Siege towers

[steele]

Can someone tell me how to make archers shoot from siege towers please? :help:

[Sinner]

Make sure the fire-at-will button is lit up. If the unit pushing the tower is missile capable, turn fire-at-will off then on to make sure the tower archers are activated.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Wow. I didn't know that you could have archers firing from the towers. Nice piece of information. I assume that they hit better when they are the same hight level as the one on the towers. Instead of shooting from the ground up.

[drone]

Wow. I didn't know that you could have archers firing from the towers. Nice piece of information. I assume that they hit better when they are the same hight level as the one on the towers. Instead of shooting from the ground up.
Actually, the siege towers have built-in artillery. This is what fires while the towers are pushed towards the walls. They mounted a rapid fire machine gun on the larger towers, clears walls quite nicely.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Towers = Walls

Woot ? Rapid fire machine gun :) I didn't know the romans invented that. Yeah yeah. I'm just a stupid dane that belives in everything people from West Virginia says :) Or something. Next time stop messing with my brain. I'm getting all confused.

[Kraxis]

THere is a nice bug in siege towers actually. I only noticed it after the readme.

The Siege Towers have a few repeating ballistas in the top room. If you select FAW during the setup and the tower is within range of an enemy unit when you start the battle the tower will either empty or nearly emty its ammo. It looks absolutely impressive. Some 40-50 bolts all flying off at once, beating down most of a unit.

I play on Huge and saw a unit of Legionary Cohortget decimated by my tower. 160 to 70 in an instant. It looked cool too with all those flying men and the dust from the hits.

But it is good to see it fixed as it coul absolutely overpower those siege towers.

[drone]

There are 2 types of siege towers to build, one for normal stone walls and a bigger one for the larger walls (they both take the same time to build for some reason). Both can be set to fire at the enemy on the walls. The larger siege tower uses a repeating ballista, I think. This pretty much mows down the troops defending the walls. Some people will push the tower towards the wall, but not all the way to it, so the tower will sit near the wall and annihilate the defenders.

To use the tower's artillery, you click on the unit pushing the tower, and set fire-at-will. If the unit is a missile unit (this includes troops like hastati), you need to turn fire-at-will off, then on again. I don't think a missile troop can use it's own weapons while pushing the tower.

No joke, there's a thread around here somewhere about it.
EDIT - and here it is
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=41640

SECOND EDIT - I'm choosing to ignore your West Virginia crack... ~D

[drone]

THere is a nice bug in siege towers actually. I only noticed it after the readme.

The Siege Towers have a few repeating ballistas in the top room. If you select FAW during the setup and the tower is within range of an enemy unit when you start the battle the tower will either empty or nearly emty its ammo. It looks absolutely impressive. Some 40-50 bolts all flying off at once, beating down most of a unit.

I play on Huge and saw a unit of Legionary Cohortget decimated by my tower. 160 to 70 in an instant. It looked cool too with all those flying men and the dust from the hits.

But it is good to see it fixed as it coul absolutely overpower those siege towers.
I didn't see that at first in the readme. I gotta try that, just for the screenshot. Must look pretty impressive.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

..

:O Rapid fire machine/balistas. Invented by the roman 1800 years ahead of time. I'm stunned! :dizzy2:

..

[drone]

I'm not the hardcore ancient history buff that some people here at the Org are, but a quick Google of "repeating ballista roman" gives a couple of promising hits:

http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/mil_roman_artillery.htm

and in a review on Amazon.com, looks like Dionysius invented the repeater
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0198142684/002-9161261-0317648?v=glance

Maybe some of the more knowledgeable members can enlighten us. They have debates on the length of spears used 2500 years ago, surely they know something of this? :bow:

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Ahh - It says that the Ballista is invented by the romans when fighting the britains (Or am i wrong?). The repeating ballista is also a roman creation. The Romans were surely good siege engineers..

But the greeks should also get some of the credit if what the text says is correct

Let's await the wise words from the older members of Org :bow: As Drone in his wisdom suggested.

[Fresnorugger]

New player here and since your talking siege equipment I have a question about ladders: I ordered my besieging army to build ladders, had the construction que full of them. Next turn, it said they were built and I assaulted but when my army appeared, there were none! I had to withdraw and lost half my men (which really pissed me off, why do you lose men for walking away from a siege? Especially when the game itself quotes Sun Szu about knowing when and when not to fight!). Can anyone tell me what happened? Silius Sodus

[Rurik the Chieftain]

Wow, I never really noticed that siege towers fire bolts. Just move 'em up about 5 feet from the enemy wall defenders and hit fire at will. Instant mowdown. ~:cheers: There's another addendum to the bug list :deal:

[R3dD0g]

...I ordered my besieging army to build ladders, had the construction que full of them. Next turn, it said they were built and I assaulted but when my army appeared, there were none!... Can anyone tell me what happened? Silius SodusWhat kind of troops were in the army? Not all troops can handle ladders. I'm not sure on the restrictions, but I wound up with a bunch of unusable ladders once.

[Khorak]

Ladders are strangely still buildable when sieging a wall bigger than normal stone, but aren't actually useable against them, so they don't appear for the attack.

[Fresnorugger]

My troops were either hastati or pricipes, so I don't think that was the problem. However, you might have hit upon it with the stone wall comment; it was a major city with huge stone walls I was attempting to take. Thanks, I'll have to remeber that. But why did I lose half my men just for walking away? Silius Sodus

[Rurik the Chieftain]

You lose men for walking away because of the battle system.

If you lose a battle (whether you retreated or not) sometimes, men will disappear from your army. The same happens to the enemy. It was probably supposed to represent the men who ran away during routing, and since withdrawing is so similar to routing, the same affect likely got applied to both situations. Its rather annoying, I know. I did the exact same thing once.

[drone]

Wow, I never really noticed that siege towers fire bolts. Just move 'em up about 5 feet from the enemy wall defenders and hit fire at will. Instant mowdown. ~:cheers: There's another addendum to the bug list :deal:
It's not a bug (unless you exploit the deployment issue in the patch readme). The towers will fire at defenders on the walls, but they can be destroyed before finishing their real objective, getting attacking troops to the wall. The defender has three options: destroy the tower, get off of the wall, or take the abuse.

The smaller siege tower is less effective, which means it's actually easier to defend small stone walls than it is to defend epic walls. The 2 siege tower types take the same amount of time to build (this is the real bug), yet the larger tower is bigger and much deadlier. As a human player, the smart thing is to never build epic walls.

[conon394]

The Repeating Catapult was not a Roman invention; rather it was invented at the arsenal of Rhodes (sometime before 250BC). The Rhodians allowed Philon of Byzantium to examine one, and he included a description of it his work “Mechanics”.
While Philon is critical of the weapon, it’s highly unlikely the Rhodians allowed him to examine it closely or displayed its full capability to him. Philon had a lot of connections with Alexandria, and the Rhodians would have little interest in giving away their secrets to a rival.

[Red Harvest]

From what I've read, the Greeks of Syracuse were the prime movers in siege technology. They revived it after it fell dormant with the end of the Assyrian empire. I'm not sure how much the Syracusians invented, but Rome tended to adapt things from others. Hmmm, does this make Rome the Microsoft of the ancient world?

[drone]

Ladders are strangely still buildable when sieging a wall bigger than normal stone, but aren't actually useable against them, so they don't appear for the attack.
I got burned by that as well. Don't see a mention of this in the patch readme, hopefully they removed the ladder option.


Originally Posted by Red Harvest
From what I've read, the Greeks of Syracuse were the prime movers in siege technology. They revived it after it fell dormant with the end of the Assyrian empire. I'm not sure how much the Syracusians invented, but Rome tended to adapt things from others. Hmmm, does this make Rome the Microsoft of the ancient world?
Does this make Carthage Netscape? The Huns Linux? ~D

Archimedes invented or adapted a lot of devices for the defense of Syracuse. There are even reports of a mirror/magnifying glass device that could set ships on fire.