banging my head in over online battles.

[death5089]

i have been playing this game for a while now and i can seem to get a hang of online battles. i used balanced armies, always make an offense, maneuver as carefully as possible, and always attack! attack! attack! But it always seems im getting out flanked, skirmished to death by rifleman, blown to bits by artillery, or having my line infantry decimated by other line infantry.

My current set up is: 1 general, 4 hussars, 3 arty, 6 line inf, and 5 rifleman. I organize my line inf and arty in single line integrated arty, with rifleman screening the front, and my cav on both flanks.

But i just can get it right in the fire and maneuvering part of the battle. When to move, where to move, what to attack, and when and what to flank.

Can someone please give me some tips?

[daniu]

Generally, I recommend you save and watch replays of your games to see what went wrong, maybe also get and watch some replays of other people to see how they do it.
There's some YouTube channels with commented games too (like Synoptic, check my sig).
It's very hard to give some general tips without knowing where your problems lie exactly... your setup looks ok, although I would substitute 2 light dragoons for 2 of the hussars.
I personally used and refined the same army for all my battles until I got a feeling for it, and then started to diversify.

With regards to maneuvering, try to attack enemy troops while they're moving; similarly, try to have finished moving when the enemy is ready to fire.
For that, you can use things like cav charges (to engage his infantry in melee) or a meat shield militia (to catch the first volley) before advancing your line.

With regards to what to attack, know the enemy's units and their value (both monetary and in battle). For example, manually target guards and Fergusons with your artillery and rifles, they receive the same damage as normal line and rifles but are way more powerful.
Don't target artillery with artillery; after unlimbering, the AI does that so take care to assign targets.

With regards to what to flank, everything you can
Line infantry doesn't shoot sideways, so you inflict casualties without being shot back at. Remember it's more blessed to give than to receive

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

personally i dont use skirmishers much. They are very difficult to handle and need lots of micro management, theyre only useful at long range and they usually get raped by enemy cavalry. I just get extra line infantry instead. For me its all about infantry. Artillery is only for long-ranged attacks and cannister fire-support, and cavalry i generally use for protecting flanks, taking out enemy cavalry and chasing down skirmishers.

Anyway, I think cavalry arent that useful against inantry in ETW, as even an isolated infantry unit can form square in 5 seconds, meaning that before you can charge it it has formed square.

[death5089]

i seemed to have found my niche my friends. with a new setup of my army of course. I have started using France instead of France instead of united provinces. the setup is: 1 general, 4 missle cav (very good melee and missile capabilities), 3 mortars (very good range and forces the military to come towards me to avoid fire), 6 line infantry, 7 rifleman.

[daniu]

i seemed to have found my niche my friends. with a new setup of my army of course. I have started using France instead of France instead of united provinces. the setup is: 1 general, 4 missle cav, 3 mortars, 6 line infantry, 7 rifleman.

That's not a "niche", that's very close to a mortar/rifle spam. If someone loses against you with that, it's
a) because you're playing on Grassy Flatlands
b) your opponent is not a very experienced player.
Actually, it appears to me that having so many rifles with mortars is a bit contradictory because mortars are static and need defending and light inf relies more on mobility
(they will get wasted by line inf once in range).

Lose at least 1 mortar and 1 rifleman and substitute by line infantry, then I guess it's quite strong (although I still think mortars are useless and 6 rifles are too much).
I arrived at an army like this: 1 general, 4 rifles, 1 cannon, 1 howitzer, 2 light dragoons, 2 heavy cav, one or two elite units if you want, rest line inf.
It's very balanced and I don't think I've come across a setup I couldn't win against with it.
The non-fixed artillery requires quite some micro, but if you get it right, they're much more effective then mortars.

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

my mortars are useless. In my campaign, i used a 4 inch mortar using quicklime shot against very big targets of Polish infantry. Not only were the mortars depressingly innacurate, there was only one direct hit during 30 minutes of the battle, the quicklime shells never worked! The mortar unit only killed 1 Polish man during the whole battle.


Does anyone know why the mortar shells dont explode into the lime cloud and work?

[daniu]

Does anyone know why the mortar shells dont explode into the lime cloud and work?

Why that is, I don't know, but I have noticed that too; more often than not, the quicklime doesn't get dispensed properly, making even the few shots that would have hit useless.
Quicklime does work fine with howitzers, if you have mortars, switch to percussion.

[Tropical Coke]

Mortars are vastly overrated. Howitzers and Cannons are superior for any balanced battle.

[NJGOAT]

Just a quick note on the quicklime and mortars. Units killed by quicklime are not counted towards the kills of the units firing the rounds, just in the total. That may be why your mortar only showed 1 kill for the whole match on the results screen.

It is much better to use percussion with the mortars though and use howitzers for quicklime if you want to use it at all.