Artillery in combat

[swilhelm73]

I noticed the AI prioritizes building a lot of artillery for its armies - almost as much as infantry. Is this intentional? And is this a good idea in game mechanics?

I'm in the 1600s now in my current game (I haven't played much since version 1.14 or so) and comparing it to history the numbers certainly aren't right - I looked up Lutzen for example and two sides both had about 20K men and around 50 cannons.

[dbond1]

Yes, because artillery occupies the 'back line'. Ideally, you will build artillery to combat width, but that is expensive.

As far as history is concerned, I wouldn't worry about it. Think of it as alternate history. The start is as historical as the game is going to get.

[ChaffyExpert]

That's because artillery does damage before shock, so infantry and artillery are better and more powerful than the measly amount of cavalry you can put in your army, (the exception being hordes) and Artillery buffs infantry, and it also shoots from the back row so you basically double the amount of troops that can be in the combat at the same time.

That's why once you build artillery before the AI does, you will find yourself actually stack wiping armies occasionally (and i mean real armies not one army with 1k soldiers to siege provinces) from combat i presume because it's just so much more effective.

It also helps shorten sieges significantly for obvious reasons.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

I noticed the AI prioritizes building a lot of artillery for its armies - almost as much as infantry. Is this intentional? And is this a good idea in game mechanics?

By Tech 13 or so, artillery should outnumber infantry in a maximally powerful army. Say you have a combat width of 30. You want a front row composed of 2 to 4 cavalry and 26 to 28 infantry. And you want a back row with 30 artillery. There are more artillery than any other troop type if you want your combat stacks to be the strongest they can be. As Chaffy said, the fire phase comes first. And on top of that, nothing but artillery can fight from the back row. All other things being equal, an army with a full back row of artillery shooting first is going to crush an army that doesn't match it.

In peacetime, split your army in half and park the halves next to each other because very few provinces can support that many troops. In war, move them around similarly, only combining them for major battles. And if they're not in danger, they can split up further to carpet siege.

[Kapika96]

Yep, artillery should be about 50% of your army.

As for comparing to reality, remember that 1 unit of artillery isn't 1,000 cannons. It's 1,000 men. It'd take multiple men to operate a single cannon, especially when you take logistics etc. into account. Plus realistically units wouldn't be the same size. Infantry, cavalry and artillery units would all be different sizes rather than exactly 1,000 men each.