use of onagers and other heavy artillery

[Marquis of Roland]

Does anyone use onagers and other heavy artillery units extensively in non-siege battles? I've seen a lot of people's preferred unit selections and they almost never include any heavy artillery.

I've never used ballistas, scorpions, or repeating ballistas, but I've found onagers and heavy onagers to be pretty useful in both defensive and offensive situations in field battles. The AI almost never uses heavy artillery in their armies, and onagers can drive them off any defensive position (especially since they're so much more accurate than MTW heavy artillery) and in defensive situations 2 onagers can cause heavy casualties before the enemy reaches arrow range.

[The Hun]

Too accurate. Reload is too fast. I do not like and never use them.

[Craterus]

On MP, I use onagers when facing S.E, Carthage or other factions capapble of having elephants. Especially, if the person you are playing is a known spammer.

In SP, no, the AI never builds many elephants and when controlled by AI, elephants charge straight onto spear points.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Artillery can be useful for armies that are static anyway. Romans can also use one or two occasionally. However I mostly skip them because there are other troops that are better at filling that slot.

[Conqueror]

I usually use 2 onager per army, 4 if I'm going to assault a city. There are some specific exceptions though: in my current Seleucid campaign I have two full armies that have 8 onagers each. These armies I have stationed to guard the bridges of the Danube river, north of Tylis and Bylazora. They see alot of action since the Scythian hordes are hell bent to invade the southern Balkans and they keep attacking the bridges almost every turn.

I use 4 phalanx units to block the bridge, 8 onagers, 2 cataphracts (for chasing routers) and the rest of my units are archers. When the Scythians come, their archer warbands and HA will be eliminated by my onagers and archers, while their nobles impale themselves in my phalanx. 8 onagers means 16 flaming shots fired each "round" which is pretty much guaranteed to hit some units, if not the intended target ~D

[Somebody Else]

I like scorpions... with RTR, there's enough per unit to make it worthwhile, and being able to reach ot and touch the enemy from so far away isn't so bad... Plus, when used in sieges, they don't damage my property before I can take hold of it. Excellent when going up against slow armoured enemy armies... or if there's a bridge or something. Also good for encouraging them off of hills.

[NihilisticCow]

I tend to use onagers in multiplayer as they are very useful in a stand off situation where neither side wants to attack. So the side with the artillery dominance tends to be the one defending, but they will be rather outnumbered by the other player (and the onagers won't generally kill enough to justify their cost if the enemy attacks), so everything should be balanced.
Scorpions also have a use versus heavy armour, e.g. Roman factions, where they are more effective than any archer.

In single player, frankly you can use whatever units you want and you'll probably win. ~:handball:

[Mikeus Caesar]

If i get later into games, where nearly everyone has Stone Walls of some sort, then my armies carry around 2 heavy onagers each, or if they can't have heavy onagers, they carry normal onagers.

[Wishazu]

you can use onagers very effectively to drive opponents off of strong defensive positions as someone else pointed out allready, this works equally well for multiplay and sp. i disagree that onagers are too accurate, they are only accurate at all when firing stone boulders, and these will only kill 1 or 2 men with a direct hit, in order to score any substantial kills you need to use flaming ammo and that is wildly inaccurate, a smart enemy will close with you before any random hits mess up his lines.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I usually use 2 onager per army, 4 if I'm going to assault a city. There are some specific exceptions though: in my current Seleucid campaign I have two full armies that have 8 onagers each. These armies I have stationed to guard the bridges of the Danube river, north of Tylis and Bylazora. They see alot of action since the Scythian hordes are hell bent to invade the southern Balkans and they keep attacking the bridges almost every turn.

I use 4 phalanx units to block the bridge, 8 onagers, 2 cataphracts (for chasing routers) and the rest of my units are archers. When the Scythians come, their archer warbands and HA will be eliminated by my onagers and archers, while their nobles impale themselves in my phalanx. 8 onagers means 16 flaming shots fired each "round" which is pretty much guaranteed to hit some units, if not the intended target ~D

Yay, the 8 onagers in bridge battles are always lovely... I've done it many time in multiplayer - picking greece with 5-8 spartans, 1 cavalry, 8 onagers and the rest cretan archers... I usually get kill-death ratios like 20-1...

[Aesculapius]

In un-modded RTW, your unit size is surely an important determinant of how useful artillery is. As unit size increases, your number of artillery pieces stays the same - so the larger your unit size setting, the less valuable your artillery and the more fighting men you are 'giving up' by having an artillery unit in that slot. (I gather some mods increase artillery with unit size, which seems sensible.)

I usually play with 'small' or 'medium' units, and I love throwing rocks. My favourite RTW moment was facing an Egyptian army stuffed with chariots. My first throw - I kid you not, my very first - was greeted with the words "The enemy general is dead!" and the satisfying clip of a chariot being heavily crunched.

Of course, artillery does slow down your army's cross-country movement; but it does give you added flexibility in facing 'dangerous' units, attacking well-defended positions, and sieging at short notice.

[Viking]

In single player, frankly you can use whatever units you want and you'll probably win. ~:handball:

That`s true, so when I use onagers, I use them `cause their fun.
But if I meet units that can run amok, then they thend to be useful.
Also as Aesculapius mentioned above, their extremely useful to kill generals with.

Today I used a unit of onagers to pepper my enemies while they were walking through my gates, and with one single shot, I killed more then 30 men! ~:cool:

[Marquis of Roland]

scorpions vs. repeating ballistas: which one is better?

[NihilisticCow]

scorpions vs. repeating ballistas: which one is better?

Depends on what's happening. Versus troops, if the enemy is advancing towards you, scorpions as they have a longer range so will cause more casualties. Repeating ballistas do have a faster fire rate than scorps, so I suppose a camped enemy would suffer quicker once in range, but I always find enemies never stay camped for long under these circumstances, so scorpions are better (the rate of fire is not that much less).

One thing though is that Scorpions do not damage fortifications or other siege weapons, whereas ballistas do, so it depends on what you want to use them for.

[SpencerH]

Properly used arty (mostly onagers in my case) are winners in open battle.

[Marquis of Roland]

Well, I'm probably going to use onagers exclusively for assault walls so I guess scorpions would be the better anti-personnel artillery?

I don't think onagers even using flaming ammo are "wildly inaccurate". Even with flaming ammo, they shoot far more accurate than MTW, I think. Thats what I'm basing it on, and in MTW if you had enough archers with 2-4 units of catapults/cannons, there is no way the enemy is going to drive you off a defensive position.

Another thing: I've found that artillery units gain valor VERY FAST. They gain about average 1-2 chevrons a battle in my game, so now even with flaming ammo they're dropping those flaming boulders right into the middle of the enemy formation. Add this to a wall of armored elephants charging and none will be left alive.

[Lord Hammerschmidt]

I find Onagers to be particularly good against chariots, which seem to have oversized (even bigger than the already large chariot) hitboxes. You can land a firepot in the right spot and take out six chariots, easy. Particularly useful against the Egyptians.
And sometimes I like to burn a city to the ground, just for kicks.

[lars573]

Me I'm very anal about my armies I could never waste a slot to more than one or two arty pieces that takes away space from more effective combat troops. The only factions that ever will train special roster siege armies for are Parthia and the Romans. And even then those armies only have 2 onager units. In a field battle they can be usefull if you set them to fire at will and hope they score a hit in the middle of a cohort.

[NihilisticCow]

Onagers with fire are pretty wildly inaccurate (certainly compared to them without fire). If your enemy marches toward you, you will (unless you're very lucky) simply not do enough damage to their forces to justify the cost of the onagers. Onagers do come into their own however with a camped enemy, even if they have onagers. As you can move your onagers up to attack them, so they will then target yours with theirs. But the difference will be, when you miss their onagers you will be hitting their troops. ~:)

If you outnumber the enemy onagers, then they will be forced to attack you (or take large casualties), but if you are outnumbered you should attack (where you will outnumber them with your normal forces - the more enemy onagers, the greater your advantage).

One thing though, I would never set onagers to fire at will - you will probably take far too many friendly casualties when you are closer together, besides it is always best to target the densest parts of the enemy formation.

[Franconicus]

I currently use onagers in my Scythian camapign. They are brilliant against phalanxes, esp. against Spartanians. I used three of them with thre archers two phalanxes and two axemen. The enemy never reached my line. Onagers and archers cut them into pieces. I used my cav only to chase the refugees.

In the end I killed 800 phanalaxes (some elite) without loosing a single man ~:)

[Al Khalifah]

Of course, artillery does slow down your army's cross-country movement; but it does give you added flexibility in facing 'dangerous' units, attacking well-defended positions, and sieging at short notice.

Because of the slow-down, I tend to keep my siege artillery seperate to the rest of the army on boats when I move around the campaign map. With the exception of central Europe, there are very few areas of the campaign map that can't be reached just as quickly by boat and so my artillery can move more or less apace with my combat troops. I only disembark the artillery before a major battle or a siege, because I find onagers imparticular are more trouble than theyre worth against small armies but pay dividends on cramped battle maps. The makeup of armies in central Europe tend to be such that siege artillery is relatively inneffective against them anyway, plus there are far more battles in forests and settlement walls tend to be smaller than in the more civilised south East.

The other advantage of keeping siege engines on boats is that they cannot be ambushed by melee troops, although its always a good idea to keep them in a reasonable stack of boats unless you know the area is clear incase you are ambushed at sea.

[PseRamesses]

With my offensive army/ armies I always include the latest artillery as soon as I can build them, usually two units. I also prefer them when defending rivercrossings since it takes some time for the attackers to deploy and attack so you can easily get some 10-20 rounds away before they even engages you.

[mxlm]

I once did a custom bridge battle in which i had 10 heavy onagers and 10 repeating ballistas, and the AI had whatever it whipped up with an equivalent cost.

My arty was slaughtered. Horribly. Looked pretty cool, though ;)

[Strongsword]

A battery of three or four onager units in open battlefield (supporting infantry and cav., of course) with flaming ammunition against a large force is especially devasting to morale. At various points of the battle, you can focus all of the onagers to "carpet bomb" a particular enemy unit. The collateral damage from explosions make up for lack of pin-point accuracy.

[pezhetairoi]

I had one onager unit on a hill firing at a full stack of greek hoplites while my archers shot them down on the plains. The onagers conducted themselves well, when I later checked the kill count. I balanced out by alternatively firing firepots and standard boulders. A little bit of each effect.

[Ramboost]

I never use artillery units........I play vanilla 1.2 campaign and I rarely don't wan't to use artillery on the expense of other combat units. But I must admit that in some battles where you are the attacker and the enemy just sit back and wait, onagers would have been nice.

I have rarely experienced the AI use onagers until I (Jullii) was outlawed by the Senate and now face the other Roman factions. I have had several battles against the Scipii and they make extensively use of artillery. Yesterday I was fighting a full Scipii army with at least half of the units being onagers. This caught me completely by surprise and I was forced to rush my attack instantly........I won the battle, but it was nice to see diversity in the AI strategy;-)

[ZZR Puig]

Siege artillery has a problem when used in the battlefield, and not just to breach enemy walls. The problem is that their numbers don't increase with the unit size option. So you get two onagers per unit in small size and also two onagers on huge.

There may be some reasons for this, basically if you get only one onager in small unit size you wouldn't probably be able to breach a wall with a single unit of onagers. By contrast, with 6 onagers on huge you would be able to destroy half of the city walls with a single unit.

The result of that situation is that siege units are only worth it in combat on smaller unit sizes. The right solution would have been to change the walls resistance with the unit size and also increase the number of onagers with it. In addition, some other siege engines like scorpions that can't attack walls get the very same limitation as onagers, which doesn't make much sense.

Personally, playing on large unit size, I recently changed the siege engines per unit for all types from 2 to 3. On large unit size, it should have been 4, but I left it in 3 not to get them to powerful against walls. This way are a bit more useful in the battlefield and may be worth using in some situations.

Note: Another solution that has come to my mind right now to really balance their usefulness either in combat or sieges is to also change their damage to buildings value. For example, you could mod the number of onagers per unit from 2 to 4 for large unit size and also reduce their damage against buildings to one half. This way they would be as effective against troops and buildings as they are on medium unit size. All these changes can be made in a few minutes, so it don't involve any problem.

[SpencerH]

I'd like to see catapults (firing lots of small boulders) replace or be included with onagers as the anti-personnel arty.

[katar]

i always have at least 2 scorpions in my stack, especially useful when thinning out any armoured units heading my way. ~D

[runes]

i take an onager or two with me as the brutii.

currently against gaul and such, i take one, so i can invade-knock over some walls- and take a city in 1 round.

and im using scorps and onagers against scythia, as my roman army is fairly ill-equipped to fight large number of HA and strong cavalry, i plunk away at them with my scorpions and onagers while rounding them up with equites.

however, their dreadfully slow in the campaign map. something you have to weigh out

[The Storyteller]

I'm a bit of an onager junkie... I try to have at least five in every stack. I just love the way their flaming ammo flies through the air... And I like the crunching noise they make when they hit something.

With 5 onagers, every shot hits something or other, and that's very bad for morale. They're especially useful against Roman armies using the manipular formation, because the army isn't strung out in a thin line. It's actually got a nice, meaty centre to aim for.

They're also great in bridge battles.

Personally, I am quite happy having up to 8 onagers in a full stack.

[Aegisthis The Infantryman]

Two things onagers with firing rock are good with:

1: Big Groups of Men
2: ELEPHANTS!

Have you ever seen an elephant on fire?! It's so COOL!

[Conqueror]

I once had some of my precious armored elephants grilled by damned roman onagers, and after the battle they were all somehow healed :juggle:

[pezhetairoi]

It takes a lot of rock to kill an elephant covered in metal, yes... O_o

[Hold Steady]

I found onagers especially usefull against egyptian chariots (as mentioned before) and elephants. In one battle defending as romans against the eggies, I had to deal with both. I had one onager unit and set it to flame fire and forget on the elephants (I was on an elevated position). At one time I decided to switch to the chariots, them allways being the most dangerous units against my mostly sword-bearing army (Romans are mostly sword troops). I noticed that the elephants were still failing to show up, so I paused to have a look. They were still at the place they started out, woblling in all directions, severely reduced and leaving large black humps. No, that aint no dung, those are roasted Elephants, try heal that! The elephants were running amok in the rear of the enemy, and set out to leave the battlefield. My troops never even had to lay their eyes on them, and my thoughts were only on how to dispatch the dreaded chariots quick enough AND survive to face the elephants! pfew!
I learned the hard way thet the only way to effectively survive a large campaign into the desert is with a lot of spearmen, enough horsemen and the occaisonal onager. The rest is fodder.