Artilery usage

[Alpedar]

One reason i bought this game is gunpowder units.
I understand that in late medieval-early modern period gunpowder weapons were not dominant on battlefield, so I cannot expect much in game too.
But my feeling (and i'm pretty new in this game) is that artilery is underperforming (I tried custom battle - bridge battle, AI on defense, I emptied artilery magazines (4 basilisks) and then attacked with rest of army. In the end, artiliery did not have most kills, nor close to that. It had some usefull kills (enemy general and artilery) though.

So far only time when artilery were worth their weight (except siege) was when i was defending bridge. Cannon balls fliing through clumped enemy on bridge did nice carnage. But in the end, other units had similar amount of kills.

This leads to my questions:
1) What is best way how to use artilery in field battle (non siege) and what kind of artilery is best for this.

2) Is using explosive rounds good idea?

3) I heard that experience improves accuracy for missile units. Does it improve accy for arty? If yes, how much?

[FactionHeir]

Serpentine, Trebuchet and Ballistae are the best artillery in terms of taking out units IMO. Explosive rounds for cannons, culverins and basilisks reduces accuracy by quite a lot but doesn't actually increase kill much at all. What it does do is throw some units back a bit (1 second stun for some soldiers in a unit in a way), so not really useful.
Experience unfortunately doesn't seem to impact accuracy. Accuracy is set in a file and is a set number, not a floating variable.

The only way to really make artillery useful would be to mod their projectiles.

[Ramses II CP]

The best use for all gunpowder troops in field battles is morale damage. Kill the opposing general, fire through his men as they advance, and by the time they reach melee range their morale will be low enough for one good charge to cause a rout. They will not kill an enemy army for you, they'll just make it easier for you to break them. The ribault is particularly useful in this capacity as it won't collect many kills, but it will scare the heck out of the men it's firing at.

In the campaign they're obviously very useful in sieges as well.

[Old Geezer]

Culverins in the 2 spanish Americas campaigns that I have played did amazingly well. Often one would get over 100 kills in a battle. I once set up a battle in which all my defenders on high ground were artillery of some sort, except for one cavalry unit and one spear unit, against the Mongols. They would start to approach and back off repeatedly. After losing a few men they gave up and sat there until time ran out. Mortars are very useful in cities, either assaulting or defending. Bombards and such are wildly inaccurate but if the defenders are massed then they are effective against troops. C/A seems to have, in general, done a good job of depicting the use and enjoyment of artillery during this age. Now, if you like artillery, hold on for Empires; it should be the queen of the battlefield.

[FactionHeir]

Afaik in kingdoms all projectile accuracies have been raised.

[ReiseReise]

In Americas the Culverins are battle-winning on offense. Defensively they are not as useful due to the incredible running speed of native units, and they will be on top of you after only a few shots.
In any case, artillery can give you a huge advantage, although you may not be able to see it. They may not kill 50% of the enemy army, but even if your artillery only kills 10% of one unit, and even ignoring morale penalty: that unit is that much weaker, that much quicker to rout, and that much quicker to start a chain reaction.

[PrestigeX]

I usually use Trebucets and Mortars when defending my settlements as a counter-siege equipment force. I try to take out their towers or their Artillery.

Ballistae I sometimes use for domestic field battles (When an enemy enters my territory.
But generally I hate to use Artillery for my invasion armies (unless they land by sea, or are taking on a CITADEL) because of the negative effect on Marching Distances - i hate that shit lol

[Poncho400]

After playing a few rounds of custom battles with the Russian Bassilisks, I really want to go back to my Russian campaign. They can shoot clear across the map with amazing accuraccy. Combined with cossack musketeers, they demoralize the enemy like crazy. Having 20 bassilisks against 1000+ peasants is hilarious.

The one thing I don't like is how you can't put artillery such as ballistas and mortars on your walls. Ballistas are basically useless in defending settlements. But if you could mount them on your walls with your troops, they could prove to be quite usefull.

[Furious Mental]

Getting your cannon to fire grapeshot is easy. If you have Kingdoms all the entries you need are already in the text files for the Crusades campaign so it's really just copy and paste. On the other hand if you don't have Kingdoms I don't know if it will work at all, because it's based on a self-explode event used for things like mangonels. There is a thread about it

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=92023

Incidentally it is easy to not let the AI use it (which on balance is best because it will destroy its own army). I had just gone about the mod in a stupid way. You can also get your gunpowder troops to fire buckshot, like a blunderbuss, etc.