A Whiff of Canister Shot (Online Battle #76)

Hey, what's up guys? This is Oakley, and we are obviously Napoleon total war So this is gonna be multiplayer battle myself as Prussia and my enemy is gonna be Spain So the rules are I think maximum three artillery and then a maximum five of these range units so To my disappointment my opponent decided to take that as a sign that oh look. I have three artillery. Let's go ahead and camp Now I don't know camping is just frustrating this game I mean look how he's boxing up his cab against the red line. He's just waiting for me to come back here I'd be fine if we have like a defensive battle where he uses cannons if you were to like push him up halfway But he's he he did not move an inch, so that's my grudge with these battles already Napoleon battles take so long It's really disappointing when players sit back And maybe I just I'm just a little bit ticked off because I played a couple battles before this where the same thing happened So uh it was unfortunate anyways. I'm just gonna share this battle because I get super aggressive After my disappointment in previous battles where I was just absolutely Pissed off on these similar tactics, so I'm gonna charge forward with my two artillery in previous battles where there was artillery load I didn't bring any mostly because I don't like to rely on artillery And I just charge up took heavy losses in one this time. I was like all right you want to play that game We'll play that game So I'm pulling my artillery across these guys are very very quick And they've been lucky enough to avoid most of the batteries from his uh yeah You can see how most of those you know are bouncing right next to my guys so very brave troops I have Lancers in the back to support them and not much else to support them. I mean my troops are lagging Let's go ahead and see what I brought so two of these artillery guys I wanted to position them on this side to get a huge. You know flank on his entire force I'm backing that up with some troops, so Fusiliers will be good for Beating back some cavalry as they make their approach and then my own Lancers to intercept his cap up in the center I have four of these Prussian Fusiliers one in a huge massive line to soak up fire three to support in the back I'm going to slowly push that forward then I have foot guards paired with those are militia units right there And then I have again two militia. Oh three militia units. This is a big fodder unit I'm going to throw right up the center basically and then my general here, and then some more Line of foot on the right anyways. Let's watch this approach my enemy figured He'd have to take out my artillery thought it'd be an easy battle wow look at that so he's going to charge right up the front and That's where I'm going to just stick both of my artillery enable battery mode And you can just see look at how obliterated those guys were switch to chain shot Finish those guys off and all I had to do was threaten him with a Lancer charge And I pulled back he decided to retreat lost one unit the other ones heavily depleted and here comes another battery He's down to 40 men now He's going to stick another infantry unit And it looks like he's going to be trying to you know okay cavalry don't work with Let's now try infantry and it's going to at least back that up with the you know artillery barrage, but I positioned my guys specifically all the way on this front Because I knew that his batteries over here would have a really hard time firing at my units and these guys themselves are going to Have overlapping fire. I was hoping they would shoot themselves, but he positions up diagonally so it's a pretty good move Any case now that he's moving up. He's taking combined fire. He sees that his morale is dropping so he's going to pull back Let's go ahead and watch this front So we're just going to Enjoy this a little bit as I'm starting to get some shots off and the ground is just shaking because we're taking lots of cannon fire from the front and here comes a Free core charge up through the center because he's counteracting with Calvary I had my own dispensable Calvary just on like intercept duty so we can watch this let's go ahead and minimize the map So here he comes up the center at great cost he was hoping to knock out all my light troops I knew they weren't guarded But I knew in this type of depth and with Calvary to intercept like in the distance I already intercepted and slaughtered one of his Portuguese cab the other one Yes is going to be in close quarter combat, but look at look at all these ranks of fire. I have in the back Something I like about Napoleon total war is these militia units They're super useful for just plugging gaps like this so you can see two of these militia units Just you know they're otherwise going to soak up this charge that came back around here And they're going to help to clean up this front So I've wasted my opponent's cab here the other Calvary units were beaten back by my Calvary charge. I tried to land a strike on his square however You know these infantry format square actually very rapidly, so you have to pull out of those engagements. You can see how my guys are already Doing having a big trouble with their morale, but that's why I brought backup troops So now we have all three types of units all can You know can put this concentrating fire on one infantry unit, so Six pounder horse artillery continuously shelling these guys if they were to break out of formation I would charge them with my calf when he forms up to the block like that It's a it's easier for my artillery hit and it's much easier for my skirmishers to hit And then yeah here you can see what happens if you don't form up in square So I think my opponent was a little bit new to this game I he was I don't know caught too much on the defensive and would send out troops slowly in all directions and look at what He has to look at on this front massive numbers of troops in the center his right flank is collapsing And so he's sort of starting to panic He's gonna send up some Portuguese calf or on this front. He got way too close with the Casa d'or So I decided to counter very aggressively Let's on my Prussian line. Let me just watch them get volleys off That's I guess I missed Napoleon haven't played in a couple games or in a couple weeks He sees me, but uh yeah I was able to play a couple games and the graphics are really fun the smoke effects on the battlefield the pace is different and Yeah, it's tons of fun. I really enjoyed this and here This is that this is the cavalry strike that my opponent was always looking for on this front So he breaks through with his Portuguese calf, and I have nothing really to back this up my own horses were routed So once just yeah once that Lancer unit is routed Then this is where this formation falls apart because cavalry can charge my Prussian Fusiliers And I'm getting some shots off You know both of my units But none of these shots are really gonna connect and so his guys are going to be free to choose which cavalry which artillery unit to go for afterwards and As this is a pretty formidable defense you know once these guys get on canister shot It's gonna be pretty ugly for my guys So that's why I'm sending just one Fusilier guy to soak it up Hope my opponent six all of his shots on this Fusilier unit And then just combined fire on this front rolling up this flank with foot guards who have really good shots Obviously being elite foot guards my opponent is gonna deploy some dudes to come and contest this side of the battlefield I'm gonna move some of these militia troops, and here you go. This is the problem again. I wasn't microing this I should have just changed to a Canister shot at this point because look at this. I think we get a volley last moment as he charges forward oh Man if I had been on canister shot, but we still knock off one guy He probably would have been routed, but now he's gonna be able to sort of pick off my two artillery units I positioned a militia here just to ward off these guys so they don't attack this line all in the front I got more foot guards more militia all pouring forward so this position is in desperate straits for my opponent I Just go ahead and push along the front, so I guess we can talk about the latest CA news Which is basically how they were saying there's gonna be a new total war announced soon a lot of people or some People were saying they would love to see a World War one game I think that's highly unlikely and really not possible to work if you look at the history of World War one well first off It didn't take much time like the battle itself or the war itself was just over the course of several years You can't have the fundamental Empire building and you know a city building and all that stuff You can't really do any of that in that short of a time frame Second problem is gonna be diplomacy at that point yes, of course there was diplomacy But the main point of the war is that you come into the war with entangling alliances So you know what options do you have that force you to go to war and then once it runs that war? It's kind of a fight to the death with really little Alliance diplomacy, so you're not gonna be running around. Oh, hey. You know as a British. Hey Germany do you want to trade or do you want to do like do you want to change some? Territories or whatnot no, it's just supposed to be all-out war so you know on the city building front on the diplomacy front It's not gonna be much basically all it will be is internal politics of trying to force your people into war Recruit as many troops as possible keep the it'll be a lot about propaganda If you were to make this thing because that was a huge part of the First World War And then the battle battles themselves were nothing anyone had expected these generals who had gone to To military schools and learn you know this is what you do in certain situations or who had theorized all these things about how the war should have gone all of that fell flat on its face and So you won't have any conventional tactics the battles you know people were not anticipating the amount of killing power of all these forces and so you would have like Basically in some of the early stages of World War one you'd have huge forces like this like literally Prussian guys The Germans would form up in infantry blocks and say okay We're gonna move in column formation kind of like Napoleon tactics swarm You know charge out they even had cavalry sometimes on the rear lines who wouldn't you know now we've now we've made a gap Let's charge through with cavalry and ride the enemy down That didn't work at all you have literal blocks of infantry moving forward against machine gun positions getting mowed down you have sort of the rape of Belgium as Germans were moving what was it like a million troops through Belgium and just a couple you know the Belgian army held up and they Could they decimated? The about 36,000 advanced stormtroopers that the Germans had set out And so it's just a massacre so the battles themselves are they that can't be handled in total war I mean the battles are super huge first and foremost that would have been long lines the Western Front was Basically from Switzerland all the way to the English Channel How are you gonna do that on a battle and then the battles themselves? You know it's charged forward and get machine gunned Or sit in a trench and wait out, and then there's stuff like poison gas is that gonna be a battlefield element So that I don't know it's it though. They're never gonna make a world war one total war. It's almost impossible to do Just because of all those reasons I listed so I think I think someone had also also mentioned that follow the samurai was as far Forward in time they would do if you're looking for more modern combat I think you can look at red dragon You can look at games like ruse and stuff like that those those are more geared towards larger and gaming engagements I think total war should really stick to to this type of fighting as You know as far forward as it can go a lot of people are hoping to see empire 2 and whatnot Maybe a return to Napoleon I don't know I would I think what would get me most excited despite the hype that I put around Warhammer title you know I wouldn't be super Excited about that because again. What are you gonna do for diplomacy? I don't know What are you gonna do for buildings if you're like a rat population or I like this cave-in that I had mentioned so I think the thing I would be most interested to watch is between End of the Roman Empire Towards medieval so you could kind of go into the Franks the Carolingian era all that stuff all sorts of changing kingdoms in that part the crumbling of the remains of the Roman Empire the Eastern Roman Empire And then you know that's one category, but I think I would be most happy for the China Total war that I've mentioned before a lot of history could go through and you know kind of similar combat to the Rome too But you would start getting a little bit of gunpowder in the later periods you have the it would sort of be like barbarian invasion With Mongols coming in and all that so days I hope you guys enjoyed this quick throwback to Napoleon played a quick battle It was relatively easy But it allowed us to discuss and then you could you know see a little bit of a refreshing Look at you know grand scheme of combat later in the period as opposed to just Rome to Rome to Rome to Rome to So anyways, hope you guys enjoyed see you next time