Artillery Analysis

[Jarkko]

Mikee64, the one and biggest reason to go for corps artillery is that they don't cycle in and out. If you have several divisions in the corp, the divisions seem to rotate (not to mention even rout at times) and the inherent artillery fights with their div. Corp artillery OTOH keeps on firing until the corp routs (as long as you have enough meat between your artillery and enemies).

If you are using a corp to do a divisions work, then that does of course not matter. But then again, why use a corp if a division is enough

[tagwyn]

Thanks Dix: I hope to use such good information in my PBEM vs. Havely. t

[Brochgale]

Great Work Dixie. Interesting with it.

In relation to artillery upgrading - I noted that 10lbs dont upgrade to 20lbs but I am curious as to what rate the 6lbs will upgrade and will 12lbs upgrade in turn to 20lbs. I seem to have ead something about this in another thread but cant seem to find the relevant thread amymore.

[Dixicrat]

Great Work Dixie. Interesting with it.

In relation to artillery upgrading - I noted that 10lbs dont upgrade to 20lbs but I am curious as to what rate the 6lbs will upgrade and will 12lbs upgrade in turn to 20lbs. I seem to have ead something about this in another thread but cant seem to find the relevant thread amymore.

I appreciate you thanks, Brochgale and Tagwyn, and I'm glad that you've found my posts helpful.

12 lbrs (or "Napoleons") won't upgrade to 20 lb Parrotts, anymore. In fact, they don't upgrade, at all. The only ordnance which upgrades now is the 6 lbr.

As for the percentile chance of conversion, I really can't say for sure. Here's a post from late last year, before the upgrade paths were changed.

as of Vanilla game v1.11d (and never modified since game was first released)

edit> For the USA:

6 lbs upgrade to 10 lbs
(25% chance all 1861 thru all 1862)
(30% chance all 1863)
(35% chance all 1864 thru all 1865)

edit> For the CSA:

6 lbs upgrade to 10 lbs
(10% chance from start of 1862 to end of game)

Of course, now the situation has changed so that 6 lbrs upgrade to 12 lbrs, rather than 10 lb Parrotts. As far as I know, the chances of upgrading haven't changed, though.

If you're interested, you can check out the latest databases for the specs of various units here: http://ageoddl.telechargement.fr/latest/AACW_DB.zip

I've attached to this post a spreadsheet with information for artillery which has been copied and pasted from those database files, as the attachment "AACW Ordnance Data".

If you'll open this spreadsheet and examine column "AV", you'll be able to clearly see which artillery units upgrade, and also what they upgrade to.

Currently, there is only one: the 6 lbr. For the Confederate 6 lbr., you'll find "$mdl_CSA_Art2" listed in the AV column. But what is that? Well, if you'll look in column "G", the "text" column, you'll see "$mdl_CSA_Art2" is the text for the 12 lbr.

I believe that the reason that you're unable to find the details is because the particulars of "revised upgrades" were listed in the release notes for the patch in which the changes were made. As far as I know, previous release notes are superseded by subsequent patch notes and deleted, to avoid confusion. Consequently, those notes are no longer available.

However, Gray Lensman has a "Civil War Historical Accuracy Pre-Patch" thread, in which he posts notes for changes of each "pre-release". Since all of these "pre-patches" are eventually incorporated into the "official" updates, this thread can be used to examine the changes for previous releases. The thread is in the "AACW Mods" subforum, rather than a subforum of the "AGEod's American Civil War" forum.

[mikee64]

I've got E. Alexander in the stack with Longstreet, but I don't see his presence reflected in the log. Here is a small excerpt:

"3:39:14 PM (Reporting) Battle effectiveness with leader rating: 130.00%
3:39:14 PM (Reporting) Firer value with leader tactical rating: 20.80
3:39:14 PM (Reporting) Firer value with leader battle ability: 24.96"

Nevermind, found the answer to this one, Alexander's 20% bonus is incorporated above in the "leader battle ability". I was mistakenly looking for his name but that doesn't show up in this case.

[Dixicrat]

I've got a question about how this works. I know it has often been repeated, even by Pocus at some point, but I can't seem to verify the details. I noticed in my current PBEM game that embedded Division artillery seemed to have an advantage over Corps level. So I set up some tests:

I started an 1862 campaign game and created a Corps under Longstreet. I placed a Division under Ewell into the Corps. At both the Corps level and inside the Division I placed 2 batteries of Parrotts and attacked Alexandria in clear terrain and fair weather.

The resulting battle log consistently shows all 4 batteries opening fire at range 7, with the batteries inside Ewell's Division firing before the Corps level reserves. All 4 batteries consistently fire at the same target in the same battle round, with the only difference being the Division batteries get a slight to-hit % bonus due to Ewell's added attack rating. This continues to hold true as the range is decreased and the shorter ranged cannon open fire.

So, what am I missing here? I see no target, engagement or to-hit bonus for the Corps level batteries. Perhaps this only comes into play when we get to the assault round of combat? But if so, the cannons should already have done most of their work.

Any insight would be appreciated!

thanks.

Thanks go to Pocus, for the following information.

The rule should be that Corps-level artillery fires on the healthiest unit of the stack engaged against the corps. The artillery within a Division will fire against the line elements of the unit opposing the unit that they're a part of.

In general, units have more chances to engage the largest enemy units compared to the smaller ones, so in the end you can easily have both Corps and Divisional artillery targeting the same enemy.

Any tests which you conduct should be done with several enemy units and several friendly units, each having Divisional Artillery plus one Corps-level artillery unit. Unless there is a bug, the Corps-level artillery should fire against the largest enemy, but the Divisional artillery should only fire against the unit which their line elements are engaged against.

As for initiative, the only reasons why Corps-level artillery would fire after Divisional artillery would be if the division has a leader giving a bonus, or if the command includes a sharpshooter.

Finally: as you noted in your previous post, Alexander's bonus is incorporated into modifiers; all that's actually missing is his name.

[Tex Willer]

A couple of questions
1) How good are mortars bombarding ships?
2) How good is coastal artillery against land units? (as part of the stack of a corps, for instance)

For the second question, I can reply that is very good! Yankees use that artillery often and I use it too after having suffered many casualities from them.
It's like the 88mm Flak in WW2: it was a anti-aircraft gun used against tanks

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Dixicrat]

[...] 2) How good is coastal artillery against land units? (as part of the stack of a corps, for instance)

For the second question, I can reply that is very good! Yankees use that artillery often and I use it too after having suffered many casualities from them.[...]

As Gray pointed out, this is a mistaken assumption. Even so, this is an easy mistake to make. Sometimes, it certainly appears that Coastal Artillery has participated in an attack, even when it didn't. You've suffered huge casualties in a battle; there's a humongous Coastal Artillery cannon in the enemy stack; and you can see its NATO symbol in the Battle Report display. What's to figure out? You got decimated by the BFG!

So, if you don't know about battle logs, or you haven't learned how to check out the database files, or there's a key piece of information missing from your understanding of the game... well, disproportionate casualties are really easy to blame on Coastal Artillery, when its in the enemy stack.

I believe it was only my second or third attempt at playing the the game, when I made the same assumption that Tex did. I was playing the CSA in the Grand Campaign against Athena, and it was probably within the first dozen turns of the game. I didn't know about the target limitations of Coastal Artillery, and so I was horrified to see Athena inching coastal artillery toward Richmond! I didn't know what to do, but I did know that the huge cannon creeping slowly toward Richmond had the biggest "power" number of all units. It intimidated the hell out of me, and so I quit so I could start over.

The thing is, that experience left an impression on me that caused me to form a few assumptions that simply weren't true. For the next couple of months, I played all of my games with those mistaken assumptions. Fortunately, one of the really great things about these AACW forums are that you learn a lot, if you read them regularly. I don't remember where it was that I first discovered that Coastal guns were restricted to naval targets, but I do know that it was a really surprising discovery.

Here it is, eight months later, and I'm still making astonishing discoveries about the game. Everybody is! Earlier today, I was reading a post from one of our Iron Tigers in one of his AARs. He was perplexed by a battle result, until someone posted an explanation. That says something really good, about AACW: when even our strongest and most experienced players are still learning, you know that the game is going to be challenging you, for as long as you care to play it.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Dixicrat]

I've revised the original post; the new version is 1.1, which combines conclusions from 1.0 and 2.0, without the lengthy discussion of 2.0.

Aside from the fact that both USA and CSA forces are listed on the spreadsheet, the primary difference between 1.0 and 1.1 is that I've included a bit more database info so that I can include power values (the "power" that you see on a unit in the game). Now, the modders and techs among us can experiment with changing different values to see their effect on power. I've also corrected some outdated material.

Here's the link to the OP:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=105063#post105063

[Dixicrat]

Hey Bill... Analyse this! [...]

Well... that certainly looks like a 10" Columbiad... much like the far left-flank one in the lower river battery at Ft. Donelson! ...But I could be wrong...

Nice "shot".

Edit 07Oct11: This post, and several of the ones by me which follow, were in response to pictures posted by Gray_Lensman which have been deleted. Since the pictures (and posts) are gone, my responses may seem confusing.
Sorry.

Dixicrat

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Dixicrat]

Doesn't quite look like it used to, today, does it.

Given the width of the river at the batteries, can you imagine how intense it must have been to have had those huge guns blasting away at Foote's ironclads, at what was essentially point blank range?! I'm thinking that stuffing cotton in your ears just wouldn't cut it.

That 6.5" rifle on the upper river battery is the one that "blew me away". A 128 lbr! Whew! Plus, the two Carronades that flanked it weren't exactly pop guns, either...

Thanks for the pics, Gray!

[charlesonmission]

I'm really trying to delve into forts and sieges. In the post, it says that Columbiads have a siege bonus (the only field piece). However, in the Excel sheet, only sieg artillery has a 1 under the siege column. How do we know that columbiads have a seige bonus (and I'd assume fort batteries as well).

Thanks,

Charles

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Cromagnonman]

I'm really trying to delve into forts and sieges. In the post, it says that Columbiads have a siege bonus (the only field piece). However, in the Excel sheet, only sieg artillery has a 1 under the siege column. How do we know that columbiads have a seige bonus (and I'd assume fort batteries as well).

Thanks,

Charles

I take it you are referring to the +1 bonus the siege artilly unit provides. AFAIK, this is the only non-general unit that provides it. It is an ability, much like fast-mover for Jackson or entrencher for engineers. It's only in that chart to demonstrate that siege arty have this particular bonus.

[charlesonmission]

So for my forts as the CSA, is the opinion that I should still put siege artillery and columbiads in for maximum impact and to hold out the longest?

[Citizen X]

Put in everything that decreases the possibility of breaches during siege resolving, by altering the siege roll. Most of all the general with the "fort defender" or the "engineer" ability. Then you want the artillery wich gives the most artillery (power) points, because 30 points of artillery give a +1 modifier to the siege roll (applies to the attacker as well).
You also want a supply wagon because lacking General supply will result in a negative modifier for the defender and lacking a supply wagon may result into surrender under certain circumstances.
If the special ability "siege engineer", either from the mortar or a general adds up for the defender as well I can't tell at the moment, but I read somewhere it does.

The other than the siege resolving purpose, the combat purpose depends on the terrain. If your fort or level +5 trenches are in the open you want a Columbiad (Rodman) once the opponent storms, because of their rate of fire and firing distance. For shorter range you want the 12lb and (very effective) the Gatling for their assault values and the latters firing rate.

Other than that I know of no arguments for or against a certain piece in siege operations.

EDIT: Just read it again and their are two types of besieging abilities: besieger, wich only adds up for the attacker, and siege engineer, wich adds up for both, attacker and defender.

[Cromagnonman]

Under what circumstances does artillery participate in assault (zero-range combat)? Going through battle reports from a recent army-scale battle; artillery was never engaged (indeed, never targeted) in the battle. I believe that support units never initiate an assault, and are only ever targeted if their side is out of combat elements; I think your force will usually retreat before this, if at all possible. In the case that you can't retreat, your artillery is likely to be overwhelmed by the enemy very quickly (I haven't yet parsed these battle reports, though). All of which is to point out that the assault values of artillery are not particularly important for winning battles, though they may make your enemy pay more dearly for his victory.