That is only accurate if you assume artillery can only go behind the main infantry line, which isn't safe for him to assume. It's entirely imaginable that an unorthodox hob with a penchant for flanking places artillery on the flanks for an ambush.
von Trotha will know that we dont have flanking artillery on the flanks once he puts some elves on hills to scout.
Ok, but shooting for 0-1 damage doesn't help us win the battle. Loosing out on a stealth ambush and giving our entire artillery battery away has very, very limited tactical benefits. The only reason to shoot with them now is to grind XP, which I don't think the battle would provide enough off to matter for the next. That is an operational concern rather a tactical one, since a 1 damage shot can hardly affect the battle.
We are shooting for 1,35 damage each turn. That means each artillery deals around 6,75 damage just from its long range shots during their approach. Knocking out an entire enemy regiment with the two elves is absolutely a tactical benefit.
Also, why the hell would the battle not provide enough xp to matter? like yeah, if we dont fire at long range it wont, but the 31st needs to shoot 8 times to level up this battle, which is definitely doable with long range fire.
Also didnt you consider the 1 damage per turn from the 31st relevant in your planmaking?
We can also not say that using every bit of ammunition for xp is best for our chances going forward. What if this reduces the ability of Arné to supply a more important campaign? What if we face a situation where we have to use much more munitions, like during a siege? What about another battle in the rain?
If we always take every shot with the artillery we bind ourselves to a considerable munition strain. I think we should follow the general practice of firing when tactically advantageous, rather than to trying to level up every time, especially as sufficient xp comes in increasingly delayed times.
What if us sacrificing troops to save on munitions causes problems in Arnes recruitment organisations? I think we can safely consider the influence cost to be a measure of how important something is and that Raka is connected enough to know when she starves munitions from other battles
We still have enough munitions for another battle in the rain. My rule of thumb is to make sure that we have enough munitions to fire uninterrupted for 25 turns of combat, which we easily fulfill. Whether we shoot 30 or 50 munitions here, we will not run out of munitions in the near future.
And shooting here is tactically advantageous, obviously.
This assumes all damage distribution is equal. Shooting at long ranges looses the ability to use the ambush dmg bonus for a specific target for the sake of low damage against a random one. The ability to use additional damage when needed rather than dealing it against a scout is worth more than +1 cohesion damage if you ask me.
So i am not sure about the exact argument here, so i will respond to both i can see:
1. if we save the ambush, we can later use it to shoot it when we really need it
But this means that we cannot shoot the artillery even when the enemy is in medium range, because obviously he will not move his high value targets into the range of our artillery first.
2. the artillery can save their ambush for a (cavalry) scout to get in range, on whom damage matters more than infantry.
But I dont consider it likely that von Trotha will move his cavalry scout into medium range of our artillery, because it would mean being in medium range of the 10th too after all, so it is very likely that the first enemy units in medium range will be infantry. If we hide the 10th for some reason, von Trotha would still be incredible suspicious of Kinzberg and easily able to guess that we have artillery there.
Hmm, how do you get 32.4 casualties for the two elven artillery? My numbers are lower, they are propably off... I still have not managed to fully wrap my head around how the casualties are calculated from hits. There was a basic casualty level (3 or 4?), onto which the wounding of the weapon is added, and a d10 is rolled? Right?
Artillery hits for 0,9 damage for each of the casualties they inflict and the elves fire at 1d100-40:
AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.
anydice.com
(eg. a Halfling, which he does not have, or a Defensive Genius, which he likely has)
He does not have a defensive genius, his units need to get hit first before revealing their trait. Only the COs from the Army of the West have their traits revealed
Yes, but he does not know where they are, or that they are ready to fire. Giving up that information matters, since if he believes we are still moving 3/4 guns into position, he might wrongly assume he has a window of opportunity to advance.
Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves. I am proposing we don't shoot with all artillery this turn. If it turns out that Von Trotha exposes juicy targets to our long range artillery, we could decide to open fire on a future turn if we want to. We are not making decision for 5 turns here.
I really do think you are focusing to much on the math, and too little on playing our opponent. Let's put ourselves in Von Trotha's shoes: if he is competent and suspects we have artillery at Kinzberg, what could he choose to do? One option would be to send a unit that is expendable or resistant to artillery shots (eg. a Halfling, which he does not have, or a Defensive Genius, which he likely has) forward into our range to bait out Ready Fire shots. That is what I would do if we were attacking him. With your plan, we would be shooting all our artillery at the unit Von Trotha choose to expose, revealing our artillery positions and "wasting" the Concealement advantage on a suboptimal target. Now knowing the position of our artillery, he chooses the safe, but slow route through Rotholz or the Western Forest for his army. We only get one turn of shooting, against a unit he specifically chose to sacrifice.
On the other hand, what may happen if he chooses the same tactic, but we only fire 1/3 guns? He might see that only one of our cannons fired, conclude that as a aggresive Arnese Hob, we are likely pushing our cannons into forward positions, and choose to try to use this perceived window of opportunity to quickly move his troops towards us along the road. We open fire with all guns a few turns later, and get 3-5 turns of long range shooting at his now commited army.
Look, I am not saying this will specifically happen, but I do say it is a possibility. By choosing to not fire all guns this turn, we may end up doing more damage in total, if it leads to our enemy misjudging the situation. We should not focus too much on mathematical calculation, but also try to predict what a competent opponent might do.
TBH i am not convinced but I guess i could switch the elven artillery off if people actually want that and well see what we would have hit with the ready fire. Next turn we have very good scouting of the enemy and can hit whatever we want at long range then. Also i will gloat if an elven artillery ends the battle at 19 XP
It should also be noted that this damage is spread random, rather than deliberate. Just to illustrate the worst case scenario: If the enemy rolls an inspiring CO , even dealing 1-2 damage would be wasted in terms of slow attrition. A better strategy would be a more focussed fire on specific units, rather than long ranged ready fire against what is probably going to be a cavalry/elven scout.
Did you mix up cavalry and infantry? because enemy cavalry would be the exact target for a focused fire.
Also tbh just like the worst case scenario, the best case scenario could have them be unsteady, where we deal double damage or kill their CO or destroy their standard or have them be brilliant where every damage against them is super important. I dont like focusing on the outliers because they really cannot be judged fairly against each other
