Handgunners in Expert difficulty games

[History Geek]

Dear All,

Talking vanilla MTW:VI, how do you find handgunners? Personally I have great difficulties in making them hurt the enemy in more than the slightest way. Sure guns scare people and animals, but when playing on expert I have a feeling the AI bonus kind of negates this effect.

Do you apply handgunners on expert? And if so, how do you use them effectively?

yours,

/HG

[Ironside]

It's better to treat then as medium melee troops with the bonus of handguns, than ranged troops. Get them on a flank, fire and then charge.

Not that I normally use them, although when I accidently had thier accuracy at 0.7 (instead of 0.07), they were quite nasty.

[Noir]

On a side note: play on Hard - expert only gives AI cheats and unrealistic battle bonuses - its a waste of time and energy to beat the various Obi Wans and master Yodas.

Handgunners under a good general and with a few upgrades are extremely powerful - they are very decent swords (some of the best in the game in fact) - the firepower is just an added bonus. All you need to do is inflict one casualty to an enemy unit and they get a morale penalty that combined with the handgunners' charge may route pretty much anything that can route.

To do that, approach the enemy with enagage at will on and fire at will off or let them approach you. Once you (or they) are in range just put fire at will - the gunners will shoot now as they have their weapons loaded. Do that at the very last moment/closest distance possible so the chances that you make a kill are maximised. Now after the volley just press alt and click attack/charge. Your gunners take their swords out and throw themselves to the enemy taking a few scalps on the way.

Remember that volleys depend on the number of the front row troops - the more breadth your formation has the more bullets are out of them (at the expense of speed reload for reloading ranks units such as arquebusiers). This is true for sword units' melee as well as they tend to wrap round enemy flanks and make their formations crumble. It pays to have a 3 to 2 if possible ranks deep handgunners formation as they take ages to reload and you aren't really interested in getting a series of volleys out of them. The disadvantage is in terms of meneuvrability.

Optimally you want to flank as Ironside says - then you really get the best out of them.

There's more than meets the eye in this unit.

Many Thanks

Noir

[macsen rufus]

Very good advice from Noir - especially the bit about playing on "hard" rather than "expert", as it makes all the difference to AI morale. (Someone did make the point once that using expert is also bit of a player exploit too, as the AI will fight to the death rather than run - giving your troops more valour from more kills).

I tend to use guns for their morale effects rather than the outright kills. Careful use of the fire-at-will command is key. I tend to leave them in hold formation rather than engage at will, but either will stop them skirmishing which is a real killer to their usefulness. When the enemy come within range, just toggle fire at will and they let loose one coordinated volley like Noir said - this usually is enough to send them running. It's also a good way to use arbalests etc, too.

I also like to pair handgunners with arquebusiers, as that way the enemy are under fire longer, suffer more losses on their way to you, and consequently have a more fragile morale. Also when I play a Muslim faction, HGs (as opposed to the wimpy Mamluk ones) make a really useful addition for their melee abilities.

[Agent Miles]

HG, from the numerology thread:
http://shoguntotalwar.yuku.com/topic...gy.html?page=1
On Expert, the AI units only get +4 to morale and about 30% more combat power than otherwise. As you probably know, the AI units still rout. I've never had a problem with playing on Expert. Just my 2 cents.

[Noir]

Fair enough - however:

In vanilla lowly units start at about 2 to 4 basic morale - this can be turned to +4 with a general that has 4 command stars (rather the norm in vanilla), and further increased by buildings (church, monasteries, cathedrals, military buildings) to say another +4. So far its 10 to 12 morale for units like arbalests & feudal sargeants - note that knights start at 8. If you now add the "only" +4 of the expert that takes it up to +16 for lowly, i repeat units such as junk spears and shooters. IIRC 16 morale is about the jedi threshold - that is units won't rout all that much.

A unit of knights in the same stack would be at about 20+, since they start at +8 and all this before your units even enter the battlefield and get more valour due to the in fighting valour up that they tend to get even faster since they fight for more time. Units do eventually rout (outnumbering and fatigue penalties、charged from the rear etc) - but the fragile relationship that keep armies together (by mutual support) is forever broken.

The campaign game kills this relationship because it provides more morale than the engine range is capable of supporting meaningfully IMO.

In vanilla MedModIV after 30 turns almost all units would fight to the last man - so i just modded all upgrades out and reduced the stars of the generals considerably (no more than 3 at the beginning) to get to a level that i consider optimal - ie unsupported units generally rout, units down to 20% of man strength generally rout. This is reflected by the base stat/status of units.

Many Thanks

Noir

[scowie]

I imagine they'd be quite good for assaulting castles too, especially for muslims, who dont get halberdiers. Handgunners and arqubusiers are the only "heavily armoured" infantry the Turks and Eggies get.

Their armour would reduce fatalities from missiles and from boiling oil. And their handguns would be handy for shooting down those pesky jedi generals that can make for some very costly assaults.