Low Ammunition

[Faris ad Din]

Compared to ammunition capacities of units in previous TW games, units in ETW have pretty low amounts of ammunition. For example:

The majority of foot archers in Rome and Medieval 2: Total War carried 30 arrows - some horse archers carried 40. Most foot and mounted javelin throwers on the other hand carried 8 (it just makes sense why they can carry fewer. Real life javelin throwers probably had fewer). Some crossbowmen carried 20 bolts. Siege equipment and in M2, artillery, had around 30 rounds of ammunition. One exception would be the Roman legionaries with only two pila (but this makes historical sense), and the Iberian infantry from which they copied the weapon, and Armenian and Seleucid copies of Roman legionaries at that.

In RTW and M2TW field battles that were not simply two armies standing off from one another exchanging shots, the archers usually didn't run out of ammunition but often did use a good majority of it - and so did M2TW arquebusiers but they did reload rather quickly. Granted, archers reload and shoot MANY times faster than a musketeer would.

Line infantry in ETW carry only ten (10) rounds of ammunition on them. Firelock mobs and some other special musket infantry carry only five (5) rounds of ammunition. This is far less than the ammunition capacities ranged units had in previous TW games.

Two major differences indeed are 1. much increased accuracy and killing power of ETW muskets - archers used to have to fire dozens of arrows to kill one M2TW enemy and 2. much slower reload times. I usually fight battles rather quickly in order to deny the enemy any chance at gaining a tactical upper hand and before I lose too many of my soldiers and so I rarely actually run out of ammunition, even when fighting with my 5-round-carrying firelock mobs. What hunter goes out hunting with only five bullets though, much less a battle where your life can depend on an extra shot?

The artillery obviously face no ammunition shortages as they no longer have an ammunition limit.

So has anyone faced any situations in which their infantry ran out of ammunition? Or does the low ammunition carried by infantry really pose no problems for you?

[coman]

Conserve your ammunition. Fire at closer range.

Then charge.

[Faris ad Din]

Conserve your ammunition. Fire at closer range.

Then charge.

I said that I rarely actually run out of ammunition - my point was that the amount in ETW (10 for line infantry, 5 for firelock citizenry) LOOKS low. That didn't really help.

And guys, the citizenry have FIRElock guns - that fire with lit fuses (also "matchlock") instead of using flint and steel to create a spark. Regular line infantry get flintlock guns; again, the citizenry are called FIRElock.

My chief complaint is that ten rounds of ammunition is not historically accurate - soldiers in the 18th century had to have carried more than ten rounds of ammunition with them into battle, at least twenty for citizenry with firelock hunting rifles and thirty to sixty rounds for professional line infantry as dsb3232 said. I really think that the low ammunition was an intentional decision by CA's game designers to force you to close in with cold steel after a while to make battles more interesting than just stand and shoot until one side routs. It does suck when you know that only if your men had a few more rounds of ammunition when they ran out it could have turned the tide of battle in your favor.

I don't think the carnage created by flying musket balls is any less brutal than the carnage created by men charging each other with bayonets. Killing is killing. How would you explain the carnage created by the ten shots fired by each soldier to begin with? That's carnage anyway.

The amount of ammunition is fine - but only for most situations because ETW battles are usually quickly over and a significant number of shots actually make kills. It still doesn't answer for the fact that it's unrealistic - it's like giving soldiers a limited movement range on the battle map before they can't march anymore. It's a weird limit.

The average Union soldier in the Civil War carried 40 paper cartridges of ammunition into battle, and so did Napoleonic armies. Looting ammunition from dead or routed buddies probably ensured you didn't run out of ammunition if you even used those 40 rounds up.

[arcticfireuk]

Is there a way to see how much ammo is left other than seeing them no longer fire?

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Yes, I've run outta ammo before, 1st campaign and had absolutely NO clue why they werent firing. Took me sometime before it dawned on me that they might actually be out of ammo, but during that timeframe of frustration when I'm begging mentally "please fire guys, it'll help keep you alive," and my mind catching up to me saying "hey, maybe they're outta ammo" it was an excruciating span of time. It was during that fight though that I actually realized that the green bar on the side represents supply. Ever since then, I'm aware of it during urban fighting where, personally, I think it plays more of a role then rural fights.

[MyKingforahorse]

I rarely run out of ammo to be honest, even in prolonged engagements.

Now arty on the other hand.. that NEEDS an ammo limit.

[Konrad von Richtmark]

I've only run out of ammunition twice. The first time was when defending a fort, when a line regiment got several chances to fire at an enemy which ran around for a very long time trying to find an undefended wall section to scale. The second time was in a shootout during a quite protracted city battle, when a firelock armed citizen unit ran out of ammo for me, effectively determining that now was the time to charge with bayonets... and firelock rifle butts.

I don't mind units like citizen mobs running out of ammo, they're just mobs after all. But a line infantryman ought to be able to carry more than 10 rounds with him.

[dsb3232]

Considering the historic amount of ammo should be between 30 to 60 rounds, I think the ammo should be higher.

[Mr.Excitement]

The low ammunition might be a way to decrease the amount of carnage. Honestly, if the enemy had that many rounds as well, would you like your men to be caught in a situation where they'd be torn to pieces by thousands of musket balls?

[GoldenShadow]

Your guys should be able to loot ammo from the corpses of fallen comrades and enemies between skirmishes.

Also, doesn't field artillery require a lot of powder? What if a stray shot hits the horse drawn cart carring the powder keg. That would be a cool explosion, like how ships can explode.

[Zeboim]

Generally speaking once a unit has used up all of their ammunition, which takes a good long while, the battle has already reached the point where I should either pull the unit off the line and slot a fresh regiment in it's place while holding them back for when I deem that whatever has survived of the regiment is needed to jump into melee, or go ahead and bayonet charge with them.

[Frederf]

I was playing a flintlock citizenry vs line infantry and I would have won if I hadn't run out of ammo.. handily too.

I have the sneaking suspicion that ammo consumption is based on the number of volleys and not tracked per soldier. I swear it's like your group has "10 shots" and if you line up 4-abreast and 80-rank deep you run out of ammo just as fast as 80-abreast and 4-rank deep.

[Arta]

I only ran out of ammo once in my entire Dutch campaign, and that was just a brutal battle. I think the amount of ammo is fine.

[Mahatma Gandhi]

Yes the green bar w/in their icon next to their images.

[Warhammster]

Line infantry in ETW carry only ten (10) rounds of ammunition on them. Firelock mobs and some other special musket infantry carry only five (5) rounds of ammunition. This is far less than the ammunition capacities ranged units had in previous TW games.

Actually it's 15 and I have never run out of ammo with them becuase no enemy can stand in the face of 15 full volleys.

[justme70]

Yes in Fort defence, when i had to defend against 4stacks, My line infantry ran out first followed by my grenadiers. Good Line soldiers were able to fire 3 rounds a minute with the so called 'brown bess' musket, a typical line soldier carried (as said b4) 40 paper cartridges. In a siege scenario you would have a 'jonny on the spot' running around trying to replenish the ammo, not sure if this happened out in the field of battle. So in fort defence or in fort siege there should be no reason to run out of ammo.

[Dante690]

Light infantry runs out of ammo pretty fast too. I mean I am raping the enemies front line with 4 units of light infantry because they have no skirmishers then suddenly they all just run out of ammo which sucks.

[Metzgershund]

I don't know if it's just me or what but my men have NEVER run out of ammo. They either rout the enemy or themselves before I've ever seen them run out of ammo. I thought it was limitless.

I have the army size on ultra and I've never seen them run out of ammo. Do you have even larger units that stay in musket battles even longer?

[Hebrew_Hero]

I think line infantry carry more then 10.. cause, ive fired more then 10 volleys i figured?

Only units that ive ever had run out of ammo is conscripts and flintlock armed citizenry

[Kip]

You basically answered your own inquiry in the first post... I'm sure it was an intentional design move to balance the game considering the new lethality of ranged weapons. Also keep in mind that those firelock citizens, on a hit-by-hit basis, are just as lethal as Guards. Of course they're much less accurate/disciplined and such, but a hit from a citizen kills an enemy on the exact same basis as a hit from a Guard... bullets are bullets, after all. Therefore, citizens need to carry less ammunition, because in a stand-off, they need to be killing statistically less men than their counterparts, the Guards.

Some might say a solution is to raise both ammunition levels... say increase citizens by 20 rounds and Guards/Lines by 20 rounds. Now, however, you have to take unit sizes into account. This isn't 10,000 men fighting 10,000 men. You have WAY less than that on both sides, in the average battle. Now, all of a sudden, each one of those rounds is much more valuable and deadly, in terms of ratio. A Infantryman of the Line might carry 40 rounds in real life, but so would each of his 9,999 comrades. Those 40 are rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Now, if the battle is 1,000 vs. 1,000, it becomes much more important, because each of those rounds has the potential of killing 1/1000 of the enemy, rather than 1/10,000.

So I guess in my opinion, its about balance... it encourages players to actually charge into hand-to-hand, and keeps the feeble-minded from ranting that their Guards are being killed by citizenry (when in fact they just let them shoot eachother to pieces, in which case a higher-round capacity citizenry would cause much more damage).