Ranged combat basics

Explaining shooting and morale damage.

The basics

First of all, all ranged weapons have their own points of advantage system which is more simplistic compared to the melee POAs. Most of them are listed in the shooting tooltip:

1)Arquebus/musket: -100 POA vs mounted, 0 POA vs foot, ignores armor at short range
2)Crossbow: -50 POA vs mounted, -150 POA vs foot, ignores armor
3)Bow: 0 vs mounted, -50 vs foot.

Shooting stationary yields 120% effect. Turning or moving and shooting is 1.5 times less effective: 80%. The diffirence is a lot.

Shooting can only do morale damage if it does no less than 5% casualties per turn (reaction fire and residual shooting phase included) to a given unit. The casualty limit is calcualted based on the current number of troops in a squad, but the current number of troops never exceeds ~900, which comes into play with the large units like keils, billmen and the like. If a unit takes 8% casualties, it receives a -1 morale check penalty and if it gets hit wtih artillery it also receives an additional -1.

You only need to shoot a unit until it takes enough damage to make a morale check.

500 man foot squads: ~25 casualties to check morale and ~40 for further -1 penalty. If the unit isnt morale damaged after taking 25 casualties, it still can get morale damaged if it takes a total 40 and /or gets shot by artillery. If 25, 40 and artillery didnt work, then the unit wont take morale damage this turn from shooting, try again the next turn.

Units take morale tests each time they are shot at if the 5% shooting casualties this turn threshold has been reached. However they only roll once for all shooting morale in a turn, so after passing one shooting morale test in a turn, the only way they can fail another is if more negative modifiers have been added as a result of the later shooting. Thus the only things that can change its results are the -1 modifiers from 8% shooting casualties this turn, being shot at by artillery, having fallen below 75% original strength, or 50% original strength. Non-superior troops will in any case Autobreak when the latter threshold is reached.

250 man mounted squads: ~13 casualties to check morale and ~20 for a morale penalty.

900+ squads: ~45 for a morale check and ~72 for a morale penalty.


Its also better to make two diffirent units check for morale then one of them but with a penalty.

Arquebus do a lot of damage to foot and even more so against the large foot units like keils (i have seen even 100+ in 1 shot).
If you re feeling that your shooting is quite weak, try to focus down 250 man non light cavalry as it is quite easy to reach the 12 casualty mark.

You also have to remember that heavy/mixed/determined foot units have +1 morale bonus. Units with varying veterancy levels roll for morale more or less favorably as well (done via rerolling certain d6 roll results). And units which are at 75% and 50% of full strength receive -1 and -2 morale modifiers and will be easier to rout.

[Carnifex]

I finally got around to reading this. It's ready helpful and I'll refer to it again, thanks for writing it!

[Zarkarion]

P.S. I have suggested a tweak to the guide in a post on the Slitherine board.

[Zarkarion]

Very nice guide

[January Desk]

looks excited

[mateusg]

good guide