Firstly, I believe I had let myself be fooled by the notion that light artillery could be deployed better in poor terrain than heavier. After looking for support of this notion, I can find none. All I've really been able to find is what GF stated, that ALL artillery, with the exception of Horse Artillery, use the Wheeled movement rate. The only real difference I can find between 6-lb-er's and Siege Artillery is their 'Move Ratio' in the model files, which appears to be a coefficient. The former has 100 and the latter 70, which explains, why Siege Artillery is so slow compared to other Artillery.
Next, to help understand Frontage I believe one really must look at the Terrain tables in the database files:
CW2 Excel Database. These consist of Excel files which can easily be viewed using OpenOffice Calc, or MS Excel if you're Bill Gates of course
pgr wrote:Straight Arrow wrote:When placing the mouse arrow over an area and pressing 7, the text at the bottom of the tool tip states:
Frontage Width (in points)
Line O:48 – D:48 Support O:48 – D:48
Does this mean that up to a total of 48 line units and 48 support units can be counted in a battle?
Or does it mean that a frontage length of 48 is possible in both the front and rear lines?
If it the latter, which I think is the case, how does one find how many points of frontage a unit uses?
Also, does weather affect frontage as well as range?
So the frontage width is the total frontage value for the terrain type. It does not change (although in "open" terrain a commander's offensive/defensive rating plus rank can provide a bonus that ups the quota).
As we used to say in my company, "just to f*ck with the Russians"... each terrain type has its own table for each Weather type: Fair, Mud, Snow, Harsh Weather, and Very Harsh Weather, with a set of coefficient tables for each range plus a difference between Offensive and Defensive posture, so we are playing 3-dimensional chess here
pgr wrote:Each unit type has a base frontage quota.
NO - the Quotas are the 4 base Frontage values, one for each Offensive and Defensive, and Combat Units and Support Units (Artillery, Supply, Engineers, etc.).
Each Terrain type has it's own set of Quota usage per Movement Type: Ranger, Light Foot, Medium Foot, Heavy Foot, Light Horse, Medium Horse, Heavy Horse, and Wheeled.
This is where the major difference between regular Artillery and Horse Artillery comes into play. Regular Artillery all use the Wheeled Movement Type, while Horse Artillery uses Medium Horse.
In Clear Terrain with Fair Weather the Quota Usage for Wheeled is 4, while for Medium Horse it is 2, so--if you had that many--you could put twice as many Horse Artillery Batteries into the Frontage in one battle round as normal Field Artillery.
pgr wrote:All infantry is 4, for example (cav is 2 etc). So with normal weather, a 48 frontage would allow for 12 infantry elements.
Light Foot: Bushwhackers, Partisans, Skirmishers, and Unionists
Medium Foot: Light Infantry, Sharpshooters, and Pioniers
Heavy Foot: Line Infantry, Militia, etc., etc.
In Clear-Fair Med and Hvy are both 4 usage.
In Mountain-Fair:
Light Foot = 10
Medium Foot = 16
Heavy Foot = 18
So in the mountains you could get nearly twice any many irregulars into frontage as regulars, but try to get a division of irregulars together
pgr wrote:(To find out the element frontage quota, look at the element info (combat information...or mobility...cant remember)
Now bad weather, the element quotas go up. If you look at the terrain data files, you can see how the quota changes per unit type for mud, harsh weather etc. The weather effects can be dramatic, harsh weather in woods ups the quota for a cavalry element from 2 to 12 for example.
Feel free to check out the wiki on frontage:
http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/index.php? ... ction=edit
So, for Artillery, apparently--other than slow artillery--nothing matters. They all work the same.
Since the only units with Light Infantry are those which start out with LitInf-Mil-Mil one can simply not coordinate the usage of Light Infantry to make-up some units which would be exceptionally good in for example West Virginia.
Irregulars might do pretty well in very poor terrain on paper, but in the field things will look different. The Combat Unit Quota for Mountain-Fair is 100, so Line Infantry--see above--could fit 5 Regiments into frontage. Irregulars will only gain an advantage in frontage once they have more than 5 elements to put into frontage, otherwise the point is moot. Other combat factors might also play a role, but I'm not sure at the moment what those might be.