suicide howitzers?

[tristandracul]

Why do howitzers sometimes only hurt themselves when firing at a distant enemy unit, even if there's no LOS at all to this special unit and no enemy units are directly adjacent to the gun.
Firing a ballistic curve a howitzer should be able to fire over a hill and stay unharmed of counterfire.
Have experienced this several times: no damage to the enemy and 20-50 to the gun itself. Which principle does this follow? Or should I asume the gun firing straight up in the air and the shell falling down again?[:D]

[Naomi]

Tell gun experts to introduce the "flintlock" version of howitzers for safety. ^o^

[Ralegh]

Yeah - I've seen it too, on those French games when I didn't remember to take the howitzer division and put it into a city. It is really useful for defending a city - but IMHO worthless in battle.

[Naomi]

I never built them, and didn't see any reason for getting them, given hv. art. is by far the best (in quick battles).

[Grand_Armee]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

Yeah - I've seen it too, on those French games when I didn't remember to take the howitzer division and put it into a city. It is really useful for defending a city - but IMHO worthless in battle.

Not totally worthless...I had a surprise the other night. I had the Bavarians and had the howitzer they start out with. I think I was up to Massed Artillery III. Anwyay, my lone howitzer unit at the rear was beset by militia and cavalry. Well, I had to have it fire of course...after having gotten it into line. Anyway, fist salvo at 10K militia killed 446 of them. A couple shots at cavalry a few hexes away yielded nothing... Then a shot adjacent to them killed 316 of those cavalry. I was impressed. I won't build any of them...but it was a pleasant surprise.

[Ralegh]

ORIGINAL: Grand_Armee
killed 446 of them

Yeah - totally useless. With all 3 levels of Massed Artillery, a normal artillery piece in line would be doing at least 5 times that (2500 casulties) - and my record is just over 8000.

[Naomi]

ORIGINAL: Ralegh

ORIGINAL: Grand_Armee
killed 446 of them

Yeah - totally useless. With all 3 levels of Massed Artillery, a normal artillery piece in line would be doing at least 5 times that (2500 casulties) - and my record is just over 8000.

8000... (a shot?) [:o]
I never saw this level of casualties in quick battles. Do QB calculations follow a different algebraic line?

[Hard Sarge]

well quick combat flows a little too fast for me to pay total attention, but I do know what the new Hows can do in battle

they are now worth it

in detail battle, I have killed 10,000 with one shot, just blew the unit off the map in fact (I mean off the map, it was no longer there)

one I got a kick out of, I did nail a supply wagon the other night for 17645 !!!!!

which is strange, as it does not have anywhere near that many troops

(I was able to test that doing a battle, I caught a number of Wagons running away and then counted how many troops I had killed with my fire (enemy retreated before first shot was fired) I did some 12,000 losses to the wagons, but end of battle only did some 3000)

don't want to say too much on the Hows, but think like this, the perfect counter battery fire

[Ralegh]

In case anyone if confused by this thread, in his last post H_S is talking about howitzers in v1.2, after they got a boost to make up for the comments about them being useless. In v1.2, howitzers no longer take return fire (the main reason for this thread), and do 12.5% less damage rather than 25% less damage than artillery.

I didn't think that would be enough to make tham any good, but from what H_S says, sounds like it is.

For others - the huge damage is after taking all 3 "Massed Artillery" upgrades and allowing the strength of the unit to rise to the new max.

[Hard Sarge]

oops, guess I got to make myself more clear

the big losses I reported were from normal and Hv Arty (I was just talking about the most kills I have seen)

the new Hows don't do as much damage as the other Arty, but can still knocked out a fresh Inf unit with one shot

plus they are the weapon of choice to go after already formed Inf