Hello,
Most people put artillery behind a stack of other units to protect them from enemy ground forces, with the artillery behind them they aren't in danger (unless the stack infront dies) of being damaged unless the enemy has ranged units as well. Where as if the artillery is in the same stack the enemy could send their army to attack yours and once they engage the artillery will take a good amount of damage due to having low health and low defence stats.

A smart player always considers the possibility of sneak attacks on the artillery by planes, other artillery, or fast units circling around behind, and DOES stack units with their artillery in addition to the blocking force.




Another aspect of bombarding with artillery and having a blocking force in front is to counter the AI behavior. AI will generally react to an artillery bombardment by dispatching a unit or two to attack the artillery. If you have a good sized blocking force the AI unit walks right into the trap and is easily destroyed, while the artillery remains safely behind the action, and able to select targets at will. You always have to be ready for the AI to react differently depending on what units it has available. I advise caution against using this tactic to pick apart AI stacks when they have a nuclear weapon available.

When you want to attack many provinces with speed, artillery may be annoying because they will auto fire at the nearest unit when no orders are given. They will also stay a long distance away from the unit they are attacking which do not make them easy to move WITH the unit in front.

From my own experience, artillery is part of the mixed assortment of ground units of any decent player- in addition to some armor, infantry and AA ...

oh man. you got to pop your artillary cherry.

Shoot n Scoot all day long.