For Kennosen - Cannons Are Your Friend

Dear Kennosen,

I am so sorry you've had a bad experience with AI cannon batteries. I wrote this in hopes you can obtain better comfort with them. God knows you'll suck without coming to terms with them.

To the gentlemen writing the Royal Artillery School thing; I don't think this overlaps very much. My apologies if it offends.

Hope this helps,

coman


Cannon Crew & Handling - Article written from 12 Pound Foot Artillery

Base Reload Time is 50 seconds - reload skill, same as muskets.

A one experience bar 12-pound foot artillery reloads in exactly 43 (50 - Reload Skill of 7 = 43) seconds from the initial discharge. There are other actions you need to be aware of when timing your orders, and these are critical.

The artillery from the moment they arrive at their destinations take and average of 7 seconds to actually come to a stop. Then the crew will unlimber their guns, which takes close to 14 seconds to complete.

The cannon are then turned to the appropriate angle, if on autofire, guns take approximately a half second to adjust 15 degrees, so presumably a gun crew can turn 180 degrees in 6 seconds.

Once a loaded cannon is set as ready to fire, the order is given and the captain steps up to the individual gun, assuming it is already aimed or that minor adjustment is needed the gun captain will step up to the gun, check the aim, set the match to fire and the gun will go off. Usually the gun captain requires 3 to 4 seconds to check aim, set match and for the gun to go off.

It is possible for guns to explode and it is possible for them to require relighting if the match fails in bad weather.

As to crew survivability, I find it difficult to tell which crew member is injured and at this time it appears from observation, if a cannon crew falls below 3 people, the cannon is usually abandoned. Crew from one gun can crew another piece.

Once the piece is discharged, the two men at the rear will roll it forward and reset the piece on target which can take about 5 seconds. Once the gun is in place the left loader places a shot in the muzzle and the muzzle taking about 5 seconds to move up, pick up the shot, and place the shot in the piece.

The game cuts a corner here without sponging out the piece, which would have required another animation and typically another crew member. Loading and plunging consumes roughly the bulk of the time, and I believe this is where the animation cuts off reload time as a unit gains experience. With one bar of experience a 12-pound gun takes, 28 seconds to pack the shock in place.

End to end time from firing to firing on a cycle is 43 seconds from match to match, firing to firing. A perfect cycle of 50 seconds - minus reload (without delays due to failures). There are no orders given during a barrage, but you can hear the sound effects, the hiss of the match, the scratching of the shot being loaded, followed by the scraping of the ramrod.

Employment - Or - How to Shoot those motherers over there!

There are three purposeful methods of firing a cannon as I see it. Only one involves clicking them on an individual target. So stop being lazy and learn how to properly use your pieces of artillery!

1. Point Firing - Specific Targets (Right Click on a unit)

If you REALLY want to try and harass just one unit, you may. You can order your cannon to fire on a single target just by selecting one in range and right clicking. The gun battery will track the target as best it can and keep up a withering 3.42 rounds per minute. Accuracy comes into play here as well as guessing where the enemy is going to be.

Accuracy as far as I can tell is a logarithm that says, Point X is my target. With accuracy there is X + Y% of deviation from point of desired impact. The greater the accuracy, the less the deviation from point of desired impact. When you add accuracy limitations, with the fact the gun is aimed six seconds before the shot arrives, you end up with pretty wild hit chances and often shots going wildly astray - sometimes into your own Army.


2. Designate Target - (Right Clicking on the Ground)

What needs to be understood about managing the AI is that while tricky, it can be mastered and tamed to behave exactly the way you want. In addition to being careful where they are moved and placing them properly (which I recommend be done with pause on), I strongly request that you disable fire at will. Doing this keeps the gun ready to fire when you need it and prevents mishaps of targets wandering too close to enemies and a deviated shot hitting your own men.

By designating a target you can take an entire battery and have them fire at a specific point on the ground by right clicking. Ideally this is done just before, or just "Ahead" of a moving body of enemy. You can experiment between shooting just before a unit, or just behind a unit to see the effects.

Shots just before the unit tend to land too short, but my skip once or even twice on hard dry ground, or splash heavily into mud or snow. Shots that go long pass right into the intended target at leg level, often taking down two times as many targets as you'd get out of a point shot. Shots that deviate right or left will likely still hit something because for whatever reason, changing the size or alignment of a target unit can drastically alter the aimpoint when right-clicking on a mass unit.

There are two things to keep in mind with cannon, angle of deflection and velocity. If your shot is coming from a slightly higher position, aiming low at close or moderate range is assured to cause a skipping hop in the cannon shot. Aiming beyond at long range gives you a better chance of plunging a shot into a crowd of horse or men.

From a flat, roughly even level of terrain, which rarely exists you'll end up with a shallow trajectory and aiming slightly behind a unit will surely miss - aim far behind an enemy and you'll take down half a cavalry unit as the ball passed through them at horse-head / torso level.

The control is yours. Experiment. Type 2 assumes you're firing all your guns on one ground target. This has a mass, concentric effect of putting a lot of shot into a very close area. Because the aim point isn't moving, you don't face the zaniness of both trying to hit a target AND the target moving and shifting size and rank/file.

One thing to note is that cannon shot, and cannon aim point can be adjusted RIGHT up to the point the match is being lit provided the target is roughly within 30 degrees and doesn't require significant lateral movement in the piece. This means you can start timing your guns, battery 1, wait, battery 2, wait, battery 3, wait. You can do this by pausing the game momentarily and issuing the orders 1-2 seconds apart in real time. This will also naturally occur if a unit is under fire, is missing crew or has various reload rates due to piece size, or experience levels.

3 - Beaten Zone / Denial of Area - (Scattering Right Clicks on the Ground Across an Area per Battery)

It is very possible you can deter an enemy from approaching you based on a constant and wide barrage of fire landing in a specific area. One piece can deny nearly 75 yards either side to an enemy. If that enemy wants to pass into your beaten zone, it's going to suffer morale hits and weak enemies simply won't do it. If you stagger your shots per battery every 50 yards, or 75 yards, or one long, one deep, one to the left of an area - making a box, you'll see something miraculous happen.

The enemy won't advance willingly "I'm not walking into that barrage! You're crazy!". It will bring it's general up, or an elite unit or try and find a way around the fire and in rare cases pause, then form up and march right into it.

If the enemy advances into a beaten zone, you'll then have to adjust your fire. But placing a beaten zone effectively in advance of your own movements allows you to move Horse and Foot while the enemy is generally suppressed.

This is highly valuable considering that accuracy is greatly effected at long range and while the exact impact at the exact point is unknown, it feels after much experimentation that around 65% range the pieces become much more accurate. True murder can occur with cannon at 250 yards.

When dealing with a brave opponent, or one prone to rushing, such as a native or human player - always keep half your batteries barraging a beaten zone, the other half should be prepared to fire canister shot. Often the AI has telepathic powers and knows when you've switched into canister for they will instantly back away from the gun arcs and reposition just outside canister shot.

Perfect time to hit them with roundshot close or long from their position and knock them down like pins in an bowling alley.

Worst case scenario, if an enemy is charging you, NEVER, EVER AIM canister at the enemy. Aim it before their position, or at some point just behind where they are going to be. Remember you may need 3-8 seconds to actually adjust a loaded piece, aim and set a match. If you time it right, you can select the point in the ground very close to the battery, where the enemy is going to be, select the Right click on the ground 5-6 seconds before the enemy is upon you, and you can cut an entire unit to pieces with one battery.

If you are facing horse, I always recommend firing long. The spread of the shot and the height of it will inflict deadly hits. As canister fans out in a ~30 degree cone, you don't want a mass of those shot striking the ground when it can come down in a horse, or a mess of legs, or some soft bit like a throat or head. What goes up, must come down!

Keep in mind that the AI will get stuck. Sometimes it just appears like its not doing anything. Toggle the AutoFire. Toggle the Limber command. Toggle the Flee Command. If nothing happens, it MAY think it's stuck in a firing sequence. Give a unit at a few toggles, then wait another 50 or 100 seconds. I often find the unit resets itself and even though the buttons are out of synch with the animation, you can relimber and move a gun.

I find the AI has problems around non-animated objects, hay, cul de sacs, etc. Be patient and make artillery your servant and together you will own the battlefield.

Another way to play, is to select your target, fire your batteries and instantly hit the Halt button (Backspace by default). You want those guns firing only when you have a sure target, or an ongoing safe area to beat from afar.

Remember, muskets are great and all, but they accounted for 10-15% of the kills on the battlefield. Artillery was the great killer and is such in Empire Total War.

No offence taken


Nice timing observations.

Originally Posted by coman

As canister fans out in a 360 degree cone

Come again? 360-degree cone? That is...not really a cone, is it?

Originally Posted by J. Fishman

Come again? 360-degree cone? That is...not really a cone, is it?

Thanks so much math-major.

Along a ray from muzzle to intended target, it spreads in a cone un-choked. If unrestrained, it would not be a 360 degree spread. I suppose then it's closer to a 30 degree cone. I shall do some more testing in slow motion and evaluate the spread a bit more. And clarify the language.

Its a full cone from what I can see.

Can someone who studied physics clarify for this old retard (I mean't <--- the POSTER as retard, not J.Fishman)? I can't even remember rules for division. "Quick, get an engineer!"

Well, if you mean "360 degrees" in terms of a cone in 3D orthogonal to the firing ray, then sure, I see that, although this statement doesn't tell us anything useful about who gets a face full of shot, merely that we don't have duckbilled cannons. More information about where the DEAD ENEMIES are going wind up may have been more useful than informing us about the unduckbilled nature of cannon barrels, though.

Originally Posted by J. Fishman

More information about where the DEAD ENEMIES are going wind up may have been more useful than informing us about the unduckbilled nature of cannon barrels, though.

Write it yourself. If you found nothing else useful about the article, then you probably shouldn't troll, it's unseemly. I clarified my post above, I wasn't calling YOU a retard, only a math-major, which is still fighting words where I come from. I'm the retard, I barely remember math.

I don't care where my dead enemies go, only that they die, plentifully and before they do harm to my shiny uniform.

Originally Posted by coman

I don't care where my dead enemies go, only that they die, plentifully and before they do harm to my shiny uniform.

And i tought it was excellent, just like the economics lecture.

Comans doctrine does work with the way the game/artillery mechanics work. I'm consistently getting much better results with my big guns now, just takes a little nudge in the right direction, and a little effort (swearing ) prior to realising they are not just for show.

Thanks for the information. I did not realise you could shoot at points on the map and not just at formations. This has really helped my use of Arty and I have successfully used them to deny areas of the map and keep the undertakers busy.

I would rep but i'm a sprog so i can't!

I wish they'd work on canister, my cannons fired canister into a group of enemies all for 4 ft from the cannons and one burst went about 90 degrees straight up into the air.

I'm begging your lord'ships pardon, but I'm going to rip this content off for my artillery guide to go with the videos and combined foot tactics...

Does the three right clicks really work? Each gun in the battery will fire at a separate area?! Like Fire for Effect!!

I think coman meant that you click in 3 separate areas using 3 batteries, but it's possible I've missed something about right clicking on the ground.... triple click? Seriously?

Also, angle of fire makes a HUGE difference. I almost never fire at lines directly in front of a battery...firing at an oblique angle is devastating, especially w/ shrapnel shot. For example, if I have a battery in my center, I like to target units on one of the enemies' flanks...