Guide to Artillery

Artillery is one of the best units in Call of War. I would say they are the tactical bombers of the ground, in terms of damage dealt to damage received. Properly used, they can turn the tide of the battle in your favor, with you losing less/none troops. It is important to be able to use artillery, and also defeat it.

There are three types of artillery.

1. Regular artillery- Cheap beginning units, regular artillery is a staple early game. Opening fire from an initial distance of 60km, this unit usually fire for two hours before units reach it. While good at long range, artillery is very poor at defense and requires protection from ground forces and air attack.

2. SP (Self Propelled) Artillery - Doubling the health, speed and power of regular artillery, this speedy unit is probably the best artillery unit in the game. While costing more than regular artillery, the benefits are more than worth the extra cost. Especially powerful in plains, this mechanized artillery is a beauty to behold.

3. Railroadgun- The longest and strongest artillery unit in the game, firing at 150km away; it is not surprisingly the most expensive. While taking only 1 research level to build, it requires high level buildings and a lot of resources to produce. While the slowest unit in the game, it is more powerful than regular infantry for a long time. This unit almost always requires careful protection, and a spotting unit ahead of it. However, this unit does have a special place in attacking ships and landing naval convoys.

Build Requirements

Build Costs

Protection

Your artillery is highly important. Unprotected, defending artillery is very easy to defeat and kill, and is like giving free kills to your enemies. Keeping artillery attacking is vital to their survival.

1. Putting troops in front of artillery

⦁ Place several units in front of the artillery, so they can be roadblocks. These can be militia for example; cheap, disposable roadblocks that will buy you a little time. You can also place large stacks in front of your artillery, and let them attack safely from behind.

2. Protecting the units themselves

⦁ Artillery are vulnerable to every unit in the game. Air attacks can wipe out unescorted artillery 5 at a whack. A fast light tank can roar in and destroy 10 units easily.

⦁ To counter this eventuality, one should place anti-tanks and anti-air with artillery. While you will almost certainly loose units if your artillery are fighting hand to hand, this may save some units and will most definitely make the enemy pay for his attack. This also helps with attacking other artillery, but I will touch on that further down.

Attacking with Artillery

Using artillery to attack units helps preserve you army for future battles. See the protection on how to guard your units.

1. Holding the enemy in place- One of the key points to using artillery is holding your enemies in place. With them unable to escape, your artillery will have a field day. There are two ways to do this.

⦁ Attack the enemy with troops. Then bring your artillery to attack while your enemies are stuck for hours.

⦁ Attack with artillery- A direct assault is not always bad, and is sometimes unavoidable. During these assults, it is best to have troops stacked with artillery, especially if there are artillery in the enemy target. This will spread the damage across all the units, and keep you firing for hours to come

⦁ Use of terrain. Sometimes it is not necessary to put troops in front of artillery. Mountainous terrain can slow units down extremely, allowing for strategically placed artillery to fire for long periods of time without being hit.

Attacking Artillery

1. Attack without being in range of artillery. - Being able to attack artillery without it being able to reach you can be highly valuable.

⦁ Tactical Bombers- Attacking artillery from the air is often a quick way to get rid of artillery. With such low health, they are easy pickings from the air.

⦁ Outranged Artillery- Use artillery that has longer range then their artillery to fire without them being able to respond. Make sure they don't move though!

2. Quick units - Sometimes it is not possible to attack at a distance. In these cases, you must make the best of things and get to the artillery ASAP.

⦁ Light Tanks or Armored Cars- Quick units, these can easily reach artillery quickly and put an end to their long range firing. Consider using forced march, the quicker you arrive, the better.

⦁ Any unit available- Simply put, once you reach the artillery they cannot fire. While the faster units are better, use whatever you have to silence the arty.

Range

Artillery has four ranges. 60km, 70km but 80km and 150km are specialty ranges. Standard artillery starts off at 60km, but can be upgraded to 70km at day 16. This gives a special strategic advantage, especially if your opponent has artillery. While your artillery fires away, his cannot respond unless he travels the extra 10km to fire.

80km for regular artillery can only be achieve at lvl 7 with blueprints. Very special, almost none have all those blueprints. Having that long a range almost guarantees enemy artillery cannot respond.

150km is the fixed point for railroadgun, which the whole reason to build a railroadgun.

I hope you all have found this guide useful, if I have made some mistakes, please let me know.

-General Nightman, intelligence