nwg

A long held rule in ntw2 has been "No arty sniping of General".

This is mostly followed by the Community, but does have some mis-understanding in places......some think this allows their General to be used as a "scout" or "shield" by having the General in front of their combat troops, not allowing the enemy to target the Genral with artillery fire.....this is not correct in my view.

So what does "No arty sniping of General" really mean ?.

To my mind, it means you do NOT shoot at a General that is in the rear safely away from any combat that is taking place.

The General has been moved to safety and so should NOT be fired on from long distance with artillery.

If the General is used as a scout or shield, or close up with fighting troops then he is a target for anything.......

This has been a looooooooong time rule in the NTW community. The simple thing is, dont target the general, period. Its not a big deal, its just a general, not fire in melee or anything. If the general is up close in the heat of battle, well anything is possible, but when it comes to artillery, just dont target him. (Even if he is up close acting as a 'shield')

At the battle of Orovais in Finland, General Aldercruetz stood in a small wood close to the Russian lines. The Russian gunners spotted him but were ordered not to fire.

As you recall on the movie Waterloo, Wellington was asked if the gunners could fire at Napoleon. His response was "Certainly not. Generals have better things to do than to shoot at each other."

Jakob, your right and wrong at the same time......

Here's an example : I stick my General in front of my OG and march up to your line - now your NOT able to target artillery at me, if you hit my General you will have "cheated". This kind of thing happens and is really daft, I'm not allowed to use artillery because the General is in front of the attacking troops, sorry, that's plain bonkers, we would be better off without any such rule.

Just because something has been a rule a long time does not make it correct !. LoV being a good example.

This rule has NEVER been made clear, use your General as a shield or scout and he can and we be hit by artillery fire......but that's against the rules - madness.

Gunner, you are AGAIN splitting hairs here. If the general is in range, its fair game.(This is usually accepted by most of the older, mature players) Target your artillery at the Old Guard and not at the general. Usually if the general is hit, than most people understand.

Gunner, you seem to just make an argument out of anything. You have played NTW2 for ever, but THIS comes up NOW? What are you trying to do here?

It takes two.


We need to be clear what the rule means, in that example above, if I target the OG, and kill the General, there's many people that will jump up and down screaming "what don't you understand about NO arty sniping the General"........hmmm, who was it said that, I forget now, maybe I'll remember later.

Perhaps you've never this this happen in a game ?.

Mmm. This topic has made me think more on something that I was considering during the Fire in Melee (FiM) conversation.

Perhaps we need to draw a distinction between "honourable" play and legal (by rule) play?

I hate to split hairs but there are several things going on which most old timers will view as being extremely dishonourable yet are too difficult to manage from an absolute rules perspective.

I'd suggest that Sniping the General is one of these and Fire in Melee is another. You can't always honestly tell if a player is causing a FiM or if the death by roundshot of your General was deliberate. The argument has been made in both cases that to leave these out of the rules is to invite a whole heap of nasty behaviour and this argument has a fair bit of validity....yet.....how to even pretend to control by rule something that the game has enormous loopholes in?

I'm just throwing this idea out there for scrutiny and debate, but is there any chance at all that we can have set piece rules which should -never- be broken, then some honourable conduct, such as not shooting generals and not firing in melee?

If Wellington -had- shot at Napoleon would he have been hauled before a military tribunal? Probably not, but it would have been whispered behind the officers club doors that here was a man without honour...perhaps that is enough?

Best regards, M.

Oh, and Gents, can we possibly ever have a conversation without you two going straight for each others throats? Lively debate is one thing but for gawds sakes, does it always have to be like this?

Advice for both, take it or leave it, is to be more careful with your language. Try not to use phrases like this:

> Jakob, your right and wrong

> Gunner, you are AGAIN splitting hairs


Take a step back, use "third party" language and don't personalise your debates. Both of you have valid things to say and I for one certainly want to hear all of it. A bit of extra care with wording will probably turn these blood-letting sessions into really informative and thought provoking debates.

Best regards, Moopere

Arty being used to target the commanding general is a no-no. What does this mean? It measn that my commanding general (CG) is safe from pointed arty fire, the player who places their commanding general in the heat of battle, near massed units for example has a chance of that general being killed.

Do people target the CG with arty? I'm sure they do, it is hard to tell in the fire-fight where arty rounds are meant to be directed.

In NTW1 I learned that a commanding general could be used as a scout, without arty fire being aimed at him - however! - that did not mean the lancers couldn't run him down. I learned this the hard way. The same goes for musket fire (Dury and Carson ).

Now, people do this trhing of saying "my arty is on auto-fire" when a CG gets close. If it is the beginning of a battle with no line or cav units engaged, then surely a bit of scouting is allowed? That a player would threaten with "arty on auto-fire" shows that that person doesn't want to play NTW to its fullest and that they are not too keen on taking an imagative approach to killing off a very prized unit.

CG as shields? Pfft, if you want to endanger your GC in this way go for it. That's a player's choice. NTW2 does offer the player to move their CG out of harm's way, or even better, of taking another general who can be used in combat with a moral bonus. Not a bad trade-off if you ask me. I really only notice this indirectly though. For instance when the fighting gets tough and you have you arty follow a large marching column of men that are retreating to the CG's position. In this case a CG finds himself endangered due to arty rounds smashing after the large mass of infantry near him.

(Of course, you can go out of your way to say "hey buddy, I want to kill your OG move your gen". This is harmful for the player telling the other player to move because you give away your actions, something you want to keep under wraps ingame. Secondly, it cuts down on much needed time to type the message. Thirdly if the player being asked to move is sneaky they can use this CG shield in front of other units to annoy the asking player. This can spiral into the pettiness we so often see on the field. I feel that if a vet player knows this rule, they know to keep their CG out of the fire fight, to not expose him to undue harm. Yes it is some mirco-management but a vet player can do it no sweat and the new folks learn in time. I did.)

Played a game this evening/morning where this happened. I had ordered my arty to fire on a large mass of cav and infatry who were moving forward. fter a whle this same mass of men fell back with me on the move as well. My arty kept firing at the orginal target (some horsemen) and they ended up passing and then stopping right close near the CG. I did not know this until the little full-size image showed up and I think the player didn't know it either. I did not purposely target this CG, but I did kill him because his location was very close to the orginal target.

Is this cheating? Depends who you ask. For me, it was a honest mishap. I did not target the CG but he died all the same from arty fire. That player might say that I knowingly did target the CG. A third party might go back and find out that it was neither via a replay.

As Moopere kindly points out, this game is filled with loopholes. Things we cannot mod and must work around. Wile the CG does add flavour and fun to the game it presents oppurtunities to be vile. Of course, historically speaking what person wouldn't want to wipe out a CG with arty? It is the character of the player who decides ultimately if the CG dies from arty purposely or accidently. It is also up to the person who lost their CG from arty to play on or to cause a fuss. And! it is up to the people joining the game to sort who the good (by good I mean fairly honest) players are and who likes to use the loopholes.

If the guy is miles away from any troops / action and is killed by cannon fire, it's fair to say he got sniped....which is very bad news, and against the "rules" of no arty sniping the Gen.

If he is standing in front of, in with, or behind a "fair target" and gets killed - tough luck Commander....no one will ever know if the artillery target was the General or the "fair" target he was in front of, with, or behind, but you can be assured that the General was the target in a lot of these cases - rule broken !.

The rule works pretty well, with some exceptions - to make it a little clearer what those exceptions are can only help.

The way I interpret it is that you cannot order fire specifically on the general's unit. Whether or not I think a general has been sniped comes more down to how much I trust the killer. For example, Jakob here once killed a general of mine who was several unit-lengths behind my infantry line. After all of this time, I have not suspected that Jakob did this intentionally - it was an honest mistake.

Nevertheless, as Moopere has stated,



Generals got killed all of the time by artillery fire while leading assaults or even just standing around. I think it is only fair to fire on any other unit, regardless of its proximity to a general. If he gets killed, even if you targeted that unit just so you might "accidentally" kill the general, good - the other guy might reconsider the general's positioning next time. I do not do it, but I do not think badly of those who might.

Additionally, I must confess that if I see an enemy general who has been left behind as an enemy retreats during my infantry assault, I will specifically target him with musketry or bayonet (whichever is more convenient - musketry if the enemy is immediately behind, bayonet if his forces are in full retreat), because I always welcome the morale bonus. The guy on the other side should not have left him there to be killed in the first place!

What I particularly dislike is "General Hunting," wherein an enemy runs his cavalry all over hell just to pick off my general with them. I wouldn't make a rule against it, though.

-LaMarseillaise

Ah, this is a cool thread. We all admit to having our own ways of getting around the "no gen vs. arty" rule, no matter how sleasy it might be. I am glad to see that no one purposely targets the gen with arty and prefers to kill with steel or musket balls.

This is a tricky one, i just cant criticise anybody for this as in some ways it seems fair enough,
Having said that i would be delighted if it did not happen, with so much going on in multi player games, it does not help having to spend the whole game worrying about where your general is, there is so much more interesting stuff to concentrate on.

The thing here is some players see this as an important part of the game, for me, I'm not bothered by it one way or the other - I never go out looking to hunt the General down right from the start, but I often find late in the game the "easy" chance to send, like 15 Hussars, after the enemy General, who happens to be close by and all on his own. Then it's time for him to face the enemy and do or die !.

As i said Gun i would not criticise anybody for it, i took out CL,s Gen late on last night when it had wandered behind our lines,
Its just when someone goes out straight from the off to get your gen, as Conq did to me recently, when you and he defended against Cip and myself in the desert, it takes a lot of your concentration to keep him safe,
Off course no problem with Conq doing it., as you say it is a legitimate tactic.

For sure it takes your mind of the job in hand - a real distraction, and that may be why it works, while your worrying about getting the General safe something else is happening that you might miss !......I find it really hard when Cavalry circle around me like in the wild west - CL used to do that to me, it drove me bonkers - 3,4 or 5 Cav swirling around in circles behind me - very off putting.