Cannons do zero damage at close range?

[Malarky]

Just got this game, and I'm trying to understand the mechanics. I had a line with 2 hvy cannon and 1 light cannon in center of the line, and the enemy sent large groups of foot soldiers to the center. I figured I would have fun decimating the tightly packed group of about 1800 foot troops that was marching straight at the cannon. It was two tiles away in open ground and all of my cannon fired on this unit, and I think I killed 2 men. How is this possible? It make absolutely no sense.

[Yasha]

Canister, a devastating anti-personel round of artillery, was introduced in the 1500s. The normal ammunition of artillery at that time was a solid, round ball. Unlike hollywood special effects, in the 1500s and 1600s (period of this game) those balls did NOT explode - they had no gunpowder inside. The ball did damage by physically striking men as it passed through the massed ranks of troops. The only advantage cannons had at short range was that the ball had less time to wander off course, and therefore more chance of passing through the massed body of men.

I don't think the game includes provision for canister, which is reasonable. Therefore, artillery is most effective against densely packed infantry units, like tercios and pike phalanxes, and least effective against skirmishing foot or horse (like commanded musketeers, etc.).

[Malarky]

I was firing at a large, densely packed troop. The cannon shots all went right through the gaps in their formation. Makes no sense.

[Yasha]

I suspect the random results generator has an extremely low minimum value. Your gunners might not have been of the best quality. My recommendation is to execute every tenth man in the gun crews. It might not lead to more hits in the future, but it will certainly make you feel a lot better about their pathetic performance.

[Malarky]

That helps, thanks.

[Philippe_at_bay]

I don't think you can decimate your gun crews because they're probably civilian contractors.

[Michaelus]

I found point blank shots completely useless, I have yet to hit more than 0 on point blank range. Also my gunners are poor compared to enemy, in last battle 2 enemy batteries killed like 1000 of my men (the game lacks statistics, I'd love to know which unit type did most damage) and fragmented 3 infantry units in the process. My batteries shooting early tercio did 0 every other shot. I hate this RNG, but I keep trying.

[Malarky]

wow, that is unrealistic!

[Vektor T]

Not going to how awkward artillery shots can be at close range in Pike and Shot and how much I wish canister shot was simulated, the main use of artillery is not to actually causes damage ingame, but to lower enemy organization. The more shots a single unit takes in the same turn, higher are the changes it will became disorganized, and artillery are particularly efficient in it especially when you also have arquebuses/muskets firing on that same target. Artillery apllies it bonus "moral damage" even when it misses the target (0 damage, I mean). (saw it on the manual)

So don't expect your artillery to be super killers ingame, in that era they was not even that effective in killing, anyway. They are kinda like 'terror weapons' in here so use it according. Combine and focus your fire and lower enemies best units (like keils) organization from a safe distance with gunpowder.

But speaking about my own experience, I wont deny that arty has limited use so far to me and it main advantage is being very cheap (in campaign), otherwise I would choose another infantry or cav. But that may be because I'm playing with the ealier armies (~1494) first and here arty may be not that good yet and may become more important later on.

[Malarky]

I'm just saying, I fired three rounds at close range straight into a LARGE tightly packed group of men and no one even got a scratch. I'm pretty sure that would be considered absurd by most table-top game players.

[Lyle]

Any height difference? Firing upwards tends to yield poor results.

[Zarkarion]

Originally posted by Dino swe:

Any height difference? Firing upwards tends to yield poor results.

This factor isn't currently taken into account. Partly because we did not want to make it too easy to adopt an impregnable position.