How powerful should artillery really be?

[rajpoot]

So basically, artillery needs to have a realistic moral damage effect, insted of being very powerful. Somehow I never thought that the guns and muskets in M2TW scared the enemies enough.....specially in the Kingdoms xpack, the natives.......I mean guns should scare troops a lot, alot.

[Sheogorath]

I suppose if they use grapeshot, it might be another matter altogether. But look at this, the wiki article on the charge of the light brigade:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_..._light_brigade

Sure, it was disastrous, but the cavalry still managed to drive off the enemy artillery crews(their main target), despite charging through a valley occupied by a large amount of both enemy infantry and artillery on both sides and at the opposite end of the valley.

Lol, keep in mind, though, that the Russian infantry could barely ever hit their targets. Still...

The 'Russian' gunners were Don Cossacks, actually some of the best 'irregular' gunners in the world. Of course, they didn't match regular army gunners, but they were pretty good.
The Russian infantry by this point had actually got marksmanship training, however, the ones behind the battery were, again, Don Cossack troops and most likely armed with muskets, not rifles or even rifled muskets. Keep in mind, Cossacks were NOT known for their ability to engage in 'attrition' type combat. They were light infantry.

As to the charge, the Light Brigade suffered something like %35 casulaties (that includes wounded and prisoners), and lost almost half its horses. Despite taking the battery, they were rendered essentially combat ineffective.

Which is not to say I doubt the gallantry of the British cavalrymen, simply that, like the Thin Red Line, it's been overglorified. In both cases, the British were facing Cossacks, typically with their own elite units.
Against the regular Russian army, the British tended not to fare too well. You'll note that, over the course of the war, more allied troops died than Russian ones. Although the Russians did suffer heavily from disease, taking something like 500,000 casualties. However, of those, only about 100,000 were actually killed, to the allies over 300,000 (although its true that most of these were Turks, and their army, while at a high point, was hardly better than the Russians in terms of medical care.)

Back on topic, if you want to see the real power of artillery of the era, check out the Siege of Sevastopol form the same war.

So basically, artillery needs to have a realistic moral damage effect, insted of being very powerful. Somehow I never thought that the guns and muskets in M2TW scared the enemies enough.....specially in the Kingdoms xpack, the natives.......I mean guns should scare troops a lot, alot.

I think that MTW2 levels of morale damage would be approriate for this era, except for the close range cannon fire.
Most people by now knew about muskets and what they were, and, hence would be less likely to shout "OMG, ITS THE IRON FIRE-TUBE OF SATAN!"
However, they need to give untrained militia incredibly low morale. Which, I think, should increase greatly (even faster than regulars, perhaps) with training.