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Seems whenever I use artillery I do minimal damage (50-100 casualties), however the AI seems to destroy my formations doing upwards of 500 casualties per shot.

What's the correct usage for artillery? Distance, terrain, direction, I'm at a loss.

Just some thoughts:

Artillery on a hill does only 20% damage firing down (and the same firing up against units on a hill). A "plunging fire" rule relating to artillery of the period, I have read elsewhere in this forum.

Art in line does more damage than one in column.

Upgraded Art does alot more damage than non-upgraded, are you upgrading?

Art shots within 4 hexes usually does some decent damage. Beyond that (without the ranging upgrade) damage drops off fast.

...and not to be too obvious, but...

- Facing is important, face the enemy
- Should be in line
- Don't be tangled or fatigued (rest if necessary)
- Shooting columns does more damage than lines
- The morale / quality of the pieces is important. British guns are beautiful (10 Factories, 10 Barracks, High National Quality), Turkish guns are not good (Low National Quality, Low Factories and Barracks available).

After reading Raleigh's excellent guides, the purpose of artillery is to disorganise enemy formations. Cavalry are for finishing off once the enemy is disorganised.

Since reading this I have always looked for heights to place the guns even though it is documented that it will only cause 20% damage. On the hills, artillery has almost unlimited fields of fire and can cause easier disorganisation than placement on the same level, where it has much more limited fields of fire. A few cavalry hovering around the flanks can then race in and cause havoc.

Question for the Grognards... Does the 20% only apply for action that occurs in adjacent hexes where there is a change in height? It doesn't make sense otherwise as historically armies fought for the heights and I thought that is where they usually placed their guns.

LOL I do more than 1200 damage per shot with my artillery sometimes as much as 2500 in one turn basically vaporizing any offensive or defensive position no matter how strong it is and yes I have a lot of artillery in my army 10+ units.

I have beat up armies with 6 times numerical superirity forcing them to suffer massive losses.

My largest problem is when 600 000 strong Turkish and Preussian army starts offensive against my 100 000 strong artillery army and it starts rain that ruins artillery.