AGEOD Forums

When using a force that has enough 12 pounders elements in artillery divisions to completely fill the support line, does it make sense to remove all the 6 pounders possible from the same force?

And if this is the case, disregarding building forts and entrenchments, what is the best combat use for 6 pounds?

I find that 6lbs can still offer good service in the defense. So I would use them to give artillery support to garrison divisions. (Say a Union force dug in at HF in order to keep the valley bottled up).

[delete]

[delete]

Straight Arrow wrote:When using a force that has enough 12 pounders elements in artillery divisions to completely fill the support line, does it make sense to remove all the 6 pounders possible from the same force?

You are assuming you could know what support element frontage will be in a given battle, and have the opportunity to make adjustments for it. If it were possible, that would be extreme micro management. All you can viably do is plan for the greatest number of possible situations.

The consensus for years has been 4 artillery per division or 10-11 infantry, depending on how many cav you have in a division (assuming always 1 sharpshooter), which ought to be a minimum of 4 cav per corps, which is a hard-coded number for patrol and evasion IIRC.

Most units with embedded artillery have 6lb-ers. You will find that many of the divisions you build will have a substantial number of these. Even if you only build brigades without embedded 6lb-ers (purchasing 12lb-ers on the side instead, and putting them into your divisions) you will sooner or later have purchased all such brigades and be force to purchase brigades with 6lb-ers later in the war, which means your divisions will start to become weaker.

The events which upgrade 6lb-er batteries to 12lb-ers have been deactivated in the game for some time now. *1) So there is no way to upgrade embedded 6lb-er batteries to 12lb-ers. Once purchased within a brigade, you are stuck with them.

Straight Arrow wrote:And if this is the case, disregarding building forts and entrenchments, what is the best combat use for 6 pounds?

IF you could replace 6lb-ers with 12lb-ers, leaving you with a large number of unused 6lb-ers, you could use the 6lb-ers to build forts and redoubts, or add them to defensive positions. 12lb-ers are more effective in defensive positions than 6lb-ers, but if the 6lb-ers would otherwise just be sitting around, you might as well add to important defensive positions, where their added weight would make besieging a location more difficult.

But that would be only IF.

*1) This was done bc of a bug, which would mess up the content of a brigade which had had it's 6lb-er battery upgraded to a 12lb-er, and subsequently lost an infantry element. During the replacement phase, the game would check the elements in the unit and discover the original 6lb-er missing (it had been upgraded to a 12lb-er) and therefore add a new 6lb-er, which would change the TOE of for example an Inf-Inf-Inf-Cav-Art to an Inf-Inf-Cav-Art-Art, which messes up the composition of your division.

6-lbers are just a fact of life; you would never build any, so most of the ones you have are embedded in larger units. You will always have some 6lbrs on hand cluttering up your selection pool..

A player doesn't have to assume the quotas for combat and support elements in combat in a given region. Just use the "7" key and you get an exact menu of what will be available. As such, it makes no sense to have 6-lbers and heavy artillery in a stack competing for the same frontage. The Union can churn out a lot of trained "militia to line infantry" with McClellan, Sigel and Halleck to fill Infantry Divisions without using brigades with 6-lbers. The CSA can make about 20 Mixed Divisions with only a couple 6-lbers if you choose well. Mixed Divisions with four 6-lbers should be entrenched in a city/stockade/fort/redoubt. The entrenchment improves the to-hit of the artillery. I've seen to-hit scores over 80%. The city/etc. reduce an attacker's frontage by -25% and negate a General's ability to increase the frontage as for open terrain. This maxes out what the light guns can do versus the enemy.

Captain_Orso wrote:

Straight Arrow wrote:
But that would be only IF.

*1) This was done bc of a bug, which would mess up the content of a brigade which had had it's 6lb-er battery upgraded to a 12lb-er, and subsequently lost an infantry element. During the replacement phase, the game would check the elements in the unit and discover the original 6lb-er missing (it had been upgraded to a 12lb-er) and therefore add a new 6lb-er, which would change the TOE of for example an Inf-Inf-Inf-Cav-Art to an Inf-Inf-Cav-Art-Art, which messes up the composition of your division.

If game would check for missing INF elements FIRST, there would be no bug. But I guess that was too complicated to code?

I would guess, not too complicated, but too much work.

IIUC the devs have to represent the effort to their bosses on the basis of ROI, which would probably be pretty hard to do with a game that has already reached market saturation, and on a point, which most current players are not even aware of.

Anyway, IMHO, the real solution would be to have the code simply understand that a unit with a 6lb-er defined in its TOE has the slot filled by any field artillery class element, but even that might get complicated for units with 2 artillery elements defined, of which there are a very few.