artillery control

[scsscsfanfan]

is there a way to control the guns to hold the fire until you tell them to? eg, timing canister shots for a coming cavalry charge? something like the broadside fire on the ships?

[pevergreen]

Turning off fire at will, then right clicking kind of works. There is no foolproof way, but the method I have given will work better as the unit gains experience.

So a low level unit of cannons may not fire as one, but a high xp unit may.

[IRONxMortlock]

Turn FAW off then on when they get in range.

[pevergreen]

Turn FAW off then on when they get in range.

How do you know they will aim for the right unit?

[crpcarrot]

How do you know they will aim for the right unit?

you right click on target unit when its in range. sometimes cannons seem to take a while to respond to you orders

when enemies get really close i turn off FAW anyway cos my canons seem to cause so many FF casualties and make my units rout. also i never use FAW when i am using canister shot. and right clicking on target has worked fine for me so far. canister shot is leathal on elefants they all die in 3 shots.

regarding ships if you play the tutorial it shows you how to do a broadside which is always manual

[IRONxMortlock]

Yeah, its pot luck which one it will go for with that method if there are multiple targets

[AussieGiant]

keep in mind gentlemen that experience should be playing a role in how quick artillery responds to your orders.

This is applicable to normal units as well.

[crpcarrot]

keep in mind gentlemen that experience should be playing a role in how quick artillery responds to your orders.

This is applicable to normal units as well.

what he said and i'm not sure of this but during a batlle it hink my canister shots were doing a lot more damge after my canons got just one rank. before that i was tearing my hair out thinking why the hell they keep misisng but after the rank they seems to hit with 90% of their volleys and kill at least 5 each time. also it think they nees to be on the sides but make sure they dont turn too much and shoot eachother on the backs

[AussieGiant]

absolutely crpcarrot. Experience levels are going to make a huge difference to many units.

Everyone seems to forget this when playing and expect all units to be veterans from the start.

[Sheogorath]

Anybody else having occasional difficulty getting their artillery to limber up correctly? They seem perfectly willing to deploy, but sometimes they limber the guns, then immediately delimber right after that. It's quite annoying.

[phunkbot]

Anybody else having occasional difficulty getting their artillery to limber up correctly? They seem perfectly willing to deploy, but sometimes they limber the guns, then immediately delimber right after that. It's quite annoying.

second that, I've been seeing the same behavior. It seemed to me it occurs often when having them on FAW. Those were experienced units too (albeit in RtI).

[Sheogorath]

second that, I've been seeing the same behavior. It seemed to me it occurs often when having them on FAW. Those were experienced units too (albeit in RtI).

Indeed, most of the time it seems FAW related, but sometimes it happens even when I have that turned off. It's quite annoying when you need your artillery ready to move somewhere quickly.

[andrewt]

I'm only playing on medium. In the RTI campaign, the AI loves sending some cav to the back of your lines, then pull their forces in front out of range. I usually speed up that portion of the fight because artillery takes forever to load. Well, my artillery on fire at will started firing on the cav at the back of my army, killing a few of themselves in the process.

[Forward Observer]

I have the game but can't play until my new PC arrives---hopefully by this Friday, so I haven't been following the discussions much, simply because I could not speak from any game experience--plus
reading the all posts made me just that much more envious.

However, I remember having discussions about all the gunpowder units back when the game was in development, and I seem to remember one of the CA guys saying that they planned to instigate a "fire at my command" button for both infantry and artillery---plus artillery would have the additional ability to target an area and not just a unit or structure.

These types of controls and commands were missing in M2TW of course, but then they were less critical since gunpowder weapons were much less sophisticated during the Medieval time frame, and artillery in particular was more designed for siege work than anti-personnel anyway.

I know that a "broadsides" command function made it into the naval portion of the game. but am I hearing that none of those control features for infantry or artillery made it into the land battle portion?

I guess I can live without it, but as an old cannon buff, I was looking forward to a bit more sophisication in function and control---especially with the artillery units.

Cheers

[AussieGiant]

Well I take back what I said about experience.

I had a battery of three guns firing and a particular target. It moved to flank, all three guns turned to shoot and proceeded to blow 2 of the 3 guns to smithereens!! Bloody idiots!!!

It seems stupidity is not part of the experience process.

jees