land mine than a stake. If I'm on the left side and I tell my cav to move to the right side, they don't have enough sense to avoid the stakes and get themselves killed. They'd get stuck on a stake and die.

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Speaking of landmines has anybody seen fougasse in use? I haven't yet, and I wonder how effective they are.