Poor Cannon Performance?

Is anyone else having severe accuracy problems with cannons? It seems that no matter what I do, high ground or flat surface, my cannons can't hit a damn thing, they're all over the place. Not only that but they do not respond to my attack orders. It's either Fire at Will or nada

My howitzers work amazingly, but the cannons.. horse or foot, doesn't matter.. they all have the above problem.

They work fine for me. THey aren't terribly accurate... but they weren't historically.

My suggestion? Bring lots. I use 3-5 units worth and that does the trick. Station those bad boys up on a hill and target a section of the enemy line and watch the bodies fly. Recommendation, stick them on the flanks and up on a hill. Best bet is to target them yourself and aim in front of the enemy. Targeting things directly makes the cannon aim directly for that unit, which doesn't always work out the best.

One good thing is to zoom in super close to your cannons to see what they can see and their firing angle and have them aim in such a way that balls will skip like a stone down into the enemy. I've fired a volley from 5 units of cannons (20 cannons total!) and taken out 30 men before in a single big volley. "oh big whoop, that's not that many for so many cannons!" But ... they are also firing from half way across the map and cause massive morale hits when crap like that happens ... so yeah.

I prefer cannons over howitzers. They fire much faster and if you can use them correctly kill as many men per shot.

Hmm... I'll try that next time what are the differences between Horse and Foot artillery? I know that Horse is more mobile, but a lot of their stats are similar

I've used them quite effectively. I love ultra units though-so I get 4/battery. in any case it really just has to spook the troops-use it as a shock weapon.

Thank you both!

I played a few online battles that have the unit sizes set to normal, (I normally play with ultra), and the cannons really did seem damn near uselessly inaccurate, however on ultra settings they make quite a mess of things. As Society said the unit sizes do make a difference in terms of the results you see.