Why are line infantry so unrealistically bad in this game.

Line infantry are worthless because light infantry do their job better from every single angle, lets take a look at what light infantry does.

Light has more ammo on light 15 shots X 90 units 1350 bullets vs 10 shots 120 units 1200 bullets.

Light has more range 100 vs 80, they get the first shot which instantly makes up for having 30 less units than line.

Much better accuracy & much faster reloading time than line. HUGE firepower difference
Light infantry can fire One to unlimited ranks deep. < Another huge firepower bonus. Thats right you can tell your light infantry to make dense squares to really pack firepower for the amount of space they are taking up. Meanwhile line infantry de-evolved and lost rank fire somehow as ETW had that ability and NTW doesn't and historically speaking as far as timeline ETW happened first NTW happened second. But right, back to not having rank fire. Your line infantry only fires once, one rank deep.

Both have bayonets.

I'll give line infantry this though, they do have better melee stats which doesn't affect me as i don't use a knife in a gun fight. And they have square formation which is a minor detail that i easily avoid w. good unit placement & artillery to snipe calvary.

My army consists of 1 general, 6-8 12lbers artillery, and rest light infantry. Playing vh/vh and i get 100k income around turn 60ish taking over the whole map. Has this topic been discussed more times than i could possibly care to know & is commons sense among everyone who played this game?

Download a mod and quit playing Vanilla.

Get into MP. AI is too stupid to take advantage of the weaknesses of light infantry.

1. Line will outshoot lights once in range
2. when using terrain properly, it's often possible to negate the range advantage
3. if your opponent doesn't let his cavalry getting sniped away, it is great against both lights and artillery,
4. melee is a very real option.

That said, the setup you describe would be considered a light inf spam which actually is frowned upon in MP because it is very annoying to play against.

When playing against the computer my army consists of 5 cannons and 5 howies 2 units of cav and the rest line. i put my cannons just in front of my line even spaced out and wait. thats it the enemy will walk up get shot to hell by my shot gun cannons and line. not fun.

get a mod ( ive never modded so have no idea what to do or what to get)

go online just do it you wont regret it.

Originally Posted by DunkFunk

When playing against the computer my army consists of 5 cannons and 5 howies 2 units of cav and the rest line. i put my cannons just in front of my line even spaced out and wait. thats it the enemy will walk up get shot to hell by my shot gun cannons and line. not fun.

get a mod ( ive never modded so have no idea what to do or what to get)

go online just do it you wont regret it.

In Italy we say: ti piace vincere facile eh????

Originally Posted by daniu

That said, the setup you describe would be considered a light inf spam which actually is frowned upon in MP because it is very annoying to play against.

Hi there.
Well, quite honestly, why would the user of such tactics care about other people. If they can not defeat such tactics, the user is just plain smarter than them. No reason to frown uppon better players, just because he has found a way to beat you. THAT should be frowned uppon, and players acting like that should be black listed.
The same problems was seen in ETW: I was the defender, on a map choosen by my opponent (some big-shot 45000+ pointer), and I defended my self. He rage-quit because I defended. MP is for stupid egoes and dickwards.
Y.S.
M. Jessen

Originally Posted by MortenJessen

If they can not defeat such tactics, the user is just plain smarter than them. No reason to frown uppon better players, just because he has found a way to beat you.

*sigh* how often do we have to reiterate this...
The problem is not that light inf spam is not beatable, it's that it is no fun to play against, it's just a waste of time.
I once spectated a game (ETW) where one party had one light inf left, the other two line. Because lights are faster than line, the chase went on forever.
I actually don't know who won because I quit after 10 minutes... the time it takes to fight a whole normal battle!
I wasn't even involved in that game, but I sure frowned.

I only keep Line Infantry because they have more troops than lights. I always use Lights as just Skirmishers because buying Riflemen just isn't worth it in my opinion. Plus, Square formation can make or break your entire battle, especially if your opponent has more cav than you do.

Light Inf. vs Line Inf:
Melee can really go down badly if you have an entire setup devoted to Light Inf.
Also a couple of cav charges at the same time can do wonders for your morale.

He will instantly destroy you if he uses his howitzers/fixed artillery on your skirmisher while you run away from his army.
What will you do when you are attacked by light cavalry spammer? He will first chew your artillery by concnetrating his cavalry and attacking your through the least defended area. Then he will have the range advantage, not to mention he can chase your general.
At least if you had line you could "hide" your general inside a square from all but misssile cavalry.

oh my god!!!...only line inf???...from a certain point of view it's reasonable...but unrealistic...

Only line infantry? Skirmishers are so useful, I would take 2 at the very least. They are awesome for quick manouvering, and can be the second unit to start a battle, if there is artillery present. Stakes, flanking fire and loose formation is awesome

Well I only really play the campaigns against the AI where the AI just doesn't smart enough to realize it can shoot back at me.

Hmm, I just noticed something.
Look at the cinematic for this game, and when Napoleon rambles on about Russia, you can see a realistic rank fire.
Their laziness is unacceptable, seeing as this proves they know about it.

Originally Posted by Prototype2001

Your line infantry only fires once, one rank deep.

Actually, no, after having paid close attention: they can fire two ranks deep (which is how far they should be stretched out anyway).
I must admit it doesn't always look that way.

As noted the problem is that you're playing the vanilla version of NTW. You need to pick up a mod. I just downloaded the napoleon realism mod and, Oh. My. God.

I can't ever play vanilla again.

I only played one battle (which crashed, but I have been having problems with crashing before the mod so it's something else) and it was epic. Here is what i noticed from one battle.

The mod changes everything. Morale. Firepower. AI strategy. The AI actually "thinks". They use cav's to scout. Have a group of skrimish or light infantry hiding in the woods waiting to fire off a few rounds on the advancing troops, then retreat? The cav will scout areas, draw the fire, then charge in and route those troops.

Attacked by a superior force? Well, just camp on the hill - the AI will suicide charge and you win. Nope. Not on the mod.The AI will see your defenses and pick an alternate route. I laid all my cannons on one face of the hill. The AI saw this, SPLIT his army up and attacked the hill on two different sides (with a small "harrasing unit" attacking another side - nothing major but still had to defend it) I still won, but it was because I forced the AI to attack me on the campaign map ( I besieged one of their cities, so they had to attack) which allowed me to pick where the battle was. But if I didnt bring the amount of cannons (I had six horse artillery units) I would have been knocked off the hill and routed easily. (Where that same night, while using vanilla, I fought off an AI attack with two lines units, a general, and 5 units of armed citizens. I took out an enemy army with two cannon units, fives units of line, skirmish units and a general - all by camping a small hill with my lines behind the trench defense. The AI didnt make any attempt at a coordinated attack and just attacked my lines from the front - firing up a small hit at troops behind trench modifications)

Fire power is reduced so the firefights are drawn out more which allows more time for the AI to attempt flanking moves. It also allows for some epic screen shots.

You can find the mod in the offical mod release section - the thread is a 111 pages long so it can take some time to read what changes were put in and WHY. The DL page gives an overview, but the thread will show the thought process of what went in and why.

I would serioulsy suggest checking it out. I also DL'ed the deployment mod (found on the same thread as the realism mod) whgich allows the defender to have the whole map (except for a no mans zone between the attack and defender) so you dont have the immediate artillery barages - have to manuever.

I high suggest the mod. Was that all a fluke in that battle? By reading through the thread, apparenlty not.

The mod: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=352810

Thought process of whats been put into it and why thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=338437

I personally favour an all line inf army,which i stretch into 2 ranks. Though i have never dared play online. For me it is good in defense or attack. If Cav threaten i go into square and then back into line to deal with infantry. I have beaten armies twice the size of me like this. When the enemy run i send my army into melee to deal with the Art. If attacking I advance via the move forward button. If the enemy mass in one area (which they usually do), I make another line of unused inf from the flanks and put them at a 90 degree angle so i have 2 or 3 sides of a square. I've found that Cav for some reason don't try and flank, but run in front of the line and there is no need to form square, as they got blasted by my men. It's not unusual for kills for some of my units to be double their size (I.E. 80 men=160 kills; i usually play on medium size though recently tried small and ultra, i have an old machine :-)).

I only field at least 4 light inf in my armies, 2 on both flanks, or I sometimes create what I dub, "Skirmish Armies" where I just dump lots of light cavalry, skirmishers and light inf. for when I raid enemy regions.