Artillery in Combat

[hossjww30]

Stalin called artillery the "god of war." In WitE2 it appears be the pipsqueak of war.

Seriously I notice in the combat popups each artillery battalion contributes maybe (0) or (1) to the combat results. Even attacking Odessa with the Karl siege gun doesn't appear to have much effect. I've also looked at the combat detail results and again artillery doesn't seem to be doing much. So I'm asking if a pioneer battalion should have more kills than an artillery battalion?

I can post combat results but you can look at examples in your own games.

[Joel Billings]

I find artillery on the defense is very powerful and can kill a lot. On the attack, it's much less so, and it's main purpose is to disrupt so the other elements can close to close combat. You're welcome to post screen shots with results and pre-saves so the battles can be analyzed.

[FortTell]

Seriously I notice in the combat popups each artillery battalion contributes maybe (0) or (1) to the combat results.

That is because the number shown is the unit's Combat Value, an indicator of how well a unit can control territory. The artillery units have very low numbers of elements with negligible effect on CV. That is not to say they do not have a significant effect on battles. Artillery is the key to combat as it suppresses much more CV worth of infantry than it itself has.
See this for example, one battle has German artillery commited, the other does not:

[AlbertN]

There is CV - and there is Combat.

Combat Value is an abstract value to present how influential a unit is, in terms of size and shape and mass.
The CV of a Medium Tank for instance is always the same. A '39 Medium Tank and a '45 Medium Tank.
You will discover that your Elite Super SS '43 unit at their peak will be 30-40 CV; and your Soviet '42 Infantry Guard Corp can get even over 50 CV.

Then you have Combat.
During Combat each ground element fire. Who better and who worse - and in general the Artilleries fare quite good.

The real CV that matters is the one post combat. Thus while Artilleries may seem to not contribute much CV - they 'deny' a lot of the enemy CV by hitting targets.

I advice you spend some time in the 'Show Details' bit of the combat screens.
The Ground Combat panel will show you how ground elements performed.

[Saelon1]

I honestly really can't tell what artillery does in combat, even looking at the battle details seems to show my (as Soviets) artillery getting very few "hits".

However, while it is very opaque to me what artillery is doing exactly, I find that battles with initially even cv turn into 2:1 retreats when you use 2 artillery divisions to add some 800 additional guns to your side of the battle, so it must be doing *something*.

[AlbertN]

I honestly really can't tell what artillery does in combat, even looking at the battle details seems to show my (as Soviets) artillery getting very few "hits".

However, while it is very opaque to me what artillery is doing exactly, I find that battles with initially even cv turn into 2:1 retreats when you use 2 artillery divisions to add some 800 additional guns to your side of the battle, so it must be doing *something*.

It does loads.

One of the present game-gimmicks (which I hope will get sorted) is to have multiple Corps / Armies attack together to bring in more artilleries together - since each HQ can contribute with their own SU units.
The Soviets easily in '41 (WITE) can mass more barrels together than what they did in '45 (historically) to storm a hex.

2000+ guns cause disarray and all - and it's not uncommon that even stacks of 2-3 German divisions in '41 get to retreat under Soviet pressure.

[Stamb]

arty is fine, you just need to know how to cook (stack) it

19 panzer 20 mot 18 mot.png (5.63 MiB) Viewed 924 times

[exalted]

I honestly really can't tell what artillery does in combat, even looking at the battle details seems to show my (as Soviets) artillery getting very few "hits".

However, while it is very opaque to me what artillery is doing exactly, I find that battles with initially even cv turn into 2:1 retreats when you use 2 artillery divisions to add some 800 additional guns to your side of the battle, so it must be doing *something*.

It does loads.

One of the present game-gimmicks (which I hope will get sorted) is to have multiple Corps / Armies attack together to bring in more artilleries together - since each HQ can contribute with their own SU units.
The Soviets easily in '41 (WITE) can mass more barrels together than what they did in '45 (historically) to storm a hex.

2000+ guns cause disarray and all - and it's not uncommon that even stacks of 2-3 German divisions in '41 get to retreat under Soviet pressure.

With enough extra artillery it seems currently that the basic CV barely matters, since no enemy will fight anyway most of them being disrupted. Had quite a few interesting defeats in 42-43 due to soviet bringing 1-2k+ guns against german/axis allies divisions who should have held them off easily looking just at the CV.

[Saelon1]

I honestly really can't tell what artillery does in combat, even looking at the battle details seems to show my (as Soviets) artillery getting very few "hits".

However, while it is very opaque to me what artillery is doing exactly, I find that battles with initially even cv turn into 2:1 retreats when you use 2 artillery divisions to add some 800 additional guns to your side of the battle, so it must be doing *something*.

It does loads.

One of the present game-gimmicks (which I hope will get sorted) is to have multiple Corps / Armies attack together to bring in more artilleries together - since each HQ can contribute with their own SU units.
The Soviets easily in '41 (WITE) can mass more barrels together than what they did in '45 (historically) to storm a hex.

2000+ guns cause disarray and all - and it's not uncommon that even stacks of 2-3 German divisions in '41 get to retreat under Soviet pressure.

Something else I've noticed is that while the Soviets generally get smaller artillery regiments over time (e.g. corps artillery rgt goes from 36 heavy guns (until 1942) -> 28 medium guns (until 1943) -> 36 heavy guns (for like 3 months) -> 16 heavy guns, which would encourage amalgamating regiments into the brigades and later artillery divisions, the original 36-gun ML-20 regiments are available for the entire game, which seems like it kind of defeats the purpose of the other artillery regiments.

I think for most of 1942 - 43, I had some 80 Army artillery regiment 41s (36x ML-20) and Cannon regiments (48x A-19), which is a lot of firepower in a single artillery SU. You do have 84x M-30 brigades and 36x ML-20 brigades, but only (IIRC) 20 - 26 in 1942 & 1943. It feels like stacking artillery SUs would be less problematic if they were 12/18-gun regiments rather than the 36/48 gun regiments on the 1941 TOE, and you only had 20 large artillery SUs. I assume the Soviets in reality did break up those large gun regiments, so its not really clear to me why they have no 'upgrade' path (or a downgrade as they would be made smaller).

[Zovs]

This is just one small (and early turn 1) example, but every hit, does something: destroyed, damaged, and disrupted. Every little bit helps.

[Saelon1]

Yeah, but I also get battles like this where we had 25x as much artillery as the Germans, 20:1 men, and almost 300 tanks and we took massive losses without being able to get a retreat.

unknown.png (636.17 KiB) Viewed 895 times

I guess it must be related to morale/xp still being low in 1942, as similar battles to this in 1943/44 are almost always retreats rather than holds.

[Stamb]

Soviets struggle vs fortifications

Also what stats F.Ivanov has?
Is this army in an assault front?

[Stamb]

heavy woods, no fortifications, assault front + GS, already in 41

290 ID.png (5.18 MiB) Viewed 890 times

[AlbertN]

Yeah, but I also get battles like this where we had 25x as much artillery as the Germans, 20:1 men, and almost 300 tanks and we took massive losses without being able to get a retreat.
unknown.png

I guess it must be related to morale/xp still being low in 1942, as similar battles to this in 1943/44 are almost always retreats rather than holds.

Russians have no real Engineers to fight forts til '43. It is rarely wise to attack a fortified German position adequately manned before 'time is ripe' for.

Swamp also - combat is shorter range, less artillery pre-fire.

Fort 3 affects defender losses and disruption.

Blizzard does not help Soviets either tbh - just it shrinks the German CV (Which is still not the same as combat efficiency - but Fort lvl 3 mitigates that negative effects severely)

As Stamb said too - Leader and 'Assault' front matters a lot since Soviet artillery before '44 is only 60% efficient -UNLESS- part of Assault Front.

Pratically the present Soviet meta-play is to hammer with lots of units and lots of arty the advancing (and thus non fortified, in general fatigued and exhausted after having fought on) German spearheads and pretty much shank them badly. Stalin dream fantasy of '41 successful counterattacks. Massed artilleries are one of the key component contributing to this.

[Saelon1]

Yeah, not critiquing exactly that "Soviet artillery does nothing", as I have other similar battles (see below) where we win after deploying massive amounts of artillery, but rather that it is very hard for me to see what exactly the artillery is doing.

unknown (1).png (260.42 KiB) Viewed 856 times

unknown (2).png (258.93 KiB) Viewed 856 times

It could simply be that November 1942 (the original image I posted) is kind of the lowest point for Soviet artillery divisions (low base morale, and all the artillery divisions are newly formed), so their morale and xp are meh, a few turns later in January 1943 they're more effective, and by 1944, where I am in my current game, they have high xp and morale and let you inflict pretty disproportionate losses on the Germans.

The 1941 army artillery regiments contrast by being about as effective as the 1943 Soviet artillery units (being around 50 morale, 50 xp), which probably makes them pretty effective as well.

[Stamb]

check ground battle tab and then sort by disrupted, destroyed, damaged, also pay attention to a RNG (range) from which arty is doing its damage

[hossjww30]

I guess specifically I was referring to super heavy artillery vs. high fortified targets. Here I am attacking Sevastapol and have the 600mm Karl and the Skodas. The fortification dropped from 3 to 2 but looking at the results I don't see the pieces doing that much damage.

[AlbertN]

On the paper one can say they did 'good'.
They have a lot of Hits per Element.

On the other hand one probably expects for these 'one shot marvels' (You got as many as you start with pretty much, they do not get producted), probably it is expected of them to perform better in terms of general damage?
Not sure there.

But certainly they outperformed other ground elements in a 1 to 1 ratio.

[hossjww30]

Here is an attack on N Moscow. It appears the artillery did basically nothing. Am I missing something?

[Jango32]

Level 3 forts diminish the effects of artillery.