What ordonnance for what situation?

[Peasant Phill]

I feel we're getting off topic towards artillary placement instead of ordonnance use.

Basicly I had something like this in mind:

Direct fire: use roundshot unles enemy close then grapeshot unles enemy in column in front of your gun.

Arching fire: use ... unles ... unles ....

[resonantblue]

Round shot - use it against bulidings and only when nothing else is in range (it has a longer range than any other type of shell). Round shot is also quite effective if the AI ever gets all its units into a smaller area/ball while moving... round shot will tear through them better than anything else. Also, if you are playing a mod that improves accuracy, round shot on the flank of an infantry regiment/line can be devastating... unlike shrapnel round will go right through as many men as you can put up in front of it. I had one round shot shell wipe out almost half of a full strength infantry regiment - take out most of 2 ranks in one go. On default/vanilla accuracy, I find it's usually better to use shrapnel shot.

Shrapnel shot - if you don't have a large mass of troops bunched together at long range, use shrapnel.

Cannister - should be the choice of shot whenever enemy units are in its short range. One salvo can tear a full strength infantry regiment to shreds.

As has been pointed out, if you're using foot or horse artillery, the best way to use them is to integrate them into your line or otherwise give them clear lines of side from the flanks - horse artillery is especially useful for this as they can change positions quickly. My main field army only uses horse artillery. In my current grand campaign my main field army only has 1 artillery battery (I limit the size of my stacks to increase the challenge) and it's a horse artillery battery - experience level 7 and I'm in the 1730s. You can probably imagine how many men it had to kill to get to that experience level in spite of the occasional casualties.

For howitzers/mortars, I'm not a huge fan. I basically only ever use them in my one specialized siege assault/defence stack. But:

Round - only use it against hardened targets like buildings or walls or if nothing else is in range. The bounce makes round shot kind of pointless to attack troops.

Quicklime / Percussive / Explosive etc - honestly I can't tell the difference in effectiveness, but given that I don't use the howitzer/mortar family that often I'd defer to the opinions of others. I just know that explosive seems to really suck.

[Tillan]

Explosive Ive found to work relatively well (certainly better then round against troops) The problems with Howitzers is they arnt very accurate at extreme range, and there even more inaccurate at close range.
Mortars I havnt really used, same with percussive and explosive ammunition, so I cant really comment on them, but the key to getting use out of your howitzers is positioning, so that you can keep them firing as long as possible at the best range. You cant throw them to far back behind your line, otherwise enemy troops coming towards you will only be in best firing range for a brief amount of time, at the same time you cant stick them to close to your front line for the same reason.
Just think about the kind of battle your expecting, and where you expect the enemy to stick around the longest.

But yes, in a field battle, with direct fire I switch on round shot at the beginning, making sure i know the limits of shrapnel, and switch over to shrapnel asap. For my howitzers, typically i leave them on explosive (but as I say, I havnt unlocked the other types yet)

[Slaists]

But yes, in a field battle, with direct fire I switch on round shot at the beginning, making sure i know the limits of shrapnel, and switch over to shrapnel asap. For my howitzers, typically i leave them on explosive (but as I say, I havnt unlocked the other types yet)

Just curious, playing 2 turns per year, by what year do you have shrapnel?

[Tillan]

That was my mistake, meant to say Cannister. I havnt got shrapnel yet in my current campaign (between 1730 and 1740ish in a swedish campaign) Though i would bet the same holds true for Shrapnel.
This is a Grand Campaign, and is for all intents and purposes over (hold 25-30 regions, have broken the Russian, polish and Austrian armys that will allow me to take the rest of their territory's within the next 5 or so years (probably giving me 35-40 regions - N/N) and have done the same in india with the maratha (sp? - Mughal were already wiped out and Mysore are my protectorate - and causing plenty of problems for Maratha themselves).

I tend to put individual cannon advancements on a low priority, getting them as the last thing on the tech level. But Ive also put a high priority on the soldier side techs in general (fire by rank, square formation etc) so im not sure how much that balances things out. Anyway, its pretty certain I wont be getting shrapnel/quicklime or percussive before the game is so far finished that it would take a tactical genius to stop me (as opposed to the AI)

[Prussian to the Iron]

i love shrpanel, but for some reason i can never visually aproximate the terrain (which means that my cannons firing shrapnel always hit right in front of them in the ground)

[Fisherking]

Don’t waist money on Mortars anymore.

They have great difficulty hitting the battlefield. They need a target a bit larger than a fort!

What a load of dung that is!