Artillery Fire at Will

[nafod]

Is there anyway to tell Arty units to fire at will, but not to rotate guns to acquire a new target?

It's a challenge micromanage Arty units once the AI closes with your lines, and too often, leaving fire at will mode on means that a unit of Artillery will acquire a new target on your flanks and unload cannister shot down your line. If you end up needing to manage skirmisers or calvary on your flanks it's near impossible to manage both in real time (such as when the AI sends a unit of melee troops after your missle cav -- they will eventually be cornered at the edge of the map even with skirmish mode on.)

Marquis Roland mentioned on another thread that you can avoid this by targetting the ground -- I've experimented with this and it's better, but still, targetting the ground is something that needs to be micromanaged if you want a decent number of kills.

What I'd really like is to tell Artillery to fire at will, but not to rotate their guns. Is there no way to do this?

While I'm at it, has anyone noticed that when telling a cannon to attack an infantry unit with canister shot, the cannon seems to aim for the sides of the infantry formation, and not the center?

If a developer would read this suggestion and implement it, Id be overjoyed.

Simply put artillery will currently not only turn to fire through your line of other units, but a center gun will destroy the one to the right or the left of the same battery....

Simply put, in no way this could ever be considered a well thought out feature.

In fact I usually opt to entrench armies (no movemment for two turns/wait for sally at siege) just so I can put the artillery in a barricade so it operates properly without babysitting.

[Fisherking]

Yes artillery is still a very buggy thing.

I have seen howitzers destroy units and never select a new target…just fire on the same spot. At other times it targets the nearest unit.

There are still issues with limbering and unlimbering. Things are still odd when you try to target specifics areas, locations, structures, and units.

There is also a path finding issue with it. Units should not walk through deployed artillery but they seem to prefer doing that.

[Babblearossa]

There is also a path finding issue with it. Units should not walk through deployed artillery but they seem to prefer doing that.

Oh dear yes, I think i've seen this in every TW game, any unit anywhere in the vicinity of artillery always decides the sensible path from point a to point b is 20 steps to the left, in front of the firing guns then swing slowly towards point b with an occasional dawdle to wait for the cannon to salute them.
it's not improved a bit in this version.