Thank you and question

Good morning all. I just thought I would personally thank CEGORACH et al for this wonderful mod.
I am still firmly emersed in the MTW1 experience, and probably will be for a long time.
Now, I have a 'new' game to play in a period I'm rather interested in! Pike and Musket is fascinating.
I have to completely 'relearn' all my tactics I used in MTW, as I've already had a piece of my anatomy handed to me in my first PMTW campaign. Woohoo! :laugh4:
A couple of questions for those in the know:
Firstly, which faction would you recommend for someone starting out in PMTW?
Secondly, I noticed in some screenshots the use of War Wagons(nice!). Which factions are able to produce them, and in which eras?
Finally, can someone steer me in the direction to some info on period battlfield tactics that would be relevant to PMTW?
Well, thats it for now. And again, thanks for an interesting mod.
Cheers
Alex

Hello AlexandersForlornHope,

try one of the largest factions, say Spain, the Ottomans, the Polish, the Russians or perhaps the French. I had quite fun with the Scottish once.

With P&M the gameplay is about holding off enemy pikes/halberds with your own and then maneuver to position to shoot them (flanks and rear) while protecting the shooters from enemy cavalry. You can also make your gunners coordinate their volleys (say make up a line of 3-4 gunner units and upon maneuvering them (or waiting for the enemy) within range then toggle the fire-at-will button from off to on to unleash a coordinated killer volley. Works well when you face massed enemy infantry. Be careful to always provide protection to your gunners from enemy cavalry, while trying to pick off isolated units with your own cavalry. Some heavy cavalry units are tough enough to take the enemy on in massive frontal charges - like the Winged Hussars and Gendarmes. Thats also spectacular. The Russians have hybrid mounted archer units that can play with hit-and-run tatcics - also interesting. The pace is somewhat slower than MTW proper - so you can pull off quite sophisticated maneuvers.

The wagon units belong to the eastern european factions IIRC.

:bow:

Thanks gollum. So it seems a lot of the finesse in PMTW comes down to proper use of gunners, I assume. To properly protect them then I suppose is the reason for the pikes, otherwise the cavalry would 'chew them'...hmmm.
Cavalry or infantry such as halberdiers then to protect the gunners? Can the pikers be ignored then in favor of halberdiers, which in MTW had a good 'chop' against cavalry?
You also mentioned some heavy cavalry taking on the enemy in a frontal assault. Certainly this excludes pike formations no?
Very interesting and thought provoking. I have a lot of practice ahead of me it seems. Thanks for the info.
Cheers
Alex

Hello AlexandersForlornHope,
halberds in P&M are cheap militia easily/cheaply available IIRC. Pike units on the other hand act as spears+heavy infantry they can melee really well. Halberds can never substitute for pikes, but you cannot maintain (especially early) armies made of pikes only. Best to combine according to what your economy can support and your infrastructure can train. Another important difference is that pikes are immune to frontal charges from cavalry - while halberds will feel some *pain* when charged. Halberds are there to melee supported, while Pikes have generally high morale and wont go down easily. Use the halberds to complement the Pikes - that is say 2 halberd units for every pike unit or something to that effect...

Guns in the early period are less powerful but as you progress become more and more powerful. Cavalry correspondingly starts with heavy armor (gendarmes) and slowly drops armor for speed.

:bow:

I played P&M for a few months, although the invisible and faulty units really began to annoy me.

I would suggest playing on the campaign which has the most factions on the map, (Not the Sun King's Ambiton or Religious Turmoil), for then there will be less chance of three major factions destroying everything else right from the beginning.

I really liked the mod for it's progress in technology, but it also had a few faults - I never enjoyed holding of waves of town militia, who were actually just floating, shape-shifting blobs.

But you have only just begun!

I remember the fun I had in my French campaign, in which I swore to protect the meek factions and destroy the Spanish, Ottomans, and Russians.

Please, tell us more here about your future campaigns!

Well, I jumped right in against better advice and picked a smaller faction to play, the Brandenburgers.
I liked their location relative to rebel factions. I've decided to take the hard road, as a Protestant faction to ally only with fellow Protestants( I know I'm going to pay for this later:skull:)
Right off the start all the larger faction jumped on the rebels, and me feeling left out of the scrum decided to invade the rebels in Saxony(although NOT the real Saxon faction).
In my haste, I forgot to notice that our borders were secured by a river...yep river battle! Let me tell you dashing my poor soldiers lives against the enemy's pike regiment holding the bridge was sorrowful.
Long story short the time ran out on the battle, I slunk back to Brandenburg with my tail between my legs, to lick my wounds.
Of all people the Portugese landed a sizable army there next turn(can you believe it :furious3:). I said to myself oh no you dont those are my rebels to fight, I have a score to settle with them. I reinvaded, declared war on Portugal and this time despite another bridge battle, I routed them(ha,ha)
The remnants of the rebel scum are holed up in their castle, and it will fall shortly...no mercy will be shown to them.
That's about it for now.
BTW, I've been practicing custom battles and I have to say War Wagon Infantry rock. Next campaign I will definately play a faction that have these outstanding units.
Cheers
Alex

Nice campaign happenings AlexandersForlornHope,
another way to play the game is to remove the timer - so battles will end when soemone wins.

The Brandenburgers are not too difficult - I found Wuerttemburg to be the worst german faction to play.
Those swiss rebels absolutely destroyed me on the second turn.

Tell me, AlexandersFolornHope, are you witnessing problems with the unit graphics in battle?

Are some of them invisible or very distorted?

My favourite faction was certainly France in that game, where as usually I would play a smaller, discreet faction in other mods.

Hi Glenn. As far as the unit graphics being invisible or distorted nothing as yet. The only slight blip I noticed was when actually fighting on a bridge some of the AI's units feet were'nt displayed, legs and the rest o.k.
Mind you there is a recent(?) patch I downloaded with this mod that possibly may have fixed some display problems.
In further campaigns I hope I don't encounter any invisible enemy units...I'm having enough trouble defeating the one's I can see!
Cheers
Alex

The problem with P&M for me visually is the lack of bodies - not a gamebreaking problem, but somewhat of an atmosphere breaker nonetheless...

Strange... the bodies only require the deadpage coordinates to be added. Why are they missing?

From what I have skimmed from modding; I would guess that the list of over 1000 units for P&M means that some bodies simply will not work.
Of course, I truly have no factual idea..

Hope, I think therefore that I experienced video issues due to my own specific computer.. You are fortunate then!

The number of units is irrelevant. The bodies are pretty generic and can be reused.

I think they are missing because most of the units of P&M are custom/newly made sprite models. There is a thread about it in the P&M forum somewhere... let me see if i can find it...

:bow:

My point is that it's easy enough to add a placeholder (i.e. peasant or hobilar) deadpage sprite to any new units. No one really checks over the bodies on the field to see if they match the living units exactly anyway.

I understand your point in fact thats how it is in Samurai Wars - the bodies are from MTW whie the sprites are the japanese models... hold on i ll give a link to that P&M thread...

EDIT
Post 1678 i believe
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...=32089&page=56

You used to be able to add dead bodies, see this post

I don't know if the link is still active though.

Good to hear that you are starting with a small German faction, it means that you won't be spoiled by beginning with the Spanish or Russians. I've only had that invisible unit happen a couple of times over the years, it can be annoying

Thanks for the link Lizard Pope.

:bow:

Thanks. I know that I would be spoiled as any faction that uses War Wagons. They seem to me very powerful. As the Brandenburgers I've got to manage my economy carefully. The image I get as Brandenburg, is that of a mouse deftly trying to manouver around the waltzing elephants like Poland, Hungary,et al without getting my tail stepped on!
As an aside another interesting nation to play in my eyes is Moldavia. Can anyone share their insights with them?
Cheers
Alex

Too close to the Ottomans...:sweatdrop:

In Pike & Musket, even Portugal and Ireland are too close to the Ottomans..
My sole objective became the destruction of the Sultan after a few campaigns.

I always found war wagons easily vanquished with a solid barrage from Regimental cannons.
They may have been too powerful, but I could not help dragging four batteries to every one of my battles - they simply blasted the opposition.
Jolly good when the Turk started landing in Genoa.

"Cease thy odious display of valour! Quoted numbers halteth not the canister shot! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

I put off downloading P&MTW because I was waiting for the English Civil Wars to be added. Does anyone know if they ever did?

The P&M seems static in development for a long time now BB - if i were you id download it now.

Hello. I posted this question in the alchemist section. Is this possible? If so how?
Thought I would plumb the depth of your collective knowledge.
Thanks in advance.
Alex

War wagons are great at the beginning. They are useful as artillery and to defend against enemy cavalry. They become much less useful as more powerful artillery and muskets arrive however. Very slow too so they're not good for attacks.

They were a godsend in the early part of my last early Hungarian campaign but soon became museum pieces.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AlexandersForlornHope

Hello. I posted this question in the alchemist section. Is this possible? If so how?
Thought I would plumb the depth of your collective knowledge.
Thanks in advance.
Alex

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Funny place to ask, but okay.

Follow this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...85#post2195585

The agressive/passive issue is addressed in there somewhere. Post #46 I think?

Thanks Brandy Blue, that was just what I was looking for!
Cheers
Alex

Alex, I hope you don't mind hopping on your P&M thread with some questions of my own.

I've started today with a Spanish campaign in the age of exploration setting (early game). This is actually a restart of my abandoned first P&M game (so this will be my second try).
I've started with a turtle/teching up strategy. I planned to go on the offensive once I get an army of good units. First I took out the Muslim rebels in Grenada and bribed the last survivers once it became clear I had to storm the citadel to get the province. I've bribed myself in possession of Morocco, Algeria and Malta and have connected them at last with my ships. Malta revolted but was easily put down without reïnforcements. Then Navarra attacked just when I finally came close to producing a decent army. BTW I repelled them easily enough, I didn't expect my rodeleros to be able to stand up against landsknecht-halbards and landsknecht-pikemen but they did admirably (My missile troops were also responsable for the victory).

Now my questions:

1. I haven't played much MTW in late so I have little to no experience with cannons but I didn't expect serpentines to be so weak. I had 2 serpentine crews set up so they always had a clear shot. They both had a valour of 2 and they always shot at the most bunched up group of units. They shot until they were out of ammo but only killed 12 and 14 enemies. With this experience in mind they aren't worth fielding. Am I doing something wrong with them? What cannons are worth fielding?

2. The Province of Vallencia (?) is famous for its arbuceros but I can't research the needed technology there (arqebus -> caracol -> tertio). Is this a bug or are there some rules I'm not aware of?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

Now my questions:

1. I haven't played much MTW in late so I have little to no experience with cannons but I didn't expect serpentines to be so weak. I had 2 serpentine crews set up so they always had a clear shot. They both had a valour of 2 and they always shot at the most bunched up group of units. They shot until they were out of ammo but only killed 12 and 14 enemies. With this experience in mind they aren't worth fielding. Am I doing something wrong with them? What cannons are worth fielding?

2. The Province of Vallencia (?) is famous for its arbuceros but I can't research the needed technology there (arqebus -> caracol -> tertio). Is this a bug or are there some rules I'm not aware of?

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Cannons are a bit odd in P&M. The only cannons worth fielding, in my view, are regimental cannons. However, they are so strong that I've actually lately taken to forbidding myself from using them as a house rule. They need a military academy and a basic forge, IIRC. The regimentals function essentially like a super-archer- they are entirely moveable, fire four shots per volley, and because their size is so small, they are capable of racking valor up like nobody's business. An entirely lethal unit.

2. There are "hidden" requirements for the tertio line. You need at least a basic level of most of the military buildings, including a horse breeder, in order to start the military tech upgrades. I belive upgraded gunsmiths of some sort are also required.

Thanks, Shinseikhaan.

I'm sure I'll be here asking new questions in no time.

I had my first major battles today in which I could get a real taste of the capabilities of the different units and the tactics that can be used. These are some of the observations I made for the early game (If you have things to add, this could be made in something of a guide):

1. Like I said before, early cannons are best only used in sieges. Even with there long range, any other missile unit will make more cassaulties and tactically be of more use.

2. Bows beat guns. Guns have their extra effect on morale but bows can decimate gununits before they can fire there first shot. This is especially true when you're on the offensive and your opponent is camped on a hill. I'm not saying that there is no place in your army for gununits but there should always be room for bowunits as well.

3. Put a lot of care in manouevring your army. Pike formations are, although very powerful in melee, very slow and cumbersome. Always move as on or your pikes can become isolated very easily.

4. Make extensive use of missilecav. The best way to win a full on pike on pike melee is to avoid one. Petronels, mounted xbows, mounted arqebusiers, ... can all disrupt/lure away advancing pike formations easily. There slow speed will ensure you can decimate a pike unit as long as they don't get help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

2. Bows beat guns. Guns have their extra effect on morale but bows can decimate gununits before they can fire there first shot. This is especially true when you're on the offensive and your opponent is camped on a hill. I'm not saying that there is no place in your army for gununits but there should always be room for bowunits as well.

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Caveat- bows are excellent for a ranged duel; however, they are nearly useless if the enemy is heavy oriented. Whether its men-at-arms, condottiere, or heavy german merc infantry, bows will have trouble doing much damage against the heavier, early troops of the period.

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3. Put a lot of care in manouevring your army. Pike formations are, although very powerful in melee, very slow and cumbersome. Always move as on or your pikes can become isolated very easily.

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BIG BIG BIG. This is the most important part of pike and musket. Battles are usually determined by who can outmanuever their opponent's lines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shinseikhaan

Caveat- bows are excellent for a ranged duel; however, they are nearly useless if the enemy is heavy oriented. Whether its men-at-arms, condottiere, or heavy german merc infantry, bows will have trouble doing much damage against the heavier, early troops of the period.

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I should have been more specific. Xbows and AP bows beat guns. Sure they won't stop a charge of men-at-arms dead cold but I highly doubt any early gun unit could. AND by the time the men-at-arms, condottieres, ... are upon your lines I'm sure the Xbows and AP bows will have made a lot more casualties.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peasant Phill

I should have been more specific. Xbows and AP bows beat guns. Sure they won't stop a charge of men-at-arms dead cold but I highly doubt any early gun unit could. AND by the time the men-at-arms, condottieres, ... are upon your lines I'm sure the Xbows and AP bows will have made a lot more casualties.

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Indeed, you are correct. Specifically, arbalesters(or the unique spanish unit, I forget its name off the top of my head) make excellent armor punchers early on. Particularly for vanquishing those insane landschnekt foot units that can seem impossible to defeat otherwise.

However, they cannot be trained past the first era of the game, and will be outclassed anyways as guns get better and better.