MP Tips and Tricks by Eschaton
Since I've logged 850+ hours on this game now, most of that in multiplayer, I thought I might provide what experiential assistance I can to those who've just bought this game or are just starting to get into multiplayer after exhausting the campaign.
I'm no 100% expert, but I've learned some interesting things that I consistently see new players doing in MP, so I think it could be a benefit for the whole MP community if I help those new players get up to speed so we can all have more satisfying and challenging matches ahead of us.
I'll break my tips and tricks down into 2 types: Basic and Advanced. I'll post the Basic tips here and now, and then add the Advanced tips and tricks to this post later on. While I could go into great detail about the whys and hows and other minutiae, in the interest of just getting this information out there I'll be attempting to keep each explanation very brief. Further elucidation will be offered in comments on this thread, I'm sure.
BASIC MP TIPS & TRICKS
Know Your Statistics - This is as old as Sun Tzu - know the enemy and thyself. Get yourself a copy of Le Fusilier and read up. Know the stats of all the units in the game. Start with a focus on memorizing the stats for the following nations first: Prussia, Great Britain, United States, United Provinces, France, and Austria. These tend to be the most played nations. Also know what each statistic means, generally-speaking:
Range - how far the unit will shoot normally
Accuracy - how many times each soldier will hit his mark, statistically speaking
Ammo - how many volleys (every soldier shooting once) the unit can deliver before it is out of ammunition.
Reload - the higher this number, the faster the unit reloads its weapon (some weapons modify this - a rifleman with a reload of 35 will reload more slowly than a musket-wielding light infantryman with the same reload stat, for example)
Attack - How likely a soldier in this unit is to kill an enemy in melee
Charge Bonus - The higher this number, the more devastating the unit is when charging a stationary or retreating enemy unit. For cavalry, this generally gives you an idea of how many enemies will go flying into the air when you charge a unit of infantry
Defense - How likely a soldier is to survive any sort of attack
Morale - The higher the number, the more losses, fatigue, shock, and fear this unit can take before retreating.
Artillery Ammunition Types - Know the effects and uses of the different kinds of artillery shell available in game.
Round Shot - Accurate and reloads fastest. Best for destroying fortifications and enemy artillery pieces.
Shrapnel Shot - Unreliable round that can hit a target with a small canister round at a distance. Best for killing infantry and cavalry quickly. Cannot destroy enemy artillery pieces
Percussive Shell - Inaccurate round that explodes on impact. Best for killing infantry and cavalry from behind cover such as hills or fortification walls. Can damage fortifications and destroy enemy artillery pieces and knock men down temporarily.
Quicklime - Accurate round that hits a target with a cloud of noxious quicklime gas. Best for attacking light infantry and units in melee. Causes fear and promotes routing, and can knock men down temporarily.
Rockets - Inaccurate missile that explodes on or overhead a target area. Best for causing attrition at a great range. Causes fear. In close-up situations, it is best used when fire is withheld and then unleashed all at once on a nearby target, preferably cavalry.
Canister shot - reloads fairly quickly, hits enemy units with a shotgun blast of pellets. Best used against in self-defense of artillery or to create ambushes.
* There are also explosive shells and carcass shots, but these seldom see use in MP due to the fact that they suck and are used only in the early era.
Morale - This is the most complicated of the unit statistics and should be understood thoroughly. Morale statistics emulate how much will to fight is left in the men of the unit. It is adversely affected if the unit is tired, scared by an enemy unit, has lost its general, or is/has been taking casualties, especially in ways where they are less able to fight back. Notably, artillery causes extra shock to units, presumably due to the disgusting results of a successful strike on man and beast alike. Some units - notably line infantry - have an ability called "resistant to shock" that means they will not be as affected by anything but casualties. When a unit is physically near a routing unit on its own side, it becomes afraid and will more easily rout. This means that a large volume of routing troops in one area of a battlefield can cause units nearby to suffer so badly that they begin to rout as well, even if they have not taken casualties, which only exacerbates the situation, of course. This is called a "chain rout" in the parlance.
Cover - The different kinds of cover and the effects they provide are of crucial importance to using the battlefield to your advantage. As I understand it, there are different kinds of cover and they do different things:
1. No cover - absolute lack of anything to hide behind. Even units with the "remains hidden while walking" ability are not able to stay hidden here.
2. Grass - low brush and grass makes it impossible for almost all units to hide, offers no defense bonus.
3. Light Cover - bushes and tall grass make it possible for few units to hide and offers a very small defensive bonus, perhaps only to those unit types.
4. Heavy cover - Forested areas provide this cover type. Almost all units can hide here, cavalry cannot effectively charge here and so lose their charge bonus, and units within forest gain a considerable defensive bonus. Shooting out from the forest remains normal unless shooting across large amounts of forest, in which case units appear to suffer an accuracy penalty.
5. Walls - units can be aligned on walls by selecting the unit, right clicking on the wall, and then dragging the mouse to get them on the desired side. Walls provide exceptional cover to units behind them, but no cover to units fired on from any other direction. Walls also stop cannon balls.
6. Fortifications - Fortifications offer the benefits of heavy cover, and in addition provide a very powerful morale boost for units fighting on them. Stone fort walls stop artillery shells; wooden walls sometimes allow round shot to pass through. Only star fort walls are high enough to prevent grenades from reaching defenders atop them.
7. Buildings - Provide great cover; some units can be invisible within them. Notably, they do not always stop round shot or explosive shot, and they do nothing to mitigate the effects of quicklime.
8. Ground Cover - cover provided by the fold of the earth, vegetation, or human construction. Not a system of cover as far as the game is concerned, but due to the physics in the ETW engine it does play a very important (and complicated) role which will be better addressed in the Advanced Tips and Tricks section of this tract.
Line Thickness - The thickness, or number of ranks, in a unit of infantry can be of the utmost importance in determining that unit's success. This issue is complex enough that it should really be in the Advanced section, but it is also so important to success that beginners must at least be aware of it. This issue is closely related to the fire type of the unit involved as well (platoon vs. rank vs. free, etc), so before reading on ensure that you are acquainted with the different fire types and what they mean.
Generally speaking, the fewer ranks, the more men shooting at once and the fewer hits being taken. This would seem to suggest that stretching units out until they were the fewest possible ranks would be best, but there are caveats. The longer a line, the more susceptible it is to attacks from the sides, and the longer it takes to maneuver. Moreover, units with ranked fire will eventually fire all their guns back to the third rank (and platoon fire back to the 4th or 5th rank), and units on hillsides firing on units on a plain or opposing hillside fire all their weapons at once. Using this principle, it is possible both to gain a greater WoS (Weight of Shot, to be explained in the Advanced section) and a sustained level of fire, which will more negatively impact the morale of opposing forces, especially if they are line infantry. So if you need to maximize the firepower of a unit in the initial volley, use few ranks. If you need to maximize the unit's fighting power over time, use up to 3 or 4 lines depending on whether it is rank or platoon fire. Generally, you should use 3 ranks for the best balance.
When attacking with cold steel or marching, try to form squares or even columns with your infantry - they will be better able to maneuver, form square, and avoid enemy fire when charging.
Veterancy - Veterancy chevrons increase unit stats in exchange for gold. They are not an efficient means of improving units, so as a general rule you should avoid using them and instead buy more units. They increase stats as follows:
+2 accuracy
+2 reload
+ .5 morale (morale rounds down btw)
+ 1 Attack
+ 1 Defense
+ 0 Charge Bonus
+ 0 Ammo
It may also improve endurance somewhat, but I need further confirmation from other players on that.
ADVANCED TIPS AND TRICKS
Artillery as Recon - By a bizarre fluke of misguided balancing, CA made artillery practically invulnerable to small-arms fire when limbered up to move. This means that artillery makes a great damage sponge when used ahead of your own lines. Just advance a few pieces of cheap artillery in front of your line of skirmishers to discover hidden enemy skirmishers and soak up their damage when they begin shooting at you. Your own skirmisher line can then advance with impunity and annihilate their targets unopposed. The only thing you have to watch out for is enemy artillery or melee units taking aim at these limbered pieces, since those can destroy them quite easily. Another use for this broken part of the game is to limber your artillery when opposed by enemy skirmishers who are advancing to take it down. If you do it fast enough, you might be able to save your artillery crew from being shot to death.
Grenadiers - Grenadiers are worth the money you pay for them for one thing: throwing grenades. Otherwise you might as well spend the money on a unit of elite line infantry. When using grenadiers for this grenade ability, there are a few tricks to make sure they function as well as possible. First, keep them in the rear of your line until you identify a way for them to get close to the enemy without being shot to pieces. Then, run them up. Make sure fire at will is turned off and the fire mode is set to "grenades." Once they are in range, manually tell them to attack the target. After this first volley, they will switch back to muskets. Switch them to grenades again, and set fire at will on. Continue to micro them, switching to grenades again and again as fast as you can, until the enemy unit is defeated. Rinse and repeat; they cannot run out of grenades.
Weight of Shot - This is a concept you need to understand, though it can be a little difficult. Because soldiers fight with ranged weapons that are more or less flat-shooting, you can't have units standing behind each other without causing massive friendly casualties. This means that you want to put your units next to each other instead, and as an added bonus to this "line," you can use its length to flank the enemy army at times. The downside is that this spreads out all the guns in your army so that you can't bring very much firepower to bear on any one point to achieve local superiority.
Nonetheless, there are ways to do this and it is extremely important to learn how to do so, since ETW is set up to pit armies that are approximately the same size and power against each other, meaning local superiority is the only superiority you will ever get, outside of geographical superiority. The simplest way to achieve this is to make as much use of these following tactics as possible, to increase the WoS at important points in your line:
1. Missile cavalry behind the line - missile cavalry can shoot over the heads of infantry in front of them, adding all their guns to the firepower of the line in that area.
2. Skirmishers in front of the line - do not stretch your skirmishers in front of as much of your line as possible. Instead, bunch them up in square-like formations in front of the one part of your line that needs the extra WoS. In this way a smaller number of skirmishers can dismantle enemy skirmish lines one unit at a time.
3. Archers and Hand-Grenadiers - offer weapons that can shoot over the heads of their allies, enabling them to add to your WoS while sitting behind the line.
4. More ranks per unit of line - Units that fire all ranks at once or which fire by platoon will fire back to the 4th or even 5th rank. Use this to make these units take up less length on the line and thus increase your WoS.
5. Instead of forming salient bulges in your line pointing out toward the enemy line, bend your line around enemy salients to increase the number of units firing on a single enemy unit.
6. Concentrate artillery fire on a single point where WoS is needed.
7. Dilute enemy WoS by drawing units away from the line using cavalry or skirmishers to distract them. If you can ever get a fraction of the enemy army to engage with all or almost all of your army, seize the moment and hammer them mercilessly. Caveat - this might be an ambush, so be careful.
8. WoS can also be considered across time as well as space - units that reload faster have greater WoS over time, while a stretched out unit that fires most of its guns at once has huge WoS in the first moment, but rapidly diminishes thereafter. This makes reload more important than accuracy - 60 men firing at 70 accuracy with 15 reload will kill 42 men a minute while 60 men firing at 55 accuracy with 30 reload will kill 66 men in the same period of time. On the other hand, achieving local superiority means sacrificing superiority in other areas of the battlefield, so the duration of your WoS doesn't mean everything...
Cavalry Charges - Cavalry relies on the Charge Bonus statistic to make itself felt on the battlefield, and there are ways you can maximize the effect of a good charge.
1. Charge downhill when possible, and never uphill. Downhill charges close faster and receive a bonus, while uphill charges close more slowly and lose their charge bonus.
2. When charging into a unit, spread your cavalry unit out to match the width of the enemy unit. This way, more men will be killed instantly by the charge bonus (when they go flying into the air).
3. When charging into a unit and intending to retreat, form a deep column of horse. This will leave more of the unit un-entangled and free to turn and run.
4. Do not charge missile cavalry behind other cavalry with fire at will on. They shoot indiscriminately when charging and will kill some of your own men.
5. Engaging Elephants or Camels with cavalry is generally a bad idea, since these units cause a special fear in horse units.
6. Cavalry lose some or all of their charge bonus when their target unit counter-charges.
Ground Cover - In ETW, the ground and other physical objects on the map obstruct the path of bullets and other missiles. Keeping in mind that units fire their weapons from near the top of their height, it is possible to take advantage of obstructions to make hitting your units more difficult. In general, try to keep your units in the Fold of the Earth and utilize reverse slope defenses when possible. This is one of the best ways to negate the range advantage that light infantry have over line infantry.
Alternatively, when shooting artillery, keep in mind that in this game it is better to shoot at units that are higher than you in elevation so long as they are not cresting a hill or in a reverse slope defense position. This is because in the case of roundshot, it is more likely that the round will bounce up on a short shot and inflict casualties, while with shrapnel shot it will ensure that all the shrapnel strikes the ground near the target.
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Originally Posted by TheEschaton
