Cannons useless during Revolution?

[Wheem]

I have a fairly recent game where I played for a while with pretty heavy liberty bell production, which lead to a large Royal Expeditionary Force. He started with roughly 70 Regulars, 45 Dragoons, 70 Artillery, and 35 Man-O-Wars (as a sidenote, it seemed that every time I got a message that the king expanded the number of Man-O-Wars; in actuality every unit type increased significantly).

My Army was considerably smaller, but still not all that bad. My infantry and dragoons performed ok in the field (though I need to store up waaaaaay more horses next time), but my Cannons felt useless. Every possible attack I could use them for had very low odds of success, and they got destroyed every time the REF attacked them. I know that Cannons get a bonus when defending settlements, but since they can't actually fortify, the net bonus over infantry is only 25%, and I seem to always take really heavy losses whenever my cities get attacked anyway.

Cannons seem relatively good before the Revolutionary War, but is there any real point to using them after it has begun?

 

[Dale]

I've changed this in the latest version of my Age of Discovery II mod so that cannons will now fire on enemy ships when in a fortress. This makes them very useful in damaging MoW's during the WoI.

 

[Wheldrake]

Canons are highly useful if you have the misfortune to lose a city to the King's army. I seem to have good results placing them in wooded hills with a couple infantry as well. The most important thing seems to me that you can build huuuuge numbers of them, if you've got a couple heavy industry cities with 3 carpenters and lots of tool production.

My recipe for defeating the king's army is starting early - as early as possible - producing guns. Especially given their high cost in the latest versions of AoD2. The rest of the economy becomes nearly irrelevant as long as you produce lots of guns, tools and food.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

 

[Wheem]

I've changed this in the latest version of my Age of Discovery II mod so that cannons will now fire on enemy ships when in a fortress. This makes them very useful in damaging MoW's during the WoI.

Ah, I remember that from the first Colonization, and was a little disappointed when it didn't happen in this version

 

[vixafox]

Cannons are most useful for attacking settlements. To make use of this feature, I use an empty coastal settlement as bait for the REF, with my main army in another settlement two squares away and joined by road. Once the REF takes the bait I counter-attack with cannon and retake the target settlement. Then I rinse and repeat. Sometimes the REF will move its warships into the bait settlement. Then those get captured as well.

 

[The_Dwarf]

Cannons are actually very good for another awkwarded reason. They dont influence the size of the Kings forces because they dont count as population. In fighting they kind of suck but to have lots of free bad units its still better than to have none.

 

[Dale]

Cannons are most useful for attacking settlements. To make use of this feature, I use an empty coastal settlement as bait for the REF, with my main army in another settlement two squares away and joined by road. Once the REF takes the bait I counter-attack with cannon and retake the target settlement. Then I rinse and repeat. Sometimes the REF will move its warships into the bait settlement. Then those get captured as well.

*cough*Exploit*cough*

 

[dalgo]

Cannons may not be much use in attacking the REF on open ground but they do serve a purpose in defending coastal colonies from amphibious assaults. Not that they win many battles but they can slow up the invasion long enough for you to reinforce that colony.

Once you have maxed out your colony buildings and filled up Congress with your FF you might as well have your Lumber Mills churning out cannons. You can build as many as you like without affecting the size of the REF. I usually have 4 or 5 fortified soldiers to take the initial assault and a dozen or more cannons as backup in each port.

 

[Alex Encandar]

I used them to counter-attack the colonies that had been conquered by the british, worked wonders really.

Next time I intend to design my empire in this strategy, leaving my beachside colonies defenseless in terms of both walls and troops, leaving my cannons in striking distance from the interior of my empire.

Edit: Damn, I thought I was clever. Guess Vixafox thought of it too hehe.

 

[prolefeed]

If you build a coastal city right next to a native village, that native village counts as a settlement, and your cannons will likely be the strongest unit to attack REF forces that land there.

If you have a native village within two squares of a coastal city, the cannons will be useful in taking out REF forces in those villages, though you'll have to leave your cannons outside a city after the attack and vulnerable to counterattacks.

Cannons are, ironically, good for using as "cannon fodder". The REF will generally land a stack of units on a square, with the hardest units to kill being dragoons, then soldiers, and last artillery. Rather than losing a good unit attacking the dragoons, if you have a plethora of cannon you might use them up in suicidal charges on the dragoons, knocking back the dragoons' health enough so they in effect become weak units that can be taken out without a high risk of losing a good unit.

When you first start buying cannons from Europe, they are much cheaper than buying the cheapest expert colonist (Fishermen, Farmers, Ore Miners) and equipped those units with guns/horses. So, at least a few cannon should be bought before the price escalates too much.

If you've got nothing better to build in a city, then build cannons, though generally I think it is more useful for fighting the REF to build wagons so you can store guns and horses or move guns/horses to besieged cities, or else move your expert carpenters out of that built-out city and into a city that does have useful stuff left to build. I'd only heavily emphasize cannons if you've got a coastal city with an adjacent native village.

 

[prolefeed]

Cannons can also be used for mopping up -- since a dragoon at, say 3.2 health is at a far higher risk of dying in combat than one at full 4.0 health, you might want to use cannons to pick off all the REF forces that won their first combat with you, but are badly beat up and thus easy to pick off.

For example, you've wiped out most of a stack of REF units, but there are several dragoons with health below 1.0 left in the stack who killed your first attacking unit. Do you use your remaining healthy troops to finish these troops off, thus leaving you with no fully healed troops to handle the next wave, albeit gaining some experience, or do you use those otherwise useless cannon to deliver the coup de grace and build up their experience to where they can actually stand a decent chance of winning against tougher units?