BUG: Tower Ballistae destroying your own castle...

[Azmogeddon]

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about this... though I could easily have missed it, I suppose.

When you have an upgraded Keep or a standard Castle, half the towers on the main ring-wall have ballistae on them. Unfortunately, the AI controlling them will fire at any enemy in range.. so if they are outside the wall on the opposite side to the ballista, they fire and hit the opposite wall.

In a large siege I have actually had a tower ballista *destroy* my own castle wall, allowing the besiegers to enter the castle when otherwise they were stuck with taking massive casualties as they assault the gates.

Is this fixed in the patch?

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Azmo
[long-time lurker]

[Lord Romulous]

good point.

has been posted before but not for a long while.

[This message has been edited by Lord Romulous (edited 11-05-2002).]

[Dwimmerlaik]

That seems fair enough to me,if you can shoot your own men in the back with your ranged units the same should apply for castle siege engines what next? A patch to fix stray catapult shots killing your own general? It's war...s**t happens..

[hoof]

I think the point is that you don't have controll of the castle defences, so you can't turn the fire on/off. With archers shooting your own guys in a melee, you have some way to get them not to fire (take them off of "fire at this unit" mode and "fire at will" and they will not fire).

With castle defences, they will always fire at the enemy, even if it means demolishing the walls to do it, possibly making the assault easier for the enemy. I'd like an option to turn off the siege weapons on a castle defence so that if you see this happening, you can at least do something about it.

[scipio spinx]

all of this begs the question i keep wondering: how in the hell do ballistae do meaningful damage to castle walls, anyway?

i mean, they're javelins folks!

last time i checked, pointy sticks aren't a very useful way to try and break through solid stone walls.

[hoof]

Here's another question: What's the difference between a large rock thrown by catapult and a large shaft hurled by a ballistae? Well, if they weigh the same, then not much as far as the wall is concerned. One is going to make a big crater, the other is going to penetrate deeper (assuming the shaft doesn't snap on impact). However, if they have similar mass and impact speed, its arguable that they could to reasonably similar damage to a large wall.

[Hakonarson]

Ballistae of the type used in medieval times (and most ancient ones too) were quite capable of objects such as stones.

In fact the earliest ballistae (Greek) fired only stones - arrows were a later addition, probably because they were more accurate.

Conversely many early guns fired arrows!

I wouldn't let the graphics be your guide!

[This message has been edited by Hakonarson (edited 11-05-2002).]

[Kraellin]

yeah, the ballista graphics dont necessarily represent the true power of the things. some of those ballistas were like firing a pointed tree trunk...and that will do some damage.

as for the firing on friendly castle, the compensation is that it also works the other way around. i've seen the defending AI shoot at its own walls as well :)

K.


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[Dr. Trespasser]

I do believe the this problem was fixed in the patch, here is the line

6) AI will take accessibility of walls into
account when deciding where to bombard
in a castle assault.

this may count for towers or not???

[Papa Bear!]

I don't think so, that refers to the ai's propensity to shoot rather randomly with their siege weapons.

(in one custom game I had the ai focus on a particular part of the wall that was above a cliff, thus the troops had to march right up against the wall, inch along the cliff, then go through the whole they'd made, it was not at all effective).

I could be wrong, but that language there doesn't seem to refer to ballista defenses.

On the other hand, it seems like that list is in no way comprehensive.

[Kroney]

ballista bolts were tipped with iron. that'll do damage to whatever it hits

[+DOC+]

it is also there for gameplay reasons, if ballistas weren't able to damage walls then instead of being slightly useless they'd be completely useless....! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

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