Quote Originally Posted by Alpedar
Does it affect accuracy?
Somewhere i read that yes, somewhere that no.
I did not found it mentioned anywhere in game files, but it can be hardcoded.

My in gane experience is that it improves accy, but I'm not sure (Either it do, or I see what I want to see).
I was intrigued to find this out once and for all because I've had a tendency to hold on to costly-upkeep, experienced arty because of a superstitious belief that the hard-earned chevrons make them indispensible sniper units.

The test: England vs Mongols in a castle siege battle.

England are attacking with 4 units of ballistae - 2 triple-gold and the other 2 raw recruits; and a unit of town millitia as a general's unit.

Mongolia is defending with a unit of elephants. Because they are defending with one unit the AI will not move from the castle square unless physically provoked, leaving my arty to their dirty business.

Each arty unit is set the same distance away from a tower and given the order to fire. As ballistae only cause a couple of percent damage per hit to buildings it is easy to see the hit rate for each unit.

The result: each unit destroyed its target tower at very much the same rate as the others. Sometimes one unit would be in the lead by a couple of percent but there really was no difference in hit rate between experienced and non-experienced units.

The corollary: arty units don't gain accuracy with experience and can be disbanded when not needed without worrying. After all, they are expensive to maintain.


Postscript: The above battle ended when I had the ballistae fire their remaining bolts at the elephants, and when the elephants stampeded I sent the ballista crews chasing them with their butter knives in a bizarre, Benny-Hill style chase. Needless to say, the greenhorns would rout after one stomp, but the triple-gold guys were very persistent indeed.