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[FoTS] Horse Artillery

Horse Artillery for the Boshin War

Proper "horse artillery" (as opposed to "foot artillery") had vanished in all but name and uniform by the time of the Boshin War. Thanks to the Valee system developed in 1825 by the French the mobility of field artillery had been drastically improved; by seating the artillerymen on the gun limbers during transport. This change allowed artillery to move as fast as the towing horses could gallop putting true horse artillery all but out of a job...and finally providing an explanation as to why every film set after Napoleon has armies with only "horse artillery".

When I first laid hands on FoTS I was disappointed by the absence of my favourite fast moving firepower in an era where these guns should be ubiquitous. Naturally this had to be corrected.

And so I present to you this mod:

FoTS - Modern Tactics - Horse Artillery

Modern Tactics - Horse Artillery adds two new units to the game: Parrot Horse Guns and Armstrong Horse Guns, each equivalent to their respective foot piece in firepower, that are pulled by six horse teams with mounted crews to move rapidly about the battlefield. In order to improve mod compatibility both "Foot" variants (or "somebody wanted horse sushi" variants as I like to call them) are completely untouched.

Horse Gun Benefits:
Can run and move rapidly about the field
Can move further on the campaign map (the same distance as cavalry)
Equivalent firepower to the respective vanilla "dehorsed" pieces
Ladies love men with horses AND a big gun!
You can re-enact that scene in Zulu Dawn properly.

Horse Gun Sacrifices:
Higher purchase cost (horses are expensive)
Higher upkeep cost (horses are expensive)
Only have as many crew members as they have horses to carry them so unable to take casualties (adding more crew results in some Benny Hill esque wheel rolling nonsense might I add).

You can build the relevant horse drawn pieces at the same buildings as their foot counterparts.

Compatibility: The units are completely isolated so there should be no conflicts unless you are doing something completely crazy. Any mod which directly alters the parameters of artillery will not affect this mod however changes to the default projectiles for the three guns will affect them (a benefit rather than a problem really).

Happy galloping!

Osric

CHANGELOG:

20th June 2013: Minor tweaks and fixes.
Changes:
- Valee Guns are no longer considered “Siege Guns!” This means successfully (i.e. in a controlled manner, not routing) withdrawing the guns from the battlefield will no longer result in them being automatically captured by the enemy.
- Reduced the charge bonus from 9 to 1. Why any cannon crew has such a high charge bonus is a mystery to me. If your gunners have to run at the enemy you’ve done something terribly wrong.
- Removed unnecessary rows in the units_to_buildings_allowed table referencing the original guns –nothing should be affected but leaving them in is bad practice.
- Renamed the tables in the pack file to stop them accidentally overwriting other mods that used the default table names (again; nothing is affected, but it is bad practice otherwise).
- Upended the change-log so the most recent changes are listed first.

12th Dec 2012: Rebuilt everything from the ground up - fully compatible with saved games (though you may want to rehire your Gatling guns).
Changes:
- All horse guns are now recruitable at the same level as their equivalent foot batteries (they were quite difficult to access otherwise).
- All horse guns have been renamed as "X Guns (Valee)" (a more sensible naming convention that makes it immediately apparent which guns they are equivalent to).
- Costs have been recalculated across the board. Valee guns now incur a 20% greater recruitment and upkeep cost over their foot counterparts (makes far more sense than the "different buildings/fewer guns nonsense from before).
- Gatling guns now have four guns per battery (I was being lazy. This has been fixed).
All other costs/benefits of Valee guns have persisted.

4th Dec 2012: Gatling Guns! That didn't take long at all :| They follow a similar pattern to other types of horse artillery but you only get two guns per unit for the price/upkeep of a four gun foot battery (I find it an easier way to balance the added benefits of the guns that fiddling around/adding ten per-cent etc).

21st Oct 2012: Minor tweaks to the formation spacing. They should no longer get so entangled while unlimbering/manoeuvring.

15th Oct 2012: Initial release