Civis
I Never use artillery.
Hey i was wondering am i the only person that never uses artillery? I personally consider them to be fairly useless because they slow down your armie and rarely manage to kill anything. I think its better if your army can move those extra squares to quickly assault the city/castle quicker.
Or am i just completely mad not using the big guns?
Re: I Never use artillery.
Originally Posted by Teastain
You're not mad. There was times I never used artillery, and I seldom used them in MTW 1 and RTW.
But I think you're missing out. Cannons etc. are excellent at taking down enemy walls, so unless you can draw the enemy out of his cities and castles you save alot of time and lives by having some armies with artillery.
Cannons can also be used to force a defender to come at you or you can bombard him at your leisure. In those cases cannons are battle-winning units.
Other siege engines have their uses as well. Trebs works as poor cannons, but don't cause the number of casualties. Useful to lower enemy morale. Catapults and Balllistas are excelent when defending cities as they can kills hundreds of enemies advancing to your town square.
Of course in the early game siege units aren't needed, as walls are fairly weak and ladders, towers and rams do the job.
Re: I Never use artillery.
artillery is great for quickly capturing a city.
E.g. You have a half a stack of reasonable units and an artillery unit. There is a poorly defended enemy city nearby and an full enemy stack of reasonable units nearby.
With artillery you can capture the city on the first turn negating the need to build siege equipment which could mean that a rather nasty enemy stack is guna be attacking you before you can siege the enemy city
also apparently gunpowder artillery is great for morale crushing as gunpowder is a new and scary invention
Re: I Never use artillery.
I'm not a big fan of artillery in battles as, generally speaking, you're either going to win anyway or the enemy closes with you so quickly that the cannon wont account for any significant number of casualties. Especially if the ground is undulating on the battlefield... I had one test battle where I used three bombards against a column of 1 peasant archer and 2 woodsmen who just stood there whilst I burned all my ammunitiion. I then wheeled up a ballista and the ballista caused more casualties than any of the bombards.
Anyway, using mercenary artillery is a good way to get both fast movement speed and instant assault. Monster bombards, trebuchets and artillery elephants (these aren't that good at getting through gates but will do so at low fortification levels) have all helped me out.
However, artillery really shines during sallies. As soon as you sally the AI will abandon its siege equipment and withdraw to a 'safe' distance. It will then mostly (watch out for archers and especially missile cavalry) ignore your artillery as you wheel it out of the gate and peck away at the mass of enemy. You can also take this opportunity to blow up any siege towers and rams that he's made which means that he will delay another turn to build more and you can sally out against him again. Despite cannons being horribly inaccurate they can be better than ballistas if the enemy has long range archers (because you have to get so close to use a ballista that you're almost in range of the enemy archers.) However ballistas can be excellent in some circumstances; I once disabled four units of catapults, by breaking the catapults, with one unit of ballistae. That let me bring up my archers to harrass the enemy and, on the second attempt, routed a far superior besieging force.
If cities have small garrisons then spies are generally pretty good at opening the gates and letting you win quickly, and you don't have to repair anything in the city afterwards either...
Comes Rei Militaris
Re: I Never use artillery.
You can't judge the effectiveness of Artillery just by the number of kills, there are other ways it is effective, especially when you are attacking.
With artillery, you will force the defender to attack you, or else he will be shot to pieces. This allows you to become the defender, and choose your own battleground, rather than have to march your men up the steepest hill on the map soaking up waves of arrows.
ttt
Adopted son of Lord Sephiroth, Youngest sibling of Pent uP Rage, Prarara the Great, Nerwen Carnesîr, TB666 and, Boudicca. In the great Family of the Black Prince
Foederatus
Re: I Never use artillery.
Artillery, in my point of view, is the hammer of the Gods. Nothing will break a man's will like a flamming rock landing on his buddies. Whenever I send armies into the field (unless it's a cavalry detachment) I always make sure that they have some sort of artllery. Once I have gunpowder, i always have at least 4 units of artillery. Nothing like watching the enemy break and run after one charge and some rocks in their ranks.
Praepositus
Re: I Never use artillery.
it depends, they cost you movepoints but you also don't have to wait a turn to seige, not to meantion they tend to save your losses in seige assaults.
on the field they're more helpful when your fighting with an advantage. as in they can help you avoid losses if you had the advantage. but in a equally matched battle they are fairly useless. (they're very helpful in taking out those big armys that's slightly inferiror to you but you would take significant losses if you strait out assault.)
in the end it depends on what sort of force you bring with them, they're very useful if you support them with a very strong force with mostly foot archers and melee, but if your going with say... a hit and run Horse archer army then they're useless.
Last edited by RollingWave; June 06, 2008 at 04:49 AM.
Decanus
Re: I Never use artillery.
Sometimes getting catapults etc costs more than it's worth- there are usually other buildings that a city or castle could get more from than siege works, and you get a bad movement penalty.
Cannons are awesome though, they can damage walls and knock people off them quickly before they can escape, and they really damage morale in open battle. If you've got access to basilisks, monster ribaults, and the monster bombard it really helps to use them.
Tiro
Re: I Never use artillery.
monster bombard sucks. to slow and you cant use them vs troops.
"He who controls the past controls the future.’ (George Orwell)
Decanus
Re: I Never use artillery.
Yes, they're purely for sieges, but just one unit can knock down a wall sector and kill everyone on it in one shot. That stops them getting away. And they look bloody amazing when the 1000 lb cannonball screams out of the barrel.
Miles
Re: I Never use artillery.
mortars are great for defense - they bring down the morale of the invading armies troops like you wouldn't believe
pffffffffffffffffffffffft!
they own! you can blast your way through a citadel and still have ammo left over.
I admire your luck, Mr...?
Bond..James Bond
Miles
Re: I Never use artillery.
artillery in mtw2 is exactly as it was in that era... slow, inaccurate and of limited use in a field battle, but it does shine in sieges. if i can afford it (and by the time i get gunpowder i usually can) i will get a sieging army (only has infantry, 1 general, 1-2 units of cavalry, 2-3 units of archers and 2 units of artilery) and twice or three times the number of mobile armies (1 general, 4-5 cavalry, 4 archers, rest infantry... or all HA's armies) and use each to what its designed to do
i have found however that artillery has its uses in open battles:
1) vs armies that have a big number of archer/horse archers... siege engines own them and force your opponent to come to you rather than you chasing him (horse archers)
2) bridge fights... place 2 siege units so that they crossfire the enemy comming towards you, even if they dont cause a lot of casualties, they will lower the morale to the point of wavering before the enemy engages u... or use them as the mongols first did in poland... to clear the other bank of enemy troops (or forching them to pull back) so u get to deploy to the other end of the bridge
Vicarius Provinciae
Re: I Never use artillery.
oh come on. bring two mangonels to a battle, not only will they cause a world of hurt for the tightly packed infantry formations but the explosions look pretty. i find it rather amusing that even if the flaming oil does not land on the troops, it will still burn them if they walk over it. they all reach your lines panicked.
Praepositus
Re: I Never use artillery.
in vinilla catapults are probably the most reliable anti troop seige equipment until those very advanced cannons.
one tactic i sometimes do is to use cannons at a long range... when they come close i have a second group of catapults and magnoels
Tiro
Re: I Never use artillery.
look its how you use the Artilary if you set your army before your canons yes that you destroy your own army with your onw artilery
personaly i set them on the flanks ore hill ore in front,that last one is to risk same with flanks so i go out for hills
in RTW is the same problem btw
but ok thats the negative side of artilery if you use them good they are good than
I win, you lose!
Re: I Never use artillery.
well actually I did had a fieldbattle were cannons saved my ass.
I was england and was fighting versus 2 large stacks of 4 units of english knights, 4 units of retiniue longbowmen 4 units of heavy billmen en 4 units of culverins.
I was on a hill(I had a againcourt flashback
Last edited by Kallum; June 23, 2008 at 11:23 AM.
Carl von Dobeln's son
How it all began
Author of the Basileia ton Romaion Series book 1, 2, 3
The work has been done, the trilogy is completed or has it?
Tiro
Re: I Never use artillery.
I don't use arty either if I have to drag them around my armies...
The exception to that is of course if I'm attacking a shore province by a naval invasion.
I do use merc arty though if I'm right next to a settlement I'm going to invade. Also, I have a few merc rocket launchers in my cities because they can dispense their ammo quick enough so that when the enemy tries to assault, I can fire the rocket volleys fast and retreat them back inside safely.
Re: I Never use artillery.
Siege battles are more fun without artillary.
But field battles are more fun with artillary... more epic and nothing beats the feeling you get when the first rock from your trebuchet kills the enemy general.
Crossing the Rubicon
Re: I Never use artillery.
Artillary got effective against troops in the thirty years war
when the swedish King Gustavus Adolphus The great reformed the swedish army ..Breitenfeld is the result
Re: I Never use artillery.
rocks, rebuilts, big fan
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