[RERomine]

I just read the thread on Smoke and thought I would start a new one related to the artillery fire routine in general. In the battle I'm currently doing a DAR on, there is fighting taking place up and down my line. Several turns ago, the AI cut loose twelve 25-pdr troops against one machine gun section. They got him, but would anyone realistically fire 48 artillery pieces at two machine guns? Earlier in the battle, they all pounded another area and got one tank. In both cases, we aren't talking about massed targets. With the machine gun section, the only unit within 150m was an immobilized tank. When I lost the tank early in the battle, there were two other tanks within 150m. For some reason off-board artillery seems to latch onto a target and sling everything at it, even if it is massive over kill. One thing I can add is both areas targeted didn't have units that moved. In both cases, units in and around the impact zone had not moved. They were just blazing away at targets of opportunity.

Is it possible to have the routine check to see if a target has artillery already assigned to strike? If the routine finds artillery is already assigned, maybe a sub-routine to determine if it is worthy of more guns, otherwise it looks for another target. With at least 12 artillery troops in my current battle, the AI is wasting them by not hitting dozens of other areas that it has to know I have troops. The only other indirect fire I recall came from a couple of 3in mortar sections firing smoke. While my current battle is difficult because of my inability to destroy Matilda IIs, it would be even more complex if the AI was dropping artillery all along my static defensive line.

The AI use of artillery does seem to be a consistent weakness in the AI battle plan. With the scads of artillery it tends to take, it needs to use it better than it does. People will probably complain more if artillery is more effective, but clean one fish at a time. A general impression I have is the AI utilizes on-board artillery more effectively than off-board. Other folks might have different opinions and are more than welcome chime in. If my impression is correct, maybe the AI is attaching more importance to formations than it should. If the AI purchases two 25-pdr regiments, it might be looking at them as just two fire missions instead of 12 troops capable of engaging different target areas. I could be wrong, but I have to believe in real life troops within artillery regiments/battalions aren't technologically restricted to firing at one target area en mass any more than tank companies in a battalion are required to stay together.