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Battery Size


Andre Bolkonsky

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UG:CW's ability to deploy individually modeled cannon is one of my favorite parts of this game. I have a fair working knowledge of the different pieces and how they should be deployed, and find the game to be a fair representation of what should be. Excellent even, understanding that tweaking and balancing changes lie ahead. 

What I don't understand are the dynamics of the battery.

I have read several of the testers state that small batteries are better, and gameplay seems to bear that out. Can someone explain to me how the game actually models a battery and optimum use for different battery sizes? 

Edited by Andre Bolkonsky
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Small batteries are better more for logistical purposes, especially on Confederate side IME. Confederate you generally don't want to go above maybe 6 guns in a battery because you're going to accumulate small numbers of disparate guns from looting and the shop doesn't sell that much, so you want your brigades sized to take advantage of that. Union can go higher but probably shouldn't either simply to keep costs down. Unless you're capping out on brigades and just have buckets of money to throw away (unlikely), better to also have multiple smaller batteries so you can reposition them as necessary and get more flank shots off and/or stagger fire.

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Basically... experience is incredibly important for artillery, it turns it into a completely different animal. If you have small batteries, you can give your most valuable guns to your best troops. If you have 24 gun batteries, you have to create new, inexperienced batteries to carry your fancy guns. 

Also, the AI artillery numbers scale with yours. If you take 24 gun 6 pound batteries early in the campaign, so will the AI. 

If I spent my reputation on artillery though? I would still bump my battery sizes to include it. 

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I try to build my batteries realistically.  I even attempted a whole "division" of artillery (would equal more of a Battalion.)

So I basically had 3 Corps, Two totally Infantry, and One nothing but Artillery Batteries, I went into my next fight and selected this Corps for the battle since it was fresh, but when I chose that Corps to play I got the two infantry divisions but my artillery was no where to be found!  :(

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3 hours ago, A. P. Hill said:

I try to build my batteries realistically.  I even attempted a whole "division" of artillery (would equal more of a Battalion.)

So I basically had 3 Corps, Two totally Infantry, and One nothing but Artillery Batteries, I went into my next fight and selected this Corps for the battle since it was fresh, but when I chose that Corps to play I got the two infantry divisions but my artillery was no where to be found!  :(

You need to watch the brigade limit on the deployment map before you go in. This is one of the advantages of having multiple Corps, you can downsize your primary Corps so that you know exactly what troops you're bringing and there's no concern about what just happened to you.

Secondly, unfortunately as you found out the game will typically advance deploy by Division, meaning it's better instead to have roughly balanced Divisions instead of unbalanced ones and a balanced Corps overall.

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5 hours ago, A. P. Hill said:

I try to build my batteries realistically.  I even attempted a whole "division" of artillery (would equal more of a Battalion.)

So I basically had 3 Corps, Two totally Infantry, and One nothing but Artillery Batteries, I went into my next fight and selected this Corps for the battle since it was fresh, but when I chose that Corps to play I got the two infantry divisions but my artillery was no where to be found!  :(

Exactly. I've gone to building divisions of 3 heavy infantry brigades with an attached battery, And I noticed immediately just the STACKS of artillery the AI was putting on the board, so I bumped my battery size, and the AI battery grew even larger. More guns is actually detrimental in that case. 

I backed off to batteries of 6-8 guns and put more men on the field and voila, much better results. 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

You need to watch the brigade limit on the deployment map before you go in. This is one of the advantages of having multiple Corps, you can downsize your primary Corps so that you know exactly what troops you're bringing and there's no concern about what just happened to you.

Secondly, unfortunately as you found out the game will typically advance deploy by Division, meaning it's better instead to have roughly balanced Divisions instead of unbalanced ones and a balanced Corps overall.

I've started doing this first part of every camp; deploy to figure out exactly how many brigades I need then build my OOB accordingly. One of those quality tips I got from reading your posts. :D 

Edited by Andre Bolkonsky
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3 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

Exactly. I've gone to building divisions of 3 heavy infantry brigades with an attached battery, And I noticed immediately just the STACKS of artillery the AI was putting on the board, so I bumped my battery size, and the AI battery grew even larger. More guns is actually detrimental in that case. 

I backed off to batteries of 6-8 guns and put more men on the field and voila, much better results.

The AI is usually pretty bad about protecting its batteries but in the cases where it isn't, you shouldn't max your batteries because the large AI batteries will do tremendous damage as well back to you. (Also they don't care about conserving supply, which you can use to your advantage on long maps but on short range they'll still keep casualties trickling in.)

Also even when they don't protect their batteries large ones in pairs can stay alive long enough for the other one to canister your cavalry anyway as opposed to instantly running over a 4 gun battery and hitting the other before it finishes reloading.

FWIW, on my confederate playthrough, my full Corps looks something like:

Division 1: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Cavalry Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

Division 2: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Cavalry Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

Division 3: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Green Brigade, Sharpshooter Skirmishers, Artillery

Division 4: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Green Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

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59 minutes ago, Don't Escrow Taxes said:

What I usually do is roll either 3 brigades of infantry and then a battery of napoleons and a battery of 10lb ordinance per division, across four divisions, or 4 brigades of infantry, 1 battery of napoleons, and an entire division of guns like parrots, howitzers, and 10lb ordinance.

 I look forward to having an OOB with that many options.

I'm always fond of Napoteons and 24 pdr howitzers. The thing about the 3" rifle is it has ample range, but I feel like I lose firepower. I'm sure they'll be tweaked, they're too ubiquitous to the CW battlefield. maybe a large battery of them massed in the back would help for counter-battery fire, when the scaling issues are addressed. 

The 6-pounders have nice hitting power in backing up a line of infantry at close range, as they should, but we need the option of configuring them one or two batteries as horse artillery to put some speed behind them. 

Edited by Andre Bolkonsky
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You are wasting your time with small batteries. I always bring 12+ and most of the time 20+.

Small batteries are better because the can turn faster and can be deployed better. But the real bottleneck is the amount of brigades allowed; it is not possible to deploy a bunch of small batteries.

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It all depends what you want to do... large batteries are excellent at killing enemy from close range with canister, but they run out of ammo very fast and will eat your ammo trucks fast as well...  So, i'd say you should keep some large batteries in your second or third corps, and only move them to first one for large defensive battles. If you are on attack, smaller batteries are fine, as they can be moved and deployed faster..

But of course, you need to have skilled arty commander, otherwise effectivity will go down, and you will be just wasting ammo...

 

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15 hours ago, JaM said:

It all depends what you want to do... large batteries are excellent at killing enemy from close range with canister, but they run out of ammo very fast and will eat your ammo trucks fast as well...  So, i'd say you should keep some large batteries in your second or third corps, and only move them to first one for large defensive battles. If you are on attack, smaller batteries are fine, as they can be moved and deployed faster..

But of course, you need to have skilled arty commander, otherwise effectivity will go down, and you will be just wasting ammo...

 

I've noticed some peculiarities on supply, but given the state of the game its very small potatoes at this point. 

In one battle, i drained a supply wagon dry despite having a ton of supplies going into the fight. When I came out, my supplies were back to par where I had it set. Does it auto-supply itself each round? 

I will be interested to see in six months or so, when the game is fully fleshed out and balanced, how fast a battery eats supplies. 

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15 hours ago, JaM said:
23 hours ago, Destruct1 said:

You are wasting your time with small batteries. I always bring 12+ and most of the time 20+.

Small batteries are better because the can turn faster and can be deployed better. But the real bottleneck is the amount of brigades allowed; it is not possible to deploy a bunch of small batteries.

Aye. My kind of commander. Big batteries of Napoleons and 24-pound howitzers chew up brigades. Big batteies of 3" Rifles in the back counter-battery the enemy's guns into submission. Artillery is my favorite arm of the service. You can break an army if they are marching against you with well a few sited batteries. 

On attack, smaller is definitely better. The little 6 pounders up close and personal right behind the assault brigades are killers and can prolong behind an assault. But I need some horse batteries. And we need the ability to break brigades into smaller units so you can mass guns or disperse them at need.  

However, I'm patient. I know they're working on it. The problem seems to be one of scaling which is about to be tweaked heavily in this patch. What I'd like to know more about is supply and movement and their affect on batteries, but I guess its hard to answer a question about something that is constantly being changed and tweaked. 

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26 minutes ago, Andre Bolkonsky said:

In one battle, i drained a supply wagon dry despite having a ton of supplies going into the fight. When I came out, my supplies were back to par where I had it set. Does it auto-supply itself each round? 

Yes, you get charged money to refill back to whatever you had previously set your camp Supply to.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 12/15/2016 at 1:23 AM, Andre Bolkonsky said:

The 6-pounders have nice hitting power in backing up a line of infantry at close range, as they should, but we need the option of configuring them one or two batteries as horse artillery to put some speed behind them. 

+1 to the horse artillery. 6 pdrs field guns should be more mobile than 24 pdr howitzers, right? I'd drop the damage if the devs increase mobility, though. There should be a tradeoff.

On 12/14/2016 at 11:07 PM, Hitorishizuka said:

The AI is usually pretty bad about protecting its batteries but in the cases where it isn't, you shouldn't max your batteries because the large AI batteries will do tremendous damage as well back to you. (Also they don't care about conserving supply, which you can use to your advantage on long maps but on short range they'll still keep casualties trickling in.)

Also even when they don't protect their batteries large ones in pairs can stay alive long enough for the other one to canister your cavalry anyway as opposed to instantly running over a 4 gun battery and hitting the other before it finishes reloading.

FWIW, on my confederate playthrough, my full Corps looks something like:

Division 1: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Cavalry Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

Division 2: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Cavalry Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

Division 3: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Green Brigade, Sharpshooter Skirmishers, Artillery

Division 4: Shooting Brigade, Shooting Brigade, Green Brigade, Green Brigade, Artillery, Artillery

This is how I composed my divisions for several play throughs, but for the grand battles I prefer specialized divisions to reduce micromanagement and make unit selection easier. This did not work in my favor at Stones River, where you're given no indication on the deployment screen that your 3rd and 4th divisions from your 2nd and 3rd Corps will not appear on the first day of battle (while attacking as CSA). The deployment screen allows three corps of 20 brigades, but you don't get to use the full 2nd and 3rd corps until day two, which amounted to about 30% of my army. 

A division of pure infantry is very handy for charging Marye's Heights with excellent coordination. This wouldn't work with a balanced division. I also like to put my cavalry in one division together, as they tend to form melee blobs and become difficult to select with a mouse. With 100 brigades at Antietam, the brigade widgets become less useful and I favor division selection.  

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You can always just rearrange on the deployment zone to put your big infantry out front and reserve smaller infantry/artillery/cavalry for later if that's what you wanted, you don't actually need to have the infantry together on the OOB if you're talking Grand Battle with a deployment zone. (That said, charging Marye's Heights is so lazy and wasteful even if you get away with it.)

I don't see why you would ever really want to use division selection. Pause is there for a reason, just keep microing individual brigades as necessary. ;P

Edited by Hitorishizuka
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I know you can shuffle brigades around and I'm not afraid to micromanage, but if you manage by division at Mary's Heights you can achieve a level of timing and coordination that's difficult to do with single brigade selection. That's pretty much the only time division selection has been ideal. The rebels form a perfect line and divisions line up nicely. I stack my vanguard, regular, and reserve divisions right on top of each other as I go up the hill. Meat shields aborb a volley and fall back a smidge as the regulars engage melee and the vanguard mops ups, all within a second of each other. 

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