Grapeshot way too underpowered?

Hi all,

I don't know if this has been discussed.

But I've been bothered by the way in which the artillery in the game (I mean both in vanilla and in TROM mod) seems to such a weak grape shot.

Reading accounts of grapeshot use in that era (especially in the battle of Friedland), I wish the range and devastation of the grapeshot was increased. Could anyone show me how to edit this?

I just wish we could roll up cannons and let loose the grapeshot (but for balance sake, have its reload time decreased as to not have the game suffer from an overpowered artillery).

In vanilla canister is already devastating. Their only weakness is their range. A few shots can easily wipe out an infantry unit.

If the range was accurate then cannon would dominate the game.

Personally I'd prefer to have cannon that are portrayed accurately but which are much more expensive and harder to train.

Having two foot batteries that can fire canister at their proper range and can move at the same pace as infantry would be far preferable than having to recruit 4 batteries per stack to make artillery even semi-effective.

Originally Posted by Clodius

Having two foot batteries that can fire canister at their proper range and can move at the same pace as infantry would be far preferable than having to recruit 4 batteries per stack to make artillery even semi-effective.

Artillery is only effective when you mass it. You really need at least 3 units of artillery to be effective

Originally Posted by Shellshock1918

Artillery is only effective when you mass it. You really need at least 3 units of artillery to be effective

Which was exactly my point - historically artillery fired canister at ranges of from 200 to 600 yards and ball from 1,200 to 1,800 yards.

If this was accurately portrayed in NTW one battery would do the work that you currently need 2 or 3 for.

I have to ask, out of curiosity: if you extend the range of canister, does it tighten the spread at all, or do you just wind up with very spread-out balls at the full range?

Originally Posted by TommyAtkins

I have to ask, out of curiosity: if you extend the range of canister, does it tighten the spread at all, or do you just wind up with very spread-out balls at the full range?

Yes and no.

If you were aiming at a single man-size target yes you might indeed be more likely to miss the longer the range and thus the wider the cone of dispersal is (although given that smoothbore cannon were not designed to hit anything smaller than a barn this is largely academic).

But if you are firing at a closely packed battalion of 800 men then the wider the dispersal the more targets you might hit.

The principle is much the same as firing a shotgun at a target 100 yards away as compared to shooting it into a crowded room.

Completly agreed Clodius.

Massing artillery in that period was actually rare and a 'Napoleonic' exception to the rule rather than the norm.

For example, TRIPLE artillery costs, but have it at its real-life characteristics.

Anyway to do this? It's a minor modding issue, if anyone can show me how, REP your way!

Originally Posted by Erkli Pasha

Completly agreed Clodius.

Massing artillery in that period was actually rare and a 'Napoleonic' exception to the rule rather than the norm.

For example, TRIPLE artillery costs, but have it at its real-life characteristics.

Anyway to do this? It's a minor modding issue, if anyone can show me how, REP your way!

Hi, this is relatively simple and something I do myself. The whole process might take you appx 30 minutes the first time, mostly creating your MOD-pack-file. But then you can edit it in a matter of minutes, at will.

STEP 1: Follow the very simple instructions that erasmus777 put together on how to create a MOD-pack-file in this LINK-- it will also require you to download the Pack File Manager (or PFM) tool, which is one of the best ever created.

STEP 2: The two tables that will affect your particular desire are originally named 'Projectiles' and 'Units'. Let's change the 'Projectiles' table first. Find the column-heading marked "Range" and change your settings to what you wish. For exampl, most of my cannon have a range of 700 for round-shot and a range of 200 for grape-shot.

STEP 3: Next, let's change the 'Units' table. Find the column-heading marked "Upkeep" and change the cost to whatever higher value you wish. This table will also let you mod each unit's turns-to-build, the unit-limit (i.e. how many of the units a faction can create), and the "Region IDRef" column will allow you to alter where the unit can be made -- for example, 'global' means it can be created anywhere, 'horses' means that it can only be created in a region that has the stable-town-resource, etc.

Another table you might be interested in is 'Unit_Stats_Land'. This table will allow you to alter a variety of stats associated with ALL land units, including accuracy, re-load time, morale, offensive and defensive hand-to-hand stats, etc.

STEP 4: Enable your new Mod. Place your new mod-pack-file in the 'Data' folder of Napolean: Total War. For example, I use Windows Vista, so the path for my NTW-Data-folder is as follows:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\napoleon total war\data

Last thing is to make sure that you have a user.script.txt file created that enables your new mod, or it's affects won't be activated in your game. The text file must have the command line in it as follows:
mod "name-of-your-mod.pack";

And again based on having Vista, the location of the folder that this txt-file must be placed in is as follows:
C:\Users\your-pc-user-name\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Napoleon\scripts

Hope this helps... happy modding

Originally Posted by Erkli Pasha

For example, TRIPLE artillery costs, but have it at its real-life characteristics.

I like this. Reminds me of American Conquest where you had cannons that took forever and a day to produce and you had a very limited number of them.


I would like to expand on your idea if I may.

The price I find is usually not very important in the latter stages of a GC as, by that time, you should have a good enough economy where you can just crank out full stacks like it is nothing. But upkeep costs could still be effective with their collective effect.

Another way would be to increase the time it takes to produce them, reflecting pre-industrial manufacturing difficulties.



By the way, are we talking about canister shot or grapeshot? The latter having much longer range in real life, but used more for naval applications as I understand.

Canister shot (what field artillery use in NTW)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And Grapeshot

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think limiting number of cannons per unit to just 1 cannon each is better than increasing costs because later on in the game you'll be able to afford the extra cost anyway. And honestly I don't want to see the AI spam artillery@4 cannons each with the improved range/stats. I think historically 3 or 4 pieces of artillery for around 2000 men is pretty high ratio of artillery already?

Feanor68...

You are amazing!

I will take a crack at it right away.

Best response to my post on this forum yet!!!

Rep your way, Sir.

i agree that the range is short but its not underpowered,ive crushed thousands of infantry and cav with it by now