Killer Artillery Stacks - Tactical advice

[SMK-at-work]

"All quiet on the western Front"[:(]

Yes I agree that "normal" unit artillery is included in the Corps - look at the bEF for example - 2 Corps and no artillery unit - IIRC each division had 3 field artillery brigades of 18 pdrs and 1 howitzer brigade of 4.5" howitzers (each brigade would be 4 x 6 gun/howitzer batteries), and a Royal Garrison Artillery battery of 60 pounders

[hjaco]

There are three main reasons for the lethality of the French 75 mm compared to the German main 77 mm.

1) It had been around since 1896 so crews were highly trained and equally important tactical use had been improved to perfection.

2) Technical superiority in general.

3) Better quality of shells.

So not only did it have a high ROF but it was used very effectively as well.

[SMK-at-work]

Do you have any sources for those comparisons??  AFAIK they hadn't practiced tactical siege warfare at all, and the French army was conscript and so no better trained than anyone elses's.  Indeed their training for hte attack was probably completely unsuitable for the type of warfare they found themselves fighting almost for the first day - defensive and going backwards.

The lethality in places like Verdun was down to german infantry attacking in close formations over open ground fully visible from French observer posts....almost any artillery would have cut them to pieces.

[Rhetor]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Do you have any sources for those comparisons??

Practically every source tells us that German 77 was one generation behind the French Soixante-Quinze.

[hjaco]

I didn't note the sources just finding the necessary information on the internet.

But France went to war with 4000 of these guns all manned with graduates from their Engineering schools. They only used conscripts for the dirty work like moving guns around and doing resupply.

The Germans on the other hand constantly made improvements to their 77 to try to match it to the technological superior 75. This had the obvious effect of decreased effectiveness of their crews, which had to adopt to changing material and how to use them

The 77 had a superior range but lacked quality shells. The French shell was vastly more explosive within their effective range and immensely precise. In fairness though France was never able to match the quality of their prewar stocks but it still took a year for Germany to catch up in shell quality.

With regard to tactics that naturally only relates to mobile warfare which all parties had prepared for. Having had almost two decades to find unique ways of using their guns France had the advantage to their German counterpart.

An example. The French lost very few guns in 1914 to opposing artillery while excelling in counter battery themselves by using the large mobility of their guns and terrain to split up and disguise their batteries. Eventually the Germans adopted to this and the French naturally had the benefit of being the defender but still.

On the other hand Germany had a large advantage with howitzers.

[hjaco]

The Genesis of the Field Artillery

1. In the beginning there was chaos and the chaos was the
infantry, for the infantry was alone.

2. And fear was with the infantry and they cried unto the
Lord saying, "Lord, save us for we are afraid."

3. And the Lord heard their grunts and set some of the
infantry on beasts of burden and these he called
cavalry, and the cavalry became armor.

4. And when the lord had seen what he had done, he laughed
saying, "Well, you can't win them all."

5. The infantry and the armor again cried out to the Lord
saying, "Lord, save us for we are afraid." And the Lord
heard their cries and decided to end their weepings.

6. And the Lord said unto them, "Lo and behold, I send you
a race of men noble in heart and spirit," and the Lord
created the Gunners.

7. And the Lord said unto the infantry and armor, "When
it gets dark, the Gunners shall light your way."

8. "And when you need smoke, there shall be smoke, and
when you need HE, WP, H & I and counter battery fire,
all this ye shall have."

9. And the Lord gave the Gunners big guns, and field guns,
and the infantry and armor were jealous for they had
naught.

1O. And the infantry cried out saying, "Lord, thou hast
created the infantry as Queen of Battles, and now thou
has made the Gunners King of Battles and well knowest
thou what the King does to the Queen."

11. And the Lord replied, "Right On!"

12. And the Lord gave unto the Artillery rockets and
missiles and, best of all, nukes. And when the infantry
and armor saw this they fell to their knees in wonder
saying, "Surely God is on the side of the greatest
-The Gunners."

13. And the Lord sayeth, "You got that right."

14. Now abideth infantry, armor and Artillery but the
greatest of these is Artillery.

- Author Unknown

[seaforth7]

I think your idea of allowing trench building in each impulse will go a long way to negating the effects of the artillery. It takes too long to build up your trenches when you make a breakthrough currently, that is where I'm seeing the major casualties coming from artillery, when you forced to sit for 3 impulses with level 0 or 1 trenches,

great idea Frank, when's the 1.2 patch likely to become available? sounds like it's going to be a real winner!

cheers[:)]

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

I am considering doing just that.  

I like the idea of being able to build trenches each impulse but I think the cost doesn't need to be reduced. You get 6 trenches for one point and 3 barrages for one point so you should be able to maintain your trenches in the face of barrages and regroup the front line. Getting more than 6 trenches might throw something else out of whack.

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: James Ward

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

I am considering doing just that.

I like the idea of being able to build trenches each impulse but I think the cost doesn't need to be reduced. You get 6 trenches for one point and 3 barrages for one point so you should be able to maintain your trenches in the face of barrages and regroup the front line. Getting more than 6 trenches might throw something else out of whack.

Is that necessarily true? Can somebody who knows the barrage algorithm better than me answer this:

If I barrage a hex with > 1 artillery unit, can I potentially knock > 1 trench level off of it?

In other words if I shell a level 4 trench with a stack of 4 artillery units, is there any chance it'll end up as something less than a level 3 trench? Because if so, you still won't be able to keep up, even if you can build 1 trench per impluse, because you'll lose > 1 trench per impulse.

[James Ward]

ORIGINAL: pat.casey

ORIGINAL: James Ward

ORIGINAL: FrankHunter

I am considering doing just that.

I like the idea of being able to build trenches each impulse but I think the cost doesn't need to be reduced. You get 6 trenches for one point and 3 barrages for one point so you should be able to maintain your trenches in the face of barrages and regroup the front line. Getting more than 6 trenches might throw something else out of whack.

Is that necessarily true? Can somebody who knows the barrage algorithm better than me answer this:

If I barrage a hex with > 1 artillery unit, can I potentially knock > 1 trench level off of it?

In other words if I shell a level 4 trench with a stack of 4 artillery units, is there any chance it'll end up as something less than a level 3 trench? Because if so, you still won't be able to keep up, even if you can build 1 trench per impluse, because you'll lose > 1 trench per impulse.

It might be possible but I have never seen it happen.
You can lose trenches in assaults though so it certainly is possible to lose more than 1 level per impulse but at least you have a chance to cause losses to the other side in the assault.

[hjaco]

Actually you only get 3 trenches for 1 IP - same as with barrage [;)]

[Raynald]

However IMO there is too much artillery at the start of the game, and possibly the effect of trenches is not adequate - the No side used artillery bombardments as you can in this game to kill a corps/turn without actually attacking.

Definitly agree with that.

Artillery is far too powerfull and right I consider it by far the main pb of the game.

[SMK-at-work]

Yeah I'm aware of lots of opinion about the 77 being inferior to the 75 - net sources are fine (eg see http://tinyurl.com/2rbmdj) but by 1914 the 77 had a long recoil mechanism too....indeed the original idea was patented by a German (in 1891).....but I've never really tracked down much exact info.  All I can find on hte 'net is that hte German shel had less HE filling (.5kg vs .69kg) and generated fewer fragments (500 vs 800)

I've read that the Germans had a lot of obsolete field artillery in 1914, but have never been able to track down just exactly what is meant by this.

However the popular view is completely turned on its head in heavier artillery - here the Germans were streets ahead with a range of excellent howitzers up to 210mm that had high trajectories, rapid rates of fire (for their size) and were very light as well.

[SteveD64]

I'm still sticking with the idea I posted on another thread-  there should not be artillery units in this game.  The barrages should come from the HQ units. 

[Joel Rauber]

I'd be careful about making too drastic of a change at first. It works pretty well at the moment and don't forget the law of unintended consequences.

I think two small tweaks I'd make:

a) allow entrenching up to two levels per hex per strategic phase. As noted by others above, the asymmetry in the rate of destruction of trenches versus building them is a problem

b) A hex should not be defensible by artillery alone, so some sort of overrun rule is needed. Though I think that being stacked with defending infantry should typically overrun proof them.

c) I'd like to just try the above two things only in light of my opening comments, but perhaps making barrages slightly more expensive would be a help, or perhaps instead, making construction of new artillery units more expensive. There is a lot of point to the comments stating that wastage is well represented by artillery rules at the present, so I'd want to be careful about implementing this suggestion too hastily. I'd first try suggestions (a) and (b)and see what the community "playtest" experience is for a while.

[ulver]

ORIGINAL: hjaco

I was also thinking about possibility for entrenching each impulse which i think make really sense.

During the long summer turns its easier to make the elaborate trench work than during shorter muddy spring/autumn turns and the very short winter turns.

Yes – that would be a great improvement. As an added benefit it would reduce the motivation for the Central Powers to go all out for Paris and open up many more possible strategies for both sides.

Currently the temptation is to make an all-out gamble to take out France. If it succeeds they win and if it fails the Russians overrun them. Allowing the Germans to dig in quickly after a limited offensive should be a viable strategy and currently I don’t think it is.

I would much rather see more games going all the way to 1919 and reducing the odds for a knockout victory in 1914-15 would accomplish that

[ceyan]

I think the best solution to the Artillery problem is to make the Artillery actually historical. For one, its way to easy to get lots of it with tons of reloads.

The reality of 1914 - mid-1915 was that Artillery was in extremely short supply. Neither side accounted for just how much ammunition and parts they'd run through in the early offensives. The end result is a significant chunk of production capacity for each nation was shifted into artillery production and even that couldn't keep units in full operational status.

Likewise later on the war heavy artillery wasn't used much as nations would stockpile the ammunition for major offensives. The Triple Entente used, for the most part, artillery as a softener similar to the early stages in the war whereas Germany began using their infiltration tactics which ate up artillery shells quicker than just about any other period (relatively speaking) in human history.

I suppose it all boils down to exactly what the artillery in the game is supposed to represent? Are we talking about field artillery, or heavy artillery? If you're looking at Field Artillery then you shouldn't be able to kill more than a few strength points, even with several units. This type of artillery should be doing almost pure readiness damage. If we're talking heavy artillery than there is WAY to much of it, it is far too cheap, but is fairly accurate as to its power.

So you're looking at either making it a rare assest, such that each side isn't going to have more than a few units unless they dedicated a big chunk of their economy, or artillery should be adjusted to do very little physical damage. We're talking freaking Corps and Army here people, at no time in the history of artillery has it ever been easy to just wholesale wipe out 30,000+ troops even with a few months of straight bombardment.

Artillery just isn't that big of a killer, even in WWI. It's primary use is in breaking down defense and morale. People seem to forget all the side-effects of artillery which led to the high kill score associated with them. For example, it gave advanced warning to the enemy that your about to attack so often times you'd face heavier, and prepared, defenses.

Edit:
Actually I will add the exception that artillery in the modern era can be extremely deadly thanks to pin-point accuracy with instantaneous communications from front-line troops.

[Rhetor]

ORIGINAL: ceyan

Artillery just isn't that big of a killer, even in WWI. It's primary use is in breaking down defense and morale.

And breaking enemy infantry assaults.

[*Lava*]

ORIGINAL: ceyan

Artillery just isn't that big of a killer, even in WWI.

I totally disagree here.

Casualties caused by artillery in WW1 were massive.

In France, the number of heavy guns rose from 300 in 1914 to 5 200 in 1918 and the number of 75-mm guns from 3 900 to 5 600. The types of matériel also changed - field artillery lost ground to heavy artillery and so-called 'trench' artillery. Further figures: at the end of the war, there were 600 000 artillerymen, as compared with a million infantry. In August 1917, during the French offensive to secure the positions around Verdun, three million shells were fired inside three days. On September 26th 1918 alone, in order to break through the German front in Champagne, 1 375 000 75-mm shells were fired, representing a third of the entire stockpile of this calibre for 1914. One last figure: during the Great War, losses due to artillery fire rose to 67% of total casualties. The figure had previously stood at around 15%.

http://www.art-ww1.com/gb/guide/4guide.html

Radically changing artillery... would be an awful mistake.

Ray (alias Lava)

[*Lava*]

Okay..

Like any good tester...

I tested the counter battery effects of artillery.

What I did was put 5 German artillery units against 1 French one.

Each phase I fired all five German artillery units against the French one.

Result...

The first barrage of 5 shots damaged the French artillery.

The second barrage of 5 shots did not apparently damage the French artillery.

The third, fourth, and fifth barrage of 5 shots did not apparently damage the French artillery.

I fired 25 shots at a single French artillery battery and never destroyed it.

On the other hand on the French side...

I fired one artillery at one German battery... no damage.

I fired two artillery at one German battery... damaged.

The problem here folks...

Counter battery fire does not destroy enemy artillery. It will damage the battery, but it will not destroy it.

Overall, my testing would indicate, that the basic fire and damage in relation to troops in the open and in trenches seem correct.

However, counter battery fire appears to have a bug.

Ray (alias Lava)