FOTS: Firing at ground with cannons?

[Ashina]

this is a weird exploit I recently found,but in Shogun 2 Games,artillery tends to fire at the side of units,so units in the center is safe,some people try to use the first person firing mode to make a full effect of the cannons,but There's also another way,Firing into the ground where the units is going,it takes practice,but it would taken less than manually controling your cannons.
it kinda reminds me of Age Of Empires 2 Mangonel units,where you predict the enemy movement,and fire at ground.

Note:
I tend to do this because of my habit in my previous game before Shogun 2,Age Of Empires 2.
in AOE2 Mangonels must be ordered to attack at ground if you want it to be effective,which means I already have the experience of predicting where the enemy is going.
Heck,I accidentally killed a Enemy General.

[Nathan Algren]

Cannons fire on side, yes is true and it can be usefull if the enemy have a concentred army but they work in any way. In 1 vs 1 I can do iven 400 kills on my opponent with normal shoting in 14000 koku multiplayer fast battle if they camp only using cannons.
Manualy shoting is interesting only to shote over the normal range of units once you make enougth experience you can iven shote in all the map 1 hit at the time but it work only to attire an enemy that is camping far away or to shote cavallery that try to get shrine so you do not need to move.
Personally I do not find shoting at the ground usefull because once in battle you have not time to make algoritm to find out where the enemy will be :D in campaing maybe you can pouse the game but it is not a solution if you need at same time to move the army and costantly change the direction of bullets of cannons. It will result in a loss of bullets. You have not infinite ammunition.

[Ashina]

Originally posted by Captain Nathan Algren:

Cannons fire on side, yes is true and it can be usefull if the enemy have a concentred army but they work in any way. In 1 vs 1 I can do iven 400 kills on my opponent with normal shoting in 14000 koku multiplayer fast battle if they camp only using cannons.
Manualy shoting is interesting only to shote over the normal range of units once you make enougth experience you can iven shote in all the map 1 hit at the time but it work only to attire an enemy that is camping far away or to shote cavallery that try to get shrine so you do not need to move.
Personally I do not find shoting at the ground usefull because once in battle you have not time to make algoritm to find out where the enemy will be :D in campaing maybe you can pouse the game but it is not a solution if you need at same time to move the army and costantly change the direction of bullets of cannons. It will result in a loss of bullets. You have not infinite ammunition.

Yeah,In Multiplayer it would be harder,but I would stick to my Ground firing tactics,since I'm actually good at it.

Also Captain,I know that you're not true american,but please fix your grammar.

[Nathan Algren]

I mean shoting on groun I think is ok only in some case and if enemy units stop in a particular position....for example in siege I like shote to wall and dors instead at units....

[EoNightcore]

Not really a weird exploit. Even in Empire Total War, the artillery units could fire at the ground.

Of course, it is better to fire in front of the enemy instead of just having the artillery shoot at the enemy's side.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Yeah I don't consider this an exploit either.

It's a feature of the game to target ground that they introduced in Empire. Napoleon, Rome 2 and Attila all have it too.

[LSD]

You could attack ground in Medieval 2, and probably Rome as well.
It's just since Empire they've had a horrendously broken targeting AI that aims for the sides of units instead of the centre. Canister shot in Empire is useless unless you ground attack for this reason.

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by LSD:

You could attack ground in Medieval 2, and probably Rome as well.
It's just since Empire they've had a horrendously broken targeting AI that aims for the sides of units instead of the centre. Canister shot in Empire is useless unless you ground attack for this reason.

Really? I thought in Med 2 you had to target either a unit or fortification.

I'm sure the AI targets the center of units in Empire and onwards.

That was one of the problems in Empire with the line infantry, because the unit AI would spin the entire unit to try and get the most direct path to the center of the target unit, instead of just shooting at the flank of an enemy unit right in front of it, and so it was hard to keep a tidy line of infantry as 18th century tactics would have.

Decimus Meridius on his 'TW Battle Mechanics' YT channel showed how in Attila the projectiles are targeting the center of the unit as well.

[Voltronjeremy]

Yeah, not really an exploit in my opinion. You're putting in the extra work by predicting the enemies movements and manually aiming, so it's only fair you'll do better than just clicking on the unit and leaving everything to the ai.

Besides, manually targeting is pretty much mandatory in Total War: Attila, since there's some sort of bug that makes onagers randomly attack whatever unit is closest to them, regardless of the players orders.

[Zonda Zecarius]

Been clicking on the ground for ages.
Only annoyance is when they're not moving and you can't get a satisfactory click on the ground.

[Mile pro Libertate]

The ground targeting also cuts down on mp tactics that exploit cover.

In the old games, if units were hidden in trees you couldn't bombard them, even if you saw them move into the forest.

Now you can bombard the forest and hit within the general area you know they are hiding in, which is one of the primary reasons artillery was developed to begin with.

In other words, artillery has always been able to do area saturation, not a strictly point target thing. The old games' took away the real purpose of artillery by forcing you to focus on point targets.

[Zonda Zecarius]

Another use of artillery is: Giving attack orders on units that are hidden/not visible for you will still make the attack order click sound instead of the sound it makes when you click on the ground. Unfortunately it doesn't fire.

Basically means sometimes it can "scout" for you. Never deliberately tried to scout with them tho so could just be a glitch on recently hid units that won't work on ones that are moving or hidden from start.

[rory.b.p]

Its not really an exploit its just like in naval combat if you click your ships to engage an enemy they will often do incredibly derpy ♥♥♥♥.
Manual control almost always yields better results, the only siege units it doesn't make a difference on are fire projecting mangonels (♥♥♥♥♥ accuracy), wooden cannons (♥♥♥♥♥ accuracy) and fire rockets (they tend to hit everywhere and don't focus on the edges).
Also I find auto fire works better for shrapnel rounds.

[nikomatt3]

Old post, but has anyone found anything, like a file modification or mod that fixes this?