CA please fix limbering and unlimbering

I am extremely frustrated over this, simply that when horse artillery limber and unlimber they do it in such a lazy manner that it can cost you a game.


It takes an enormous time to limber the artillery back as they walk to their horses and sit up on them in the slowest fashion.

I ride myself I know that it does not take an hour to sit up on a horse nevertheless during a battle.



Also they are so unreliable, the artillery often comes up to its position to then do a long adjustment time with turns and roundabouts instead of just going up to the damn designated spot.

I'm with you on that one. That is just extremely annoying.
Also, it can sometimes be quite hard to predict exactly where the cannons are going to be located when the process of unlimbering is finished, since horse arty tends to roll the guns backward quite a bit from where they were standing when you issued the 'unlimber' command.

This video actually shows the Kings Troop Royal Horse Artillery unlimbering and limbering-up again, and gives some indication of the time it takes. I timed it at around 40-50 seconds before the limbers were clear and the battery unmasked (Unlimbering starts at around 0.45, Limbering starts at around 4:30).

How does that compare with ETW?

very cool vid...I've never seen anything like that before!

Originally Posted by Nanny de Bodemloze

very cool vid...I've never seen anything like that before!

As far as I know know 'The Kings Troop' are the only battery of horse artillery still in existence in the world. They are more famous for their 'musical ride', which is mostly intended for entertainment at displays, although it does retain some maneouvres which originate from the old tactical movements and formations.

However, the one I posted is the only video I could find which actually shows the process of unlimbering and limbering and it was nice to see that they still do it at the proper speed. I was half expecting them to do it at the walk for health and safety reasons.

The obvious bottleneck in the process is the time it takes for the limbers to complete a 360 degree turn and retire, not easy with a six horse team. In NTW they just do a sort of instant flip, but thats not possible in real life.

Whats missing from the video are the ammunition limbers. If you notice the ammunition boxes with the ready amunition are already on the ground and being used to mark the gun positions. In practice the ready ammunition would have been in the limber box and I assume the limbers would have paused during their withdrawal to allow the gunners to remove some before completing their retirement. The French system had the ready ammunition in a detachable box on the gun trail.

On top of that there would have been another set of caissons drawn by their own teams deployed about 50 metres behind the gun line to replenship the ready ammunition as it was expended. Nevertheless, I think this video is about the best assessment of actual deployment time we are likely to get.

It was faster than I expected. I thought the speed of limbering in NTW was possibly unrealistically fast. Now I see that the timing, within the context of all timings in the game, is about right.

Nice video! Guns are little bit better than the NTWs.

Well NTW got the guns wrong of course like a lot of other things.

I'm with you on that one Didz

Those are also, I may be wrong.. WW1 horse drawn artillery pieces, so firepower will obviously be different

Yes, they are British Quick Firing 13 pdr Field Guns crca 1914-1918



However, I'm assuming the time to limber and unlimber them would be reasonably similar and would apply to most horse artillery regardless of the nation and type of gun. The only real difference might be the weight of the gun but that has little effect on the process apart from the amount of strain put on the horses.

what are you guys talking about? the actual unlimbering only took about 5 seconds. in the game, the soldiers spasm about, get in the way of things and generally mill around like a bunch of drunk blind people.

What game are you playing?

I've tested this with a stopwatch and the times are as quoted above. If I had the skills to do it I would make a video with a timer onscreen to prove it but I wouldn't know how to start so you'll just have to believe me.

today i had my crewmen charge across the map at like, freaking light speed and i mean, freaking light speed after i told them to unlimber. they zoomed across the map faster than fresh hussars on triple speed to crash into the enemy line, hack a few of their landwheer apart, and then zoomed back across my own line (knocking over some musketeers over) to return to their weapon emplacements when i told them to limber up again.

i do wish i saved that replay, lol

Yeah! I've seen that bug too. In MTW the gunner behave with a lot more common sense. When overrun they abandon their guns and run for the nearest safety, and then when the enemy leave they simply return to their guns and start firing again. So, to silence a battery you either need to chase down and kill all the gunners or leave a unit in possession of the guns.

Why the hell CA did away with that routine in favour of a psycho gunner system I don;t know. The MTW tactic was exactly what happened at Waterloo during the French cavalry attacks, but in NTW the gunners charge the French cavalry.

Originally Posted by Oh.humes

I am extremely frustrated over this, simply that when horse artillery limber and unlimber they do it in such a lazy manner that it can cost you a game.

Well I did ask someone to provide the timings for this process on NTW. But I guess its easier to complain than to check the facts, so I've done it for you.

It wasn't too difficult I simply loaded a custom battle with an army of horse artillery and timed how long it took from ordering them to unlimber to the firing of the first shot, and how long it took from ordering them to limber to the point when the BUI clicked over to allow them to move.

The results are quite interesting and are listed below.

Clicking unlimber to firing the first shot = 27 seconds (Realistic timing as demonstrated above 40-50 seconds)
Clicking Limber-up to being allowed to move = 29 seconds (realistic timing as demonstrated above 50 seconds)

So, the conclusion is that animations aside the time it takes a horse artillery battery to limber and unlimber in NTW is about half the time it should really take historically. It isn't too slow, its actually way too fast.

The only thing that makes it look too slow is that the animation of the process is poor.

Having said that part of the problem is that everything in ETW and NTW is too fast and so the deployment times for horse artillery probably balance out when compared to the movement rate of infantry and cavalry. Kaunitz has done some extensive alterations to the movement and deployment rates of ETW units to match them to their historical timings based on the figure scale of 1:4 and the corresponding ground scale and if you look at some of the video results of his tests you realise just how much CA have fiddled with the historic movement rates in the interests of so called 'gameplay'.

Kaunitz Test video's can be viewed on this thread if you're interested. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...21#post8653121

Ironically, the only thing that CA haven't accelerated are the reloading times for the weapons. I did conduct some timings on the reloading of muskets and artillery and they are approximately correct. So, the overall effect in gameplay terms is that muskets and artillery are not as effective as they ought to be as they can't fire as often as they should before the enemy are on top of them. CA seem to have tired to offset this problem in NTW by making both muskets and artillery more effective than they were historically, thus you kill more with fewer shots, but whether this has restored the historical balance is doubtful.