Experimentation with Closer range fire and artillery shell types

[Hannibolico]

The statistics CA gives for the units are really meaningless. What i always want to know is how these statistics translate into actual kill damage. I found the stats interesting enough in themselves, and i'm sorry this is such a big block of text lol.

My first experiment involved how effective is it to hold your units fire until an enemy reaches close range. Unfortunately i didn't know the fire at will button affected accuracy, which according to the unit guide, it does.

My conditions: I took a group of 150 austrian line infantry and set them against a unit of 120 maharatan Sikh warrior melee infantry on Flanders with dry weather. Before the battle i would stretch my line as far as i could without using the increase rank buttons, meaning i got them into a row of 3 with only about 10 guys in the back row. Like this:
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With the CPU on easy they would head straight for my line, and for the units i marked here long i simply left them on fire at will, while the units on close i turned on fire at will at the lastest minute i could so they could get a volley out.
As soon as the Sikhs reached me i would record how many of them were left out of their unit of 120, quit, and changed a circumstance in the experiment. Most of the results i did 5 times and took an average of the results. Noone died in melee combat. Keep in mind this data is not a gurantee of how much damage will be done by a unit to any other. It is a very specific experiment, and the results should be used relatively. Just think "Oh, the line infantry does more damage at close range" because you could try these experiments and get results that are slightly greater or less than this. Please keep that in mind as you read over this data:

Early era line infantry, meaning without ranked fire, at close range:94 /120 Sikh warriors left. My infantry fired only one volley because of a lack of rank fire.
Early era line infantry at long range: 99/120 Sikh warriors left. yet again only one volley fired.

Late era line infantry, with ranked fire this time, at close range: 74/120 Sikh warriors left. 2 volleys fired.
Late era line infantry at long range: 83/120 Sikh warriors left. 3 volleys fired.

And for kicks i threw in Platoon fire too
Not very effective actually (I swapped out the 150 man Austrian Line Infantry for 120 man Austrian guards for this test because only elite infantry have platoon fire)

Long range left 101/120 sikh warriors alive, and only about half of my unit fired.
and close range left 109/120 sikhs standing, only about 10 guys fired out of the whole unit.

So, what all of this means is that the closer a unit gets in your firing range the more damage that your fire will inflict on the enemy. In the early era it's to your benefit to spread your infantry out as much as you can so that everyone in the first rank can fire, because before ranked fire the second rank exists to fill holes in the first rank.
Ranked fire helps immensely, and enables you to inflict alot more casualties upon your enemy. I personally think rank fire is the most important upgrade in this game, and really ramps up your fire power.
I'm honestly not sure how much of this is due to the fire at will though. Fire at will according to the unit guide i mentioned earlier is supposed to reduce accuracy, so i think an order to fire might actually inflict more casualties. Because without fire at will on the units wait for each other to reload before firing another volley
As for Platoon fire, i don't believe it's actually meant for inflicting damage on melee units, but it may impact morale a bit? Not quite sure though, on this i'm merely guessing.
The most important thing you need to learn to use close range volley fire is when to fire. Infantry tended to have a delay after i hit the fire at will button, and i ended up a few times witht he Sikhs on me before i loosed one volley! With cavalry, turn on fire at will as soon as they enter your range. With infantry i consider closer range to be within half of your range, with a little farther out being better with rank fire so that you can get 2 volleys instead of one.

Artillery:
The questions i wanted to answer with artillery was 'how do the different shell types operate?' I used the same kind of conditions for these experiments as i did for the infantry ones, i just swapped the line infantry with late era 24 pound, except the horses which were 6 pound, shot. Naturally my artillery got off quite a few more volleys than the infantry did. Also though these statistics aren't as hard though because artillery is really hit or miss lol. I may just have gotten lucky but i believe that it would have evened out across all the artillery types. My settings are on ultra for the units so each unit has 3 artillery pieces.

Horse artillery works the same for damage as the bigger foot artillery, it's just the foot artillery does more damage to buildings.

Round shot left 107/120 Sikhs alive to reach the cannons.
Canister shot left 94/120 Sikhs alive, but this can't be right because my arty only fired 2 volleys, due to the massively decreased range cannister shot has, and the second one didn't kill anyone at point blank range.....
Shrapnel proved quite amazing leaving 79/120 Sikhs

With howitzers i noticed that they have pretty good accuracy at anywhere in between the end of their range and the closest 1/3 of it. Closer than 1/3 of their range they couldn't hit at all, with the shots sailing over their heads.
Round shot left 114/120 Sikhs alive
Percussive shells left 76/120 Sikhs alive
Quicklime shells left 92/120 Sikhs alive
Please consider these statistics comparable with mortars too because mortars have the same shell types, it's just they're immobile and their range is litterally as big as the flanders map. Oh and their round shot bounces straight up into the air.

I didn't test the damage for rockets, but i noticed a couple of patterns in that the rockets spread out along a line, meaning that the more spread out a unit is, the more likely a rocket be to do some damage, and also rockets cluster closer together the closer the target is.

Just for kicks i decided to test the Puckle gun out and found that it actually kills more effectively than a ranked fire line at close range.
only 66/120 Sikhs were left alive after the Puckle gun got out six volleys in the same range as a canister shot!

So therefore i would say your artillery choice depends on the terrain and the range you think you're going to be engaging your enemy at. If the terrain is hilly you want mortars or howitzers, and if it's flat you want regular cannons. If you want range, again use mortars howitzers or rockets, and if not use the puckle gun or some kind of cannon. I believe that the most effective type of bombardment is using shrapnel at long range, and then switching to canister at close range to get the most use out of your cannons, but whatever you think works works.

so with those out of the way i actually enjoy these types of experiments, and if you have any questions that you think could be experimented with feel free to reply on this thread and i might give it a whirl. If you have data that contradicts this feel free to show me, and i'll use your way and test it out to see if i'm wrong.

[Diocletian]

Thanks for experimenting, was an interesting read!

[Demetrios of Messene]

Thanks for experimenting, was an interesting read!

Second that!

[Steve Holt]

With your experiments did you do several of them or just one because I think the result would be more accurate

[OberonDark]

Science demands you do this test 156 more times, divide the results by pi to the 651st digit, reverse the numbers, and then round to the nearest billion.


Good job, though.

[Steve Holt]

I wasn't thinking that extreme more like 5 time tops

[The_Dude]

I wasn't thinking that extreme more like 5 time tops

10 would be good, you cant conclude anything from just trying it once in game. artillery more often then not misses 9 out of 10 shots and at the 10th they blow up half a line of line infantry with one volley.
same goes for musket fire, sometimes you get a lot of misfires, sometimes you dont.

[Steve Holt]

I killed a whole unit of Cherokee lances with one volley of canister from one un its of 12lb's once won the battle

[Tepok]

The best testing ground should actually be multiplayer

Accuracy changes with how tired the units are, so it will actually vhange the results too.

Good initiative though

[Magnus]

Good research, thank you.

[0))crayola))>]

Nice work! What is irritating for me with my line infantry is having to wait for every last soldier to be formed into line before the regiment fires. I think this is hardcoded by the engine because I can remember this in rome and MTW2 for archers and the like. I wish soldiers could fire "from the hip" as they moved forward or to an enemy flank and not have to wait for a fully dressed line in order to fire.

[Skyphos]

MOST Interesting. I never experimented with the fire at will (now I will and props for sharing the guide..which was also a good read).

I havent played with fire at will on infantry, or ran any "isolated" tests but I've found similar results with artillery. For some odd reason my cannons researched perc. shot but havent actually been able to use anything other than explosive. Quiclime took over carcass just fine though. I havent been in any engagments since the perc. shot upgrade with any other arty pieces than 4" mortars...but I think they're supposed to get it too eh? May try a howitzer and see how she plays out. Anyone got a definate answer to that?

Thanks for the research and report.

[Rotaugen2009]

Its interesting to see that they made fire at will less accurate. Since he didn't have to fire in a volley, the infantryman could actually aim. But there were several problems that led to less accuracy when they fired at will.

1) Volume was often thought to be more important than aim. They would try to get off the legendary Prussian "5 shots per minute" which basically meant you loaded and fired as fast as you could. The barrels would get so hot, they'd have to hold it by the sling to even lift it.

2) The recoil was so uncomfortable that many of them would not sight down the barrel or level the piece on their own. Supposedly many soldiers got bloody noses from the recoil, so they held their heads up. This made them point the tip of the barrel at the enemy from too far above it, causing the aim to go OVER the enemy. In formation, they would have everyone level to the same spot, so the bullets would more or less travel the same horizontal plane.

3) Once they started firing at will, it was tough to get them to follow commands on when to stop or switch targets. There are recorded battles where an unintentional firefight could not be stopped until hours later, when all the ammunition was gone and resupplies could not be brought up.

I was really curious to see the effects of different artillery types. I should follow your lead and try different pieces, ammo and terrain to see what happens.

[Skyphos]

Good points Rotaugen. I am a firm believer in fire supremacy...put more down range than the enemy = win. Still used in the military today along with proper kill zone positioning. Not to say I dont prefer accuracy...just finding that happy middle is the key.

Puckle guns are wild shots but they usually do the trick for fire supremacy...or at least scare the life outta the approaching force. Defendign them is tough because more often than not in the heat of battle you see them shooting near (or sometimes on) your own units in an attempt to hit the enemy. Usually gotta position them dangerously close to the fronts with support ready on the sides...gets hairy though. (Future ref: Dont put them on much of a hill, they just shoot the ground a lot)


The arty reminds me of Braveheart and the first battle scene where the King arrives...
King" "Ready the achers"
Knight: "My lord, wont we hit our own troops?"
King: "Yes,...but we'll hit theirs as well."

LoL. I feel that way with my arty a lot...especially when its flintlock or militia down range haha. Maybe i treat them too mean =-p

Mortars or any pieces of arty on a big hill are cool (Attack Morocco and you get a HUGE hill that pretty much wins it for you even if its a 2:1 ratio in their favor).

Any real help with rockettroops? They usually just spam....good in the beginning when theres massive lines but about useless in any real accurate/damage sense. I was hopign for better explosions but they are intimidating.

[Bob the Insane]

I am a firm believer in fire supremacy...put more down range than the enemy = win.

We had an expression for that, "Don't die for the lack of shooting back"...

[Hannibolico]

I edited my post and added in averages. For each of these except platoon and puckle i did five tries. I probably should have done that to start with. Notice now that there is less of a difference between firing at close and long range. Possibly even a negligible difference now, but there is still a huge difference between ranked and not ranked fire.
Also the howitzer results are a slight bit misleading, on one try with the howitzer i killed down to 47 charging Sikhs, but on a later on i only killed to 115, which messed up my average, which illustrated The_Dude's point. I felt five tries was good enough for me, but any unit that can kill down to 47 even some of the time is worth having in my book because the Sikhs nearly routed! Also i learned from that that with the howitzer you want to fire the Percussive shells into the middle of your enemy, the quicklime right in front of your enemy, and the round shot should only be used at close range because for some reason it can hit a little closer to the howitzer than the others (?).

[Tepok]

least funny shot I saw recently was a 64" maratha shrapnel at my own troops engaged in close combat. Half the unit went down.

I had forgotten to switch targets...

[Skyphos]

Just to make sure I'm understanding....

Ranked Fire = Fire and Advance formation toggled on.

I tryn use this all I can, but sometimes it seems like I get licked pretty good tryin to get them to line up right before the first shot. They dont want to spread into that formation until the target is already IN range...resulting in me receiving the first volley rather than delivering. Any tips or is this consistant with design?

[Hannibolico]

Whoops lol. No ranked fire is not fire and advance.
Ranked fire is when the units in the front row fire, and then kneel down so the units in the second row can fire and so on down your line.
In the early era your units won't have ranked fire and only the front row will fire, with the second row holding back to provide replacements for the front line.
Fire and advance is when your front rank will fire and then move up a bit while the second rank fires. I don't think you can tell them when to fire with fire and advance because once you designate a target your infantry spreads out and then will advance to meet the enemy like a regular attack.
What i'm talking about is when the enemy is charging you you're holding your men in a defensive line, and it's a little better to hold your fire until the enemy closes with you.

[Kazang]

Very nice work.

Ive found that percussion shot is by far the best howitzer/mortar shell to use, quick lime is not far behind, kills less but the extra morale hit is usefull on units that are weak to morale shocks, militia and so on. But 90% of the time percussion does a better job and more reliably.

Shrapnel is awesome, at all ranges, cannister being only slightly better in 0-60 meters area.

Puckle guns, whilst they do kill pretty well at very close range, its no better than cannister shot and you lose the morale hit effect of losing 1/3 of a unit in one volley that the cannister gets.
Cannon are much better all round choice, esp the horse cannon, the tactical benefit of the speed, manoeuvrability and range make them superior to the puckle guns. Which are very niche and poor choice for a balanced army.

Platoon firing seems buggy and ends up getting less shots off than standard volleys in my own tests, stand british line inf beats a unit of gaurds, which isnt right but platoon firing seems to leave soldiers idle whiole they wait for their turn to fire. Its may be effected by the file and hence time it takes for the shots to go down the line but i havent gone into that much detail testing it, since its most likely just bugged.

As for toggling fire at will to get a more accurate volley i don't think that is 100% true, i cant see any evidence that fire at will makes units less accurate, and whilst waiting till the enemy is well in range before firing a volley is in the theory the best way of doing it. Turning it on and having the unit fire right away is extremely hit and miss, in that sometimes you turn it on and they continue to do nothing. In my experience its safer and in generaly more reliable, although not opitmal, to leave fire at will on. Unless you dont want you units wasting volleys on the wrong targets.