Gunpowder Units Always Reforming?

[eventhorizen]

I was playing a custom battle with full scale late period armies between the HRE and France.

Both sides were using pike and gunpowder, with cannon and heavy infantry and cavalry in support.

My formation was : Pike - Gun - Pike - Gun : With : Gun - Pike - Gun - Pike : In the second row.

The French marched all their gunpowder units forward, four of them same as me. The French just stood there and fired and reloaded, while my
Gunpowder units with skirmish set to off would fire and reload, but most of them were just reforming.

Thing is the French guns were taking all their casualties from my guns, while in theory my casualties would have only been my front line, and I would slowly have established a gunpowder unit superiority. Anyway that was totally ruined as my units slowly moved backwards, continually reforming, no matter what I did to try to the stop them, I.E guard area, and skirmish on/off.


im thinking that perhaps because I set them into a specific width and depth, that they kept reforming as they took casualties, but all it was was a slightly thicker version of the CPU standard block, and the CPUs units never reformed once.

I lost the battle of 2001 v 2001 with 400 units to 40 remaining. My basic formation alone should have slowly dominated the battle, but as it turned out the enemy decimated my centre with their gunpowder, with minimal losses to their own gunpowder troops.

This is a crippling problem, as it means player gunpowder units will never fire at their maximum possible rate, and will cause losses based only upon some poor coding.

An annoying bug, and some comformation that others are seeing this might help CA to put it on their list of bug fixes for the patch.

As a side note I have seen this happen everytime I use gunpowder in custom battles, but this was the first time I realised that reforming was unique to the player alone, and that CPU controlled gunpowder were displaying their correct behaviour.

[a8686]

And when they arent reforming they are moving around so they can establish a broadside usually sticking their buts out side the line.. very frustrating.. I'd take pesant archers over these right now.. Guns are useless in sieges as well.. They'll shoot once MAYBE, but when LOS is gone they cant seem to be bothered with trivial things like shooting enemys

[NachoMan]

Gunpowder units are fine for me, you just need to know how to use them. Have them with skirmish mode turned off. (manually get them out of danger if you feel the need to) Have guard mode turned on, with this they don't care about formation as much. Finally have them spread into a thin line, 2 men deep, as thin as it can go. This will allow maximum shots to be fired.

[eventhorizen]

Gunpowder units are fine for me, you just need to know how to use them. Have them with skirmish mode turned off. (manually get them out of danger if you feel the need to) Have guard mode turned on, with this they don't care about formation as much. Finally have them spread into a thin line, 2 men deep, as thin as it can go. This will allow maximum shots to be fired.

As I said in my post having skirmish disabled and telling them to gaurd position did not work in my custom battles.

Also the 'pike and shot' formation of late medievil battlefields does not allow for gunpowder units to be spread out, as this will require the pike units to be spread out, and make them too shallow to absorb cavalry, not to mention be destroyed by enemy pikes and shot.

Point I am making is that when recreating a standard late medievil battlefield formation, the units are behaving in such a manner that they dont work, and I would hope this is addressed. All they need to do is stop reforming. Even my Pikes that were taking caualties, and technically 'reforming' were still at 'ready' mode and not displaying reforming.

[NachoMan]

Well the new patch that is coming out in around a week should fix this as they are re working the gunpowder units

[eventhorizen]

Well the new patch that is coming out in around a week should fix this as they are re working the gunpowder units

Thats good news, because im absolutely in love with full scale late period custom battles right now. Watching a battle between cannon and gunpowder pike armies at max settings is amazing.

So here's hoping they start working properly too

[Mr.Bojangles]

One thing i noticed with the gunners is that alot of them seem to have a messy formation, the only ones that don't seem to are the jannisary musketeers. Even the "highly trained" cossack musketeers seem to have a messy peasant-like formation, which totally messes up the whole line-changing thing...

[dearmad]

Well the new patch that is coming out in around a week should fix this as they are re working the gunpowder units

Where in the heck do you get your information like this!?

[Frost, colonel]

Oh boy do the firelock boys need some CA love, although I did have one siege(me defending)where my one unit on the wall was firing with about 10 men out of 120 and causing serious casualties to the enemy.

I do find that they are very overpowered, I tried a custom scrap with them against Retinue Longbow men.
They have equal range(I think) where as the Longbow should have 3x the range(I would be content if it was 2x)
They have the same rate of fire, where as the Longbow would be about 6x faster.

If this is down to gameplay that's one thing, but in my tests the Musketeers win a 1 to 1 with ease over Elite long bows with a hit points of 20 against 8 firing at the same rate!

[Lusted]

Well the new patch that is coming out in around a week should fix this as they are re working the gunpowder units

Please do not make posts like that without linking to posts made by CA devs. Unless the CA devs have put up a list of fixes that the patch will make at the .com forums, there is no way way for you to know that.

[sandbag0311]

MY gunpowder units work fine when I use a Swedish Brigade "T" formation, or slightly modified thereof, granted the musketeers do seem to take a little babysitting. I have found though that if you place the pikemen in front of yor gunpowder units they tend to work a little better.

Brigade "T":
Pikemen and musketeers in the center, with pikemen in front. Then slightly behind and to the wings pikemen and musketeers in the same formation. One unit of cavalry is placed on each wing, with the general and another unit of cav in the rear as a mobile reserve. Finally, place a unit of cannon in front of each pike unit.

[MConstantine]

I had the same issue until I removed all fire_by_rank attributes in the descr_unit file. You'll find that after doing so, your musket wielding units will fire at a much more efficient rate without constantly reforming.

[Double A]

Brigade "T":
Pikemen and musketeers in the center, with pikemen in front. Then slightly behind and to the wings pikemen and musketeers in the same formation. One unit of cavalry is placed on each wing, with the general and another unit of cav in the rear as a mobile reserve. Finally, place a unit of cannon in front of each pike unit.

That sounds more like an arrow...

And shouldn't Aztecs not only be scared by gunpowder (not strengthened by it CA...) but against horses they should be scared ****. We're talking about an animal they've never seen before! (I just can't wait till I get some merc elephants... to see the look on an Aztec's face just before getting trampled by 5 tons would be classic)

[Theseus1234]

yeah but that makes the guns semi-automatic killing machines
in kingdoms, this was the problem with the lithuanian arquebusiers, they fired too fast for a normal arquebus

think about a arquebus or a musket at that time. the reload time was loooooooooooooooooooooong
but keeping with CA tradition of messing up history, gunpowder units fire twice as fast as they should, same with crossbows
but overall, the firing time NEEDS to be slow, otherwise gunpowder units are way overpowered

[MConstantine]

yeah but that makes the guns semi-automatic killing machines
in kingdoms, this was the problem with the lithuanian arquebusiers, they fired too fast for a normal arquebus

think about a arquebus or a musket at that time. the reload time was loooooooooooooooooooooong
but keeping with CA tradition of messing up history, gunpowder units fire twice as fast as they should, same with crossbows
but overall, the firing time NEEDS to be slow, otherwise gunpowder units are way overpowered

My issue is with playability, not realism. I'm not sure how many others have this same particular issue, but I had the exact same problem. Musketeers on open, flat terrain would fire a single volley (only 4 or 5 of the front line would fire), and then they would spend several minutes reforming. If it were to come down between realism and these units actually doing ANYTHING, then I would choose the latter; despite how unrealistic they are during this time period.

[Double A]

Besides, they need to cut some realism to make the game fun.

If you were a developer, would you want to make it more realistic so some historical realism geeks would buy it or more fun so a bunch of average people buy it?

[Egemere]

Today i finally came to the aztecs as spain (took quite a few turns).
and i fought at small unit size 800 against 1900 and won. But it was not really thanks to my musketeers. The line of pikemen combined with conquistadors and cannons did the job, also my general killed alot.

In the beginning the musketeers shot good. but after 2 salvo's they stopped shooting at all! it said : Reforming, all the time. Then the aztecs charged and my pikemen finally won... I lost 300 men they lost 1800. (medium dif.) :hmmm:

[Old Geezer]

The third time I played as Spain in the Americas campaign I didn't bother to recruit any muskets - they are just a waste of money and are too frustrating. The natives don't seem to be frightened at all by thundersticks.

Overall, I think the only firearm unit that isn't a joke is the handgunner because they have some armor and can melee with spearmen for a few minutes.

[Egemere]

The third time I played as Spain in the Americas campaign I didn't bother to recruit any muskets - they are just a waste of money and are too frustrating. The natives don't seem to be frightened at all by thundersticks.

Overall, I think the only firearm unit that isn't a joke is the handgunner because they have some armor and can melee with spearmen for a few minutes.

I am not talking about the americas campain but yes indeed these Aztecs didnt get scared at all! they stood there taunting me from 10 meters distance while they got shot ... but still it is the classic musket style fighting that i like sometimes so i recruit them.

[Carl von Döbeln]

Yes I have only used them in one big battle .....and belive it or not ,it was a very successful battle ..check it out : http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=169823&page=2