Still not happy with artillery

[Forward Observer]

I love to use the big guns, but I totally agree that they are still buggy. The only improvement that I have noted that the patch took care of was the limber/unlimber bug where they simply refused to limber up when given the command.

Just today, I was putting down a rebellion in India. It was going to be a cakewalk since most of the rebels were armed citizens and the first salvo from my howitzer battery had taken out the enemy's only unit of fixed demi-cannons and also their general.

However, afterward the rebels got organized and they did mount what appeared to be real unified infantry assault. As they approached, I went to switch my flanking lighthorse 6 pounders to canister. Since I did this just before the approaching rebels were in canister range, I turned the fire at will button off thinking that I would turn it back on when the enemy got into effective range.

To my surprise, all three guns seemed to belch their canister loads sideways out of the rear of the cannon. I mean the barrels were pointed at the enemy, but the cannister sprayed sideways to the right taking out 28 of the 60 light dragoons I had protecting their right flank.

I only lost about 50 men for the whole battle, but it sure stuck in my craw that over half of them were lost due to the bugs that still plague the artillery.

Cheers

[joe4iz]

I have pretty much quit using arty unless I am defending a fort. The only ones I care to use are howitzers. Prior to that , I produce no arty at all.

[Forward Observer]

I have pretty much quit using arty unless I am defending a fort. The only ones I care to use are howitzers. Prior to that , I produce no arty at all.

Don't get me wrong, I still love my artillery and never field an army without at least 25 to 30 percent artillery units. It's just that I wish I didn't have to micro-manage them so much that it distracts from managing the overall battle, and even then sometimes I still can't prevent them from self destructing, or even worse--destroying more of my own men than the enemy does.

I'm can only continue to have faith that the developers will eventually sort some, if not all, of these problems out in a future patch.

[loony]

artillery are almost always my most valuable units. I always produce those, even when I have only fixed artillery only. Just last night I played a battle where 2 units of demi cannons racked 200 kills each. why? well because I attacked enemy horse with my cavalry and enemy infantry was forced to react to my falnking attempt. my demi cannons kept firing directly on the flank of the enemy infantry.

of course, i spend a lot of time looking at what my cannons are doing; say the enemy tried to attack the cannons twice; i was fast (or lucky) enough to see that in time, change ammo to canister, engage one of the attacking units in melee and devastate another one with 8 cannon canister salvo.

i think the greatest problem with artillery is that at the beginning of the game the cannons are nothing more than big bad muskets. you have to have a lot of them pretty close to the enemy to make any sort of impact..

[Didz]

Just noticed another artillery related silly.

In my current battle I deployed a battery of howitzers in a wheat field. If you look in the map you will spot 'wheat-fields' by the little sheaves of corn stacked at random on them.

Unfortunately, when my howitzers unlimbered the central gun just happened to have one of these little sheaves directly in front of its gun barrel. What I didn't realise until the gun fired was that these sheaves of corn are armour plated and impenetrable.

So, instead of blowing the corn out of the way, or just ignoring it, the explosive shell left the barrel, hit the corn, exploded and took out the gun and the entire gun crew that just fired it.

Totally ridiculous.

[Husar]

My biggest problem with artillery was looking at 6 units of mortars firing both explosive and this fire-from-above-shot at the enemy and killing almost noone for several salvos, even a cannonball that explodes in the middle of a formation often kills just the guy it landed on, they do kill some solidiers now and then but if the enemy advances, they usually reach my lines before any real damage has been done, having 6 units of line infantry would be a lot more useful at this point.

[Didz]

Yep! agreed artillery is badly underpowered compared to its historical counter-part, however, the main benefit comes when the enemy decide to go to ground in buildings, and of course forcing the enemy to come to you rather than stand off and hide behind walls and stuff.

Pre-patch the enemy would literally sit in a building until it collapsed on top of them wiping them out. Now I notice that they abandon the building at about 60-70% damage and make a suicide charge at you instead. Same result just slightly different tactic's required to handle.

Artillery just avoids having to go in after them with the bayonet.

[Marquis of Roland]

However, afterward the rebels got organized and at least did mount what appeared to be real unified infantry assault. As they approached, I went to switch my flanking lighthorse 6 pounders to canister. Since I did this just before the approaching rebels were in canister range, I turned the fire at will button off thinking that I would turn it back on when the enemy got into effective range.

When you unlimber you have to immediately click off fire-at-will and always direct artillery fire yourself, otherwise random bad things like canister coming out sideways will happen.

Ceasing fire requires you to click both "halt" and then limber within 1 sec.