Is artillery really weak, or am i using it wrong?

[Hank the Cow dog]

for me artillery only really works well if its up on the front lines using canniseter, then it shreds

but at range even howitzers are lucky to get a kill for each shot

[DirishDevil]

its really good at routing divisions if you hit their flank,, but yea i was never impressed by it

[pandakraut]

Smoothbore and howitzers do so little damage past shell range it's a waste to let them fire. If you want to fire at targets at longe range you want to be using rifled cannon.

See the pinned artillery guide or use the UI mod which displays the damage that weapons do at different ranges to know which cannons to use for what.

Infantry + pushing up smoothbores for canister certainly works very well. Infantry are so strong there is an argument not to bother with anything else. But if you want to focus on longer range artillery that can also be very effective.

Here is an example of what can be done with a well built artillery army https://youtu.be/OEmpQ58Abko

[Kolakhan]

Where is that artillery guide?

[Dave]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1105446690

[Kolakhan]

Is there a chart that shows damage at the various ranges? Thanks by the way.

[pandakraut]

There are some average damage spreadsheets here https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/26142-hidden-mechanics-and-weapon-damage-degradation/

[BIGDOJO]

Yeah artillery is literally and figuratively hit or miss at range. This is pretty true to life as General Lee ordered a massive artillery barrage before Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg that resulted in a few casualties and a lot of impressive noise and stuff but in the end didn't really have all that much of an effect, the range from the Confederate position to the Union being about a mile at the time.

[pandakraut]

In the game, artillery effectiveness at range is determined by a damage multiplier curve. The game uses these curves to represent accuracy at longer ranges, but there isn't actually a chance to miss. As long as a volley isn't cancelled it will always deal damage, though in some extreme cases the damage can be less than 1 and you won't see enemy hp change.

[Hugh de Salle]

Cannons are rubbish apart from the 24 pound Howitzers which are good.

Dont bother get another Infantry Brigade.

In reality the rifled cannon were much more accurate than the game makes them i have seen a live fire of a 10lb Parrott that could hit a 12 inch bulls eye at 800 yards.

Ironically in this game the more you reduce enemy cannon down with counter battery fire the more accurate they become due to the efficiency threshold of 12 cannon anything above that and they don't work so well.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXtswMYlBd0

[HB]

Originally posted by Hugh de Salle:

In reality the rifled cannon were much more accurate than the game makes them i have seen a live fire of a 10lb Parrott that could hit a 12 inch bulls eye at 800 yards.

Not the norm, ballistic deviation is 36 inches at 600 yards, 144 inches at 1200 yards, vid shows 27 misses at targets, and was only able to hit a wagon sized target.

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/iusburj/article/download/19818/25895/43938

10pnd Parrot accuracy.
Thus, at greater ranges it was quite difficult to hit a target. One celebrated exception was when the Confederate artilleryman "Pelham hit a Union standard-bearerat 800 yards with one shot" (Coggins 65). While this might not seem greatly difficult, the deviation of the ball in flight was 3 feet at 600 yards and 12 feet at 1,200 yards (Ibid. 66)

Art are a crew served weapon, at G/burg US and CS brought 630 pieces into service, crewed by 13k manpower, the Infantry combined to be c125k of the total of both sides forces of c160k. So Art and Inf who did almost all the casualty infliction comprised 138k, Art being 9% and Inf 91%. c51k became casualties, Art caused c4800 and small arms c46k casualties. US AoP US fired no solid shot as it removed it from land usage as it was not accurate or effective and fired only shell till end of the war in open field engagements.

Art 13k inflicted 4800.
Inf 125k inflicted 46k.

Art ratio of inflcition ( 4800/13000) 0.37 per man.
inf ratio of infliction (46000/125000) 0.37 a man.

The statistics of G/burg show Art was no different in its effectiveness in causing casualties than a man with a rifle was.

[HB]

Originally posted by Gygax's Chosen:

but at range even howitzers are lucky to get a kill for each shot

AoP fired 32,000 art shell and canister rounds over three days, so getting a a casualty per shoot is exceptional good in game.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

Several key things:

#1 - Any arty unit over 14 guns starts to actually decline in its power. Even with a three-star general for commander and maximum efficiency. There seem to be hidden mechanics in the background of the game, where units over a certain size, even if given a leader that lifts their efficiency back up, just don't do as much damage anymore. So, if you have 24-gun arty units, that actually reduces their power drastically... try to have 12-14 guns, never more than that.

#2 - Some arty equipment is only effective at close range. 6 pounder and 12 pounder units do not have great range, so, yes, they need to be up close. If you want to cause a couple dozen casualties at longer range, you want 20 pounder Parrot guns or the 10 pound (3 inch) Ordinance guns.

#3 - Cover, especially white-shield entrenchment spots, greatly reduces arty effectiveness against units in those spots. So, let's say you fire 6 pounders across the bridge at 1st Bull Run against that one entrenched spot... you'll be lucky to do more than 3-4 casualties per volley, if even that.


Overall:

Artillery is wonky in the game. Some artillery equipment appears like it should be better than it is if you read the in-game stats, while others look worse than they are. Those in-game stats are deceiving, too, because Whitworth arty looks like it should just be for extreme long range, but because it has such long range its canister/shell range is longer, too. Whitworths do surprisingly better at close range than you'd expect.

There are several excellent user-made guides for artillery, so strongly suggest you check out guides in the Steam community hub, because they'll help a lot... the in-game stats are not always great to go by, and, worse, there are certain mechanics that are counter-intuitive and not even acknowledged as existing (as in, 24-gun arty units do way less well than 12-gun arty units, even if they show as having high efficiency in the stats for the unit).

[Rowdy Rob]

20pdr parrotts work for me. They shred enemy artillery at any distance and decimate units at close range

[crazy rocker]

rifled guns for counter battery fire on a hill to give them longer range. howitzers for hitting breastworks and advancing enemy as they fire exploding rounds that explode overhead and rain shrapnel down on the enemy below.
solid shot is only any good if the enemy is in column formation.

Howitzers placed behind ur inf so they fire over their heads. standard cannon need a direct tine of sight so have to be in the front line or they will kill their own troops in front of them in real life. those r best used for defence not attack as they r most usefull for firing canister. they rarely had exploding shells it was either solid shot or canister.

Cannon were always in front of the inf to fire canister but when the enemy got within musket range the inf would move in front of the guns to open fire and let the guns get pulled away to safety.

1 weapon used by both sides in this war but not in the game is machine guns like the gatling and needle guns. very effective but tended to jam a lot. The south imported a lot of them from Britian and proved very effective in defence. so the north had to invent some for themselves.