Before the patch allowing heavy arty to move it was all working fine. Light arty is very good value but there are not that many armies that can field it and a lot of them have some weakness or other.
In MP if someone turned up with heavy arty then they were conceding the draw if their opponent didn't want to attack, and the way the scoring works in most competitions that largely ruled it out.
But now heavy arty can move. So they get drawn up in the middle of the battlefield, it takes 12 turns to cross the map and there is enough time to force a result, at least that is what I am seeing in quite a few battles. And once in range you have combined arms firepower with the extra '-1' on the cohesion test plus the ability to concentrate more fire than would otherwise be possible because the arty firing over head.
With that mod there has been a proliferation of heavy arty being deployed in MP games, in the TDC am seeing it in most of my battles for Classical Antiquity and Dark Ages. Would expect it to be much the same in SP games where the arty is available because the AI is going to have more difficulty countering it than a human player. Though in SP you have the option to self restrict it and just not deploy so maybe not such an issue but it is a pity to have the need to self regulate and I think it detracts from the game.
Here are a few recent examples of games being dominated by heavy arty:
Umayyad vs Arab Conquest.
In this one the Umayyad started with two heavy arty, they advanced across the map and combined with bow fire disrupted enough of the vet spears to win the battle. One arty was taken out by the Beduin cav but it was too late to matter.
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This time both armies had two arty. The Umayyads formed up with a line of heavy infantry backed up by bowmen in the area of the blue rectangle. The Byzantines shot up the three lead units in sequence with the arty supported by bowmen and then charged them with lancers. Hence the swarms of routing infantry and one arty overrun. The Umayyad light cav is about to take out the Byzantine arty but the game is over.
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This game has only just started; both sides have pike armies and have deployed their heavy arty. If one player advances into range and leaves their arty behind they will be at a disadvantage because a few shots of arty could make all the difference in a pike battle. So both sides are advancing slowly so their arty can keep up and the whole character of the battle has changed from what it would have been without the arty.
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I think there are two questions here, is using heavy arty in battles historically justified AND is it portrayed realistically.
My assumption is that heavy arty is parabolic type siege engines like trebuchets and their earlier versions while light arty are direct fire like giant crossbows, not sure if this is the intention.
The only example I know of heavy arty being used in battle is Mohi, where the Mongols used it against the Rus. It was used twice, once to drive away infantry that were defending a bridge and then later to bombard the enemy camp. I would argue that neither of these situations are of an open battle, they are more akin to a defensive battle AND most important in both cases the defenders were static.
Maybe there are other examples of heavy arty in ancient open battles...
The second question: is heavy arty realistic in game.
Should it be mobile, I don't think so - it had to be assembled and was not on wheels.
Could it hit a moving target. I don't think so, by the time you had adjusted for range and direction the enemy unit would probably have moved to somewhere else, certainly they would move if being fired at. In game it shoots at charging cavalry as well as at anything else.
From what I know of history high trajectory firing only became effective with the use of gunpowder, the chance of getting a hit a unit by dropping a stone onto an enemy formation is modest at best. First you have to get it on the general target and then you have to be lucky enough to hit someone as on many surfaces the projectile is just going to get buried into the ground.
The calculation is entirely different for a bolt throwing light arty, here if you shoot at a unit that is 8 men deep you have the chance of hitting any one of them and my understanding is that bolt throwers are pretty accurate. And if the target is moving towards you there may be some adjustment required for range but not for direction.
Another issue is overhead fire. Could heavy and light arty fire overhead - probably yes to both. Could they hit anything, I doubt it if they could not see the target. The justification for arty firing overhead is that late Roman light arty was mounted on carts. Maybe reasonable to fire over one friendly unit directly to their front but in the game they can fire over several units of infantry and cavalry, both friendly and enemy, and pick out that unit of cataphracts behind them all. I doubt if you could even see an enemy unit through the dust if intervening moving/fighting units. So even if you allowed the Roman cart arty to fire over one friendly unit, what about the other armies arty that is not on carts.
So what would I like to see:
No heavy arty in open battles. Or if not that then at least revert to the old rule where they couldn't move.
No over head fire for any arty, as it is in Medieval.
