What do you think the balance should be for gunpowder units?

[Bona221]

Hey everyone. I just recently downloaded SS 4.1 (Don't have kingdoms...) and I decided to edit the stats of all of the gunpowder units to make them a bit stronger (in terms of accuracy, damage, etc...). I've played a few custom battles with completely gun-powder based armies, with the exception of the general. This means, only infantry (unless the faction has mounted gunpowder units, although I have not tried them yet) and artillery, with the inclusion of the general's bodyguard.

My first test was a scenario against a Scottish rebellion army. Mainly light infantry rabble led by a unit of highlander nobles and some noble archers, supported by some basic archer units. Nothing special, a pretty low class army. I defeated their 1200 man army with my 800 man army taking only 300 losses.

My second test was against a randomly picked Turkish army, which consisted of some of it's own gunpowder units, but also catapults, trebuchets, and worst of all, heavy cavalry. As soon as the battle started, I attempted to destroy the cavalry with my cannons. Unfortunately, I was only able to kill about 20 of them before they crashed into my infantry lines. I usually deploy my infantry groups into 3 different areas of the battlefield so that the cavalry cant destroy them all at once and, while this helped, it wasn't enough. My main line was crushed, and then as the cavalry went for my second group (which was situated on a hill) the main body of the enemy force went for my other group. Needless to say, I got my butt handed to me...

I want to make it so my gunpowder armies are able to sufficiently stand on their own without use of melee units, as I am attempting to allow armies to be completely ranged base and still take on the armies of other factions that are composed of melee units and cavalry. So, my question for you all is, how fair do you think this is? I know that the guns of the time weren't all that good, but this is something I want to mod into the SS mod itself by messing around with the stats, but I don't want to overdo it.

Sorry for the long post... But, what are your thoughts on all of this?

Thanks in advance guys.

(BTW, loving the mod!)

[Stark of Winterfell]

I think that's why period armies used pike+shot.

[Bona221]

I think that's why period armies used pike+shot.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I would just prefer a completely ranged army if possible.

[Stark of Winterfell]

I guess you would have to make damage, range, and accuracy ridiculous, or further increase the morale damage. However, if it gets the the point where you can kill/rout heavy cavalry before they reach your lines, then infantry probably would rout before getting close enough to be much of a threat.

[TheLastPrivate]

Since it's not just napoleonic wars just yet, I'd say:

Extremely low accuracy at range, very high ap damage, good range, high morale damage, slow loading time. But the game itself is not very good at simulating that, as PB said before...

[Gogolometro]

Gunmans are ok but you need to understand without pikes and some cavalry suport is no chance to win vs the DFK.Ideea is to mix well the musckets with pikes like a nice tercio combo.Pike keep cavalry, infantry at distance and you can shoot again and again.Pikes are extraordinary suport troups.Imagine you have and old muscket and a Lancer in steel atack you.
And take this situation 2 units 1 of pikes and 1 of caliver, muscket units are defending against 2 stacks of gothic cavalry.Guns wil fail maybe 3 from 4 shots of volleys but never an horse want to look like a cood piece of ketucky fried chiecken on the long pike of an adventurier.
In medieval age the guns are expensive and a bit inacurate but most important gunners never wera armor and rate of fire was slow.And in melee bayonet come later so you ned the pikes.Try tercio combo and you will be satisfied.

[Point Blank]

Try AlphaDelta's excellent 'For King Or Country' English Civil War mod, it uses gunpowder system that will be in next RR update. For that we:
-dramatically increased firearm attack values but removed AP attribute, giving improved effect versus unarmored but some resistance for heavy armor at long range
-increased overall missile accuracy in battle_config.xml file
-reduced specific weapon accuracies in projectiles file
-reinstated fire_by_rank

The overall effect is as TheLastPrivate suggests: very low accuracy at long range, good accuracy at close range, devastating effect if hit, slow reload time (still experimenting with fire_by_rank balance in context of SS)

[TheLastPrivate]

We're all holding our breath for next RR and SSTC