Firstly a big shout-out to @General Nightman who's Artillery guide for Classic that I have rewritten.


Artillery is one of the best units in Call of War. If 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.

Artillery is a ranged unit that deals damage to the enemy from a distance. It is the only unit in COW that is able to deal damage without getting damaged by the defensive output for enemy units. If you protect your artillery well, they will last you all game which is good for your KD-ratio.


Five types of artillery

1. Regular artillery (Ordnance Foundry) is an anti-armor unit or in other words anti-tank branch. It is most effective against heavy armored units and they are also decent against light armored units. They are cheap starting unit available at day 1. Regular artillery is a staple early game. It has a view range of 70km and an attack range of 50km. This unit usually fire for one hour and shoots 2 or 3 shots before units reach it. While good at long range, artillery is very poor at defence and requires protection from ground forces and air attack.

2. Rocket artillery (Secret Lab) is an anti-unarmored unit (or to simplify it anti-infantry branch). Apart from the unit that it counters its properties are more or less the same like regular artillery but moves 5 km/h faster. It has a view range of 70km and an attack range of 50km. Rocket artillery is available to be researched at day 2, except for Commitern Doctrine which can research it already at day 1.

3. SP (Self Propelled) Artillery (Ordnance Foundry) is also is an anti-armor unit or in other words anti-tank branch. Doubling the health, speed and power of regular artillery, this speedy unit is probably the best artillery unit in the game. It’s speed is 55km/h on plains and has a view range of 70km and an attack range of 50km like the other artillery units. While costing more than regular artillery, the benefits are more than worth the extra cost. Its research is available at day 4.

4. SP (Self Propelled) Rocket artillery (Secret Lab) is an anti-unarmored unit (or to simplify it anti-infantry branch). Apart from the unit that it counters its properties are more or less the same like SP artillery. All though SP Rocket artillery is 18 km/h faster than SP artillery. It has a view range of 70km and an attack range of 50km like the other artillery units. Its research is available at day 4.

5. Railroadgun (Secret Lab) The longest and strongest artillery unit in the game with an attack range of 100km it is not surprisingly the most expensive. However, the line of sight is only 70km so to make full use of it’s range you need other units to function as spotters. The research is available at day 6 and to build it requires only a secret lab level 1 but a lot of resources to produce. While the slowest unit in the game, it is more powerful than regular artillery 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.


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, infantry or anti-tank 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 is 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 is 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 assaults, 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. Bear in mind that artillery gets a 50% damage output bonus mountainous terrain and in hills.


Defending against or attacking (rocket) Artillery (unarmored class)

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. As artillery is an unarmored unit so tactical bombers are the best unit to attack those.

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.

Armored Cars: These are all light armored units and as artillery is an unarmored unit, light armoured units are the perfect to attack artillery. Not only have they excellent battle stats vs unarmored units but they can easily reach artillery quickly and put an end to their long-range firing. Consider using forced march, the quicker you arrive, the better.

Motorized infantry: is super-fast and have a very good damage output versus unarmored units, even though it is an unarmored unit itself it might be one of the best choices to counter artillery.

Light tanks and mechanized infantry: even though these are fast light-armored units with the best stats versus other light armored units they work also amazingly against unarmored units especially against artillery as those are low in Health Points.


Defending against or attacking SP Artillery and RRG (light armor class)

Just like with the unarmored artillery class the best way to attack the light armor artillery class is also with bombers. However, in this case their best counter unit is the attack bomber which has better stats versus armored units.

Anti-Tank stacked with militia: Both AT and militia are stealth in the forest and cities so they are a perfect counter for artillery. AT and militia get an additional 50% damage output bonus in forests and 25% in cities. All though militia isn’t a counter for armored units it is however a very cheap unit to give additional Health Points to your stack. With its additional bonus it’s still a good counter unit in terms of damage output vs resource input. Please note that both AT and militia are defensive units so they should be kept stationary in combat. Also bare in mind that stealth units can be revealed by interceptors, motorized infantry and armored cars.

Light tanks and mechanized infantry: These are fast anti light-armored units which are the perfect counter against other light armored units like SP (rocket) artillery.


Attacking Artillery with artillery

As said before artillery is a ranged unarmored unit. Rocket artillery is an unarmored unit so by definition it is a perfect unit to counter artillery. If your opponent has a lot of regular artillery which are anti-armor than you can easily win the shoot-out. Same goes for when you have a bigger stack then you can outlive your opponent.

Use the terrain to your advantage. Make sure that you are firing from the mountains or hills where your artillery gets an additional 50% damage output. At the same time deny your enemy this terrain where he can get a bonus.

Shoot and scoot exploit:

When a player isn’t online it takes the program 3 minutes before the the enemy artillery returns fire. This can be exploited by the fact that as soon as you fired your shot you will retreat out of range and repeat this every 30min. It is time consuming but it is worth it in the end as you can totally annihilate enemy artillery stacks without taking any damage yourself. This is especially interesting in Alliance versus Alliance games where artillery is used very frequently and where every small damage hit adds up.

This is how the exploit works in detail:

Sumatra has 3 regular artillery in his capital. In his stack he has 5 infantry that get a 50% bonus in cities. As he's in his cores he deals 15% more damage and he receives 15% less return damage. We both have a stack of 10, I have 3 artillery and one rocket artillery. As I'm not in my cores I get no bonus and as I'm on the plains I get no terrain bonus neither. In a regular artillery shoot-out I would lose the fight. Lets see what happens:

I move in my artillery for the attack, they have 153.7/168 health.



Before my attack Sumatra has 100.7/130 health.


I move out after the attack on forced march. As you can see the enemy artillery isn't returning fire and I still have 159,3/168 health.

I repeat this twice, with every attack the enemy stack will drop 10 health. If I repeat this another 8 times, the enemy artillery stack will be destroyed. My stack will have taken 0 damage.



Fire settings (for High Command users)

If you have high command then you have different fire settings that you can activate for your artillery. Aggressive and offensive fire settings are extremely useful as you can make nice artillery stacks combined with protective units and just send them on a long march while you are offline or asleep.

Aggressive fire settings: your artillery will pause its march and attack any unit that is in range even if you aren’t at war. This is useful in cases where you might get surprise attacked by another nation and avoids that your artillery will march into units from a non-hostile nation and end up locked in melee combat. To prevent that your artillery will surprise attack unwanted nations like AI make sure to give AI nations ROW or shared maps. Artillery on aggressive fire settings will only attack nations with whom you are at war, trade embargo or peace.

Offensive fire settings: your artillery will pause its march and attack any enemy unit that is in range from a nation with whom you are at war. I personally recommend to always put your artillery on offensive fire settings. This way your artillery will fire at all hostile units but you won’t end up in a war that you don’t want.

Fire at will: this is the default setting for all users in the game.

Return fire: your artillery will only fire at units that fire at them. This fire setting is not recommended

Hold fire: your artillery will only fire at units if you order them manually. This fire setting is strongly discouraged!

Other Artillery Guides:

The extensive artillery guide written by @JesterTheSheep part one and part two:
Every Artillery Piece and How/When to Use Them (PART 1 / 2)
Every Artillery Piece and How/When to Use Them (PART 2 / 2)

The original artillery guide for COW classic written by @General Nightman
Guide to Artillery

Guide to RailRoadGuns writen by @Joe-6989
Guide To Railrodguns

Proof, what is this the CIA return fire tics 3 minutes later if not done manually, try and you will see.

Active or inactive, online or offline it doesn't matter. You will notice that in a artillery vs artillery battle that the countdown isn't the same, there's a few minutes difference. Now if you stay stationary during the fight then the enemy will attack you at every 30min countdown. However if you move out of range preferably on forced march you will march outside of range before the enemy has a chance to return fire. It's an exploit that is often used in AvA battles when the enemy is asleep.

It works and I took even screenshots:

Sumatra has 3 regular artillery in his capital. In his stack he has 5 infantry that get a 50% bonus in cities. As he's in his cores he deals 15% more damage and he receives 15% less return damage. We both have a stack of 10, I have 3 artillery and one rocket artillery. As I'm not in my cores I get no bonus and as I'm on the plains I get no terrain bonus neither. In a regular artillery shoot-out I would lose the fight. Lets see what happens:


I move in my artillery for the attack, they have 153.7/168 health.



Before my attack Sumatra has 100.7/130 health.



I move out after the attack on forced march. As you can see the enemy artillery isn't returning fire and I still have 159,3/168 health.



I repeat this twice, with every attack the enemy stack will drop 10 health. If I repeat this another 8 times, the enemy artillery stack will be destroyed. My stack will have taken 0 damage.

No not necessarily but I prefer to get my troops out of there as fast as possible. With two minutes on forced march, your units won't drop in health. It's for free.

There's a thing called splash damage which means that artillery damages a larger area. If you are still close to the limit of his range it's possible that you will still receive some damage. That's why I force march out of there for the first two minutes.