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.

[Barbarian]

Artilery is usefull at destroying walls and towers quickly, of course.

Their range also makes artilery a great power. At siege defence battles in america's campaign, I kill about 30%-40% of enemys only by artilery.

When my towns/cities are under siege, I attack the sieging army. What happens: they are defending, so they wont use their ladders and towers to attack, but will retreat a bit and stand, doing nothing. They also don't want to leave the battle, so they simply stand and do nothing.
And I only station cannons outside the city, and bombard them, untill I have no munition anymore. I also use muskets, and after that, whait untill battle time goes to 0. Battle ends with draw, but enemy has lost 50% of it's army.

Next turn, I attack again...
Even if foes have decided attack the settlement, they don't have enough men to take it.
I have beaten dozens of thousands of natives with few hundreds men of my own. My culverins have 3 gold chevrons now, they almost always hit right where I show them.

About the eplosive shot: only useful for attacking single targets/units and units in loose formation, as it increases the chance of hitting someone.
But for most battles I use standard shot. It bounces of theground and slices through formations, inflicting terrible damage. AI (in all the latest battles, I have fought recently) forms it's army in three lines. I aim at the first line with standard shot, and it hits all three lines, thus being very useful

And I would also suggest to never use "fire at will" for canons/bombards. They intend to pick some dumb targets, or aim at some small, routing units, while the 2500 foes stand near
It is better to chose targets manually.

[Guru]

And I only station cannons outside the city, and bombard them, untill I have no munition anymore. I also use muskets, and after that, whait untill battle time goes to 0. Battle ends with draw, but enemy has lost 50% of it's army.

Next turn, I attack again...

If you sally out and bombard them for a while I think clicking exit will do the same as waiting for the time to run out... Only that you wouldn't have to wait for the time to run out. I'm not 100% sure but almost.

[ReiseReise]

Arty (including non-gunpowder) generally doesn't bounce. Some people say they have seen it on rare occasions, I don't recall any specific incidents where I saw it but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In Rome the onager etc missiles would bounce almost every time which is probably why people think it is commonplace in M2TW.

Also, mortar fire is extremely devastating. Only a few factions have them (namely the Italians and maybe a few others). Besides taking down any wall/tower with a few shots, they are very useful against infantry. They are very accurate, can fire over the tallest walls (or even onto units standing atop the walls) and even though they don't have explosive shells, they still have a huge area effect, killing about 8 men with every hit.

[FactionHeir]

I found mortars to have a rather small area of impact, killing maybe 3 or 4 at most. I suppose it depends on your unit scale setting too though.

Guru: You can end battle to get a draw, but you must have all your units back inside the city for that to work.

[Barbarian]

Arty (including non-gunpowder) generally doesn't bounce. Some people say they have seen it on rare occasions, I don't recall any specific incidents where I saw it but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In Rome the onager etc missiles would bounce almost every time which is probably why people think it is commonplace in M2TW.

lol. I see missiles bouncing in every battle. When the topography of the ground is not smooth, the distance between the first and the second hit may be very large. Trebuchets, mangonels and other catapults doesn't have this feature, or happens rarelly. Bombards have it, but it is not so devastating. But basilisk/culverin shots can bounce even three times. Of course, heated/explosive shots doesn't bounce, but they have a larger area effect in the point, where they hit.
A shot, which hits 2-4 units is not a wasted shot
It draws nice lines and patterns in enemy's formations

Guru: You can end battle to get a draw, but you must have all your units back inside the city for that to work.

If that is really so, I could save a lot of time, thanks.
Even on battle speed X6, it takes several minutes for battle to end.

[FactionHeir]

Of course, heated/explosive shots doesn't bounce, but they have a larger area effect in the point, where they hit.
A shot, which hits 2-4 units is not a wasted shot
It draws nice lines and patterns in enemy's formations

Unfortunately explosive shots do not increase kill rate. Higher impact area just means more people thrown into the air or falling over or being thrown back (breaks formation a tiny bit, but not really useful actually) but they all get up again. Kind of like elephants running through a mass of infantry and only those directly hit by the elephant's attack (not its attack area) die.

[Alpedar]

What do you think about balista being MUCH more accurate (0.005) than most accurate gunpowder arty (serpentine - 0.03)?

And basilisk's explosive shot being as accurate as normal (where everyone alse has explosive/heated/fire less accurate)?

[FactionHeir]

Not much to say about realism. Probably best left to military historians (such as those at the Monastery subforum)

[Alpedar]

I tried balista in sally battle (so stupid AI stood there and get shot). And i was impressed by its performance.
During this battle ballista (no experience at begining) killed 165 men, gained 2 chevron (and lost 3 to some cav charge).

When I shot from left flank to enemy army, almost every shot (two per salvo) killed around 4 (sometimes it looked like 8) men.

Its main disadvantage over gunpowder is range. But gunpowder arty can shoot from much higher range, baliste can much better hit.

edit: Another battle and around 220 killed

[FactionHeir]

The sally AI is completely useless really.
Once you take out their missiles, you can send your own artillery and missiles to stand right next to the enemy (make sure that's the flank and not the front) and just shoot at them without them coming at you.
If you place your artillery to be perpendicular to the enemy formation you are shooting with flaming shots on, you can take out about 1/3 of that formation with each single shot.

[ReiseReise]

The problem with the ballistas extreme accuracy is that it hits dead center on the enemy unit every time, even if there is no one standing there because they were all killed by the previous shot. As others mentioned, it is 10x better to have them shooting from the flanks.

[Alpedar]

My point (which i forget to wrote) was that when I tried the same with gunpowder artilery, I most of time missed whole formation.

And of course anti-sally AI is realy poor and its not good example of field battle.
But its good testing ground for showing maximal capability of weapon. (+ I could test it while continuing camapign).

[Sentinel]

Mortars are my favourite artillery unit when assaulting castles. Once you have used them to knock on the front door, the defenders usually leave the walls undefended and gather somewhere to discuss their situation (usually the main square). This discussion is so riveting that they ignore you when you move your mortars right up to the walls and lob rocks onto their heads.

With cities, the main square is often beyond the range of the mortars when positioned outside the walls, but in castles it is position nearer to the walls.


In my resent Americas campaign, as Spain, I received 4 Culverins in the early game. These were almost all I needed to take most of the Apache settlement. Their long range meant that they could be position well away from the village, yet still target any unit in it. The defenders would occasionally run to the edge of the village, but still be out of bow range to hurt the culverins.
On one occasion they did not even do that, just sat in the main square and died. One (two gold chevron) culverin killed over 600 defenders. Despite this high kill rate the unit never gained its third gold chevron).

If field battles I find artillery a mixed blessing, Yes they can do a lot of damage from great range, but the AI usually does not give you much time to use them before charging. Then once the melee has started you can end up doing a lot of damage to your own units from friendly fire unless you do a lot of micromanagement. It is must frustrating to have your best general killed by your own artillery.

[Furious Mental]

I modded my cannon to shoot grapeshot. Oh, the horror, the horror! Problem is the AI, which is addicted to using the secondary function with artillery for some reason, sometimes blasts their own army apart with it.

[Old Geezer]

Was grapeshot really used in the Middle Ages?

[Furious Mental]

Yeah. The Portugese were noted for using it to defend their fortresses in Morocco around the turn of the 15th century. They also used alot of fused explosive shells.

[Von Nanega]

Is it a hard mod, or a few lines change?

[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.