Artillery Fire - what does it do and where is it applied?

[RAID186]

What exactly does this modifier do? Just a little confused. I assumed +1 Artillery Fire would just add to the pips as the wiki states :

"These ideas increase artillery's offensive and defensive fire values beyond the unit's inherent pips."

But it's a different thing altogether in the military tab.

Is it a flat modifier meaning 2 Artillery fire will double the pips damage?

 

[Guibou]

Artillery fire is different from the fire phase that you see in combat.

When you select an artillery type in the military menu you can see 3 pips (both for offense and defense). Fire - Shock - Moral. It adds up to those number. So early game your artillery will could be 2-0-1 instead of 1-0-1.

You won't see the effect on the combat panel when fighting but your artillery will do more casualties with the same roll. Since it's just 1 pip, it is usually better early when the total amount of pip is lower ; late game the same +1 is a lesser % increase.

The fire phase in the combat panel is link to your general skill and if you have a +1 fire damage in national idea.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Art fire affects both ships and cannons increasing the damage they deal on the fire phase.

A flat +1 means that they have +1 fire modifier. Both fire and shock modifiers and multipliers on damage dealt.

 

[RAID186]

So, +1 Artillery Fire is the equivalent of having a general with an extra fire pip- but only applying to Artillery?

 

[makaramus]

So, +1 Artillery Fire is the equivalent of having a general with an extra fire pip- but only applying to Artillery?

I dont think so
because generals dont boost pipes of your units when they dont have it(thats why shock general is very good early game for western nations since they got no fire pipe early on)
its more like... if your cannons got 1 pipe, it doubles their strength
if they have more... it becomes less effective

 

[Jarvin]

I really really hate to sound offensive but damn, so many wrong answers here..

First of all
+Artillery fire has nothing to do with pips


PIps is this:

Pips work in a similar way to terrain penalties, crossing penalties and general pips


+Arti fire refers to arti modifiers so these:

Fire/shock modifiers are essentialy the base output of each unit at each tech.

+Artillery fire is added on top of that, meaning that:
At tech 7 it's ~~100% increase, so at tech 7 +1 arti fire is comparable to 100% arti combat ability

as the game progresses the base modifier increases, and as such the relative value of +1 arti fire decreases, to ~~37% at tech 16 and ~~10% at tech 32.

 

[Jarvin]

Spanish cannons however will have 3 fire on the offense and 2 fire on the defense. ,eaming they will not only get a 50% damage increase, but also grant +1 defensive fire to regiments in front of them. Non-spanish artillery will not grant any defensive bonuses at that stage as defensive fire donation is rounded down.

what

 

[RobbieAB]

@Jarvin looking at those tables, does that mean Spain should transition to artillery heavy battles as soon as they get their +1 artillery fire idea?

 

[klingonadmiral]

@Jarvin looking at those tables, does that mean Spain should transition to artillery heavy battles as soon as they get their +1 artillery fire idea?

Not quite. While your artillery will have the fire value of mid-game artillery, their pips will still be subpar. You should have increased artillery backlines, but not something approaching the lategame meta.

 

[Less2]

Not quite. While your artillery will have the fire value of mid-game artillery, their pips will still be subpar. You should have increased artillery backlines, but not something approaching the lategame meta.

That's not really the case. Tech 10: Artillery has 1/1/1/1 off/def/moraleoff/moraledef, Western infantry has 0/0/1/2. The artillery has the pip advantage over infantry. Also pips are also only worth about 13% damage each, so even if you are behind on a specific unit tech level its not a major change.

 

[EarlKonrad]

That's not really the case. Tech 10: Artillery has 1/1/1/1 off/def/moraleoff/moraledef, Western infantry has 0/0/1/2. The artillery has the pip advantage over infantry. Also pips are also only worth about 13% damage each, so even if you are behind on a specific unit tech level its not a major change.

Remember that art does only half damage from the backline and have no shock damage whatsoever. Yes it is a good idea to have as much art as possible as soon as it is unlocked at tech 7, but it is impractical to do so until you start rolling in cash, which is also around the time when art start getting noticeably strong (tech 13/16).

 

[Less2]

Remember that art does only half damage from the backline and have no shock damage whatsoever. Yes it is a good idea to have as much art as possible as soon as it is unlocked at tech 7, but it is impractical to do so until you start rolling in cash, which is also around the time when art start getting noticeably strong (tech 13/16).

True, I was purely commenting on pips not mattering for the comparison.

For spain you are looking at a combined 1.75 fire/shock for infantry and 2.05 for artillery (reduced to 1.025) at tech 10. But then infantry also take strength damage. You can probably expect damage to be fairly comparable between the two and you can expect decisive stack wipes often with them combined, where mass infantry will win battles at less cost but have a far less chance to stackwipe and more manpower cost.

 

[RAID186]

@Jarvin exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you.

So, if you were to tech up, but keep the last tech cannons, for example, would your base output be the same (Art. Fire) but you modifiers (Art pips) be the only thing changing?


Example: You tech up just before a battle but don't upgrade your cannon type, you still gain the bonuses yes?

 

[EarlKonrad]

@Jarvin exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you.

So, if you were to tech up, but keep the last tech cannons, for example, would your base output be the same (Art. Fire) but you modifiers (Art pips) be the only thing changing?


Example: You tech up just before a battle but don't upgrade your cannon type, you still gain the bonuses yes?

Again, pips are unaffected. Only unit upgrades change pips.

 

[Gratak]

@Jarvin looking at those tables, does that mean Spain should transition to artillery heavy battles as soon as they get their +1 artillery fire idea?

The damage from cannons is doubled for Spain in early game. With decent generals, at tech 7 it should be higher than what others get at tech 15 and not really far away from tech 16-21. The pips of the units don't make that much of a difference here.

What is fully missing though, is the defensive part of cannons. They do add half their defensive pips to the front units (rounded down), but since the Spain bonus is not on pips, this will stay zero before tech 13 (morale) and 16 (fire).

 

[klingonadmiral]

That's not really the case. Tech 10: Artillery has 1/1/1/1 off/def/moraleoff/moraledef, Western infantry has 0/0/1/2.

By the time you form Spain, you will have tech 9 infantry which has 5 pips.

 

[Jarvin]

I'll just note that value of cannons in early game isn't defined by their damage output but by the fact that they lock the backline.
In early game in larger battles it's practically impossible to reinforce in such a perfect way that you avoid losing morale on your backline(backline takes full morale damage of the frontline!). In this sense having cannons is extremely useful because they lock the backline, meaning that any additional infantry/cav reinforcements go into reserves where they lose only 0.03 morale a tick.


In SP terms going heavily on artillery is probably still worthless though. The AI in this game is so insanely bad at using correct army compositions and just in general army maneuvering that you really don't need to go all out to have easy time fending off their attacks. That said though, wars in SP are won by sieges rather than battles, so in this sense having some extra cannons will always help.


In MP terms I'd say that having a full backline of cannons starting at tech 10 is a must. In MP the battles are far more important than in SP and they tend to reach far greater scales, meaning that artillery's damage output(even if it's small) combined with the aforementioned backline lock will easily make for a difference between losing and winning a battle.



Also I'd strongly advise against looking at pips in vacuum, ie. by just counting how many of them a unit has.
Offensive fire pips on cavalry are essentially useless. Defensive fire/shock/morale pips on artillery are essentially useless until they get to a multiplicity of 2.

Pips-wise arti is obviously at a heavy disadvantage in the early game, but that doesn't mean that its useless.

 

[Less2]

By the time you form Spain, you will have tech 9 infantry which has 5 pips.

The shock pips don't matter though in comparison to artillery.

 

[klingonadmiral]

The shock pips don't matter though in comparison to artillery.

Uhm, they matter especially since artillery is idle during the shock phase.

 

[Less2]

Uhm, they matter especially since artillery is idle during the shock phase.

If artillery does base 2 fire damage and infantry does base 1 fire/1 shock damage, then artillery having 1/1 in fire is exactly as good as infantry having 1/1 in fire and 1/1 in shock combined. All pips do is modify base damage. Artillery not having offensive shock bonuses doesn't matter because artillery don't have relevant base shock damage (artillery not having 2 shock defense does matter though due to how artillery add defense to infantry).