Shooting Flaming Arrows at Siege Equipment

How is it determined when a piece of siege equipment catches on fire? Does it have some kind of hidden hp? Or is it random?

Archer towers are fairly decent at this. One would think that archers would be similarly effective. However, this does not seem to be the case. How does this come into play with the first question? Are archers any good at this, or should I just train more melee infantry and stick them on the wall at the siege tower exit (the enemy seems to die surprisingly quickly that way, not sure why).

I ask this because as Rome I have held off the Egyptians at Lepki probably 10 times with the help of very large stone walls, some merc phalanx, and Garamantines. They siege, I shoot their siege towers and battering rams and send some fast infantry to take out the sap points (why can't cavalry attack them?).

But sometimes one siege tower remained, so I tried Numidian archers with flaming arrows. I shot over 2000 flaming arrows into that siege tower, and it refused to go down. They usually catch fire after maybe 30 shots from archer towers. But I had an archer tower shooting at it, also! So the number of arrows until they catch fire seems to be pretty random and much, much worse for regular archers.

You can incinerate both siege towers and sapping points with archers (watch all those tunnel rats getting buried, harharhar). AFAIK Ballistae can catch fire too, though I'm not sure if archers can cause them to do that.

What's really funny is when a siege tower pulls up to a wall and everyone is loading up and then your archers finally set it on fire.

Yes you can shoot docked towers. However the game seems to mark certain siege units to die before it begins. I've focussed tons of archers on a ram to never set it on fire but I've also set a siege tower on fire on my first shot. Usually if the item catches on fire, it'll catch in the first few volleys. Otherwise they will probably never light no matter what you do. This is all from observation.

The less siege equipment the less likely it is to catch fire, according to my personal experience (and of course vice versa). Also, rams catch fire easier than towers.

But it is true, in my opinion, that archers have very little effect against siege equipment, especially compared to towers. Is there a reason for this? I'm guessing it's from the RTW and not EB.

In my expririence, flaming arrows do little to siege equipment. I can send all the arrows at it but it will not catch.

I normally have to rely on the towers for doing the job.

Sometimes I will focus fire my archers/slingers/skirmishers at the troops behind the ram or siege tower. The delay produced when the enemy moves additional soldiers forward to the equipment to replace those killed by my missiles sometimes results in enough time gained for my towers to set the equipment on fire.

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Originally Posted by Frontline1944

Sometimes I will focus fire my archers/slingers/skirmishers at the troops behind the ram or siege tower. The delay produced when the enemy moves additional soldiers forward to the equipment to replace those killed by my missiles sometimes results in enough time gained for my towers to set the equipment on fire.

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That is a good idea! I had not thought of that.

Well, I remember I have experience about setting enemy rams on flame whithout archer towers (just use Payai dunai), with woodwn palisade as my only defenses. But sure, towers did the job faster and better...

I believe in BI siege equipment catches hardly ever fire, neither from towers nor from archers. So if you do not want to see enemy siege equipment destroyed before it is even used: play with the BI.exe.

About using archers to set towers ablaze: make sure they actually hit the tower. If the tower is too close to the wall, some of your archers may fire to the upper-platform of the tower, where the enemy infantry masses before scaling your walls. If they fire at that area, there's little hope for the towers to burn. If you want to set a tower ablaze that has been positioned close to your wall, you'll need a small angle to hit the towers side (use archers that are not standing close to the tower).

I think at Lepki I actually need to kill their army. So I've decided to allow a single siege tower to reach the walls and pack that wall with units. The enemies jump off the ramp, but with nowhere to land on the wall (too crowded), many of them seem to fall to their deaths :beam:

I think in general this might be better than shooting the siege equipment with archers - if I have money to train archers, I should be able to train melee infantry and put them on the wall. That way I keep them out of the city AND kill their army, since the computer is smart enough to "run away" when they lose their siege equipment.

Besides, for the price of 4 or 5 units of archers, I can get 3 or 4 melee units, which seem to work better in this situation anyway (I have still not caught any siege equipment on fire with flaming arrows, and I've tried on 4 different sieges since I started this).

Does battle map difficulty have anything to do with it?

BTW, I'm using the standard RTW exe. I guess I'm glad I'm not using BI.... I think I would lose if they brought a big army and I had to fight them at the gates, even with boiling oil and phalanx.

BI did could burn siege equipments with arrows!

Bet you using/against simple toxotai / skudjanz / sotaroas.... that have crappy missiles anyway....

Does anyone else hate it when the ram burns instead of the towers since boiling oil makes defending so hilarious?

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Does anyone else hate it when the ram burns instead of the towers since boiling oil makes defending so hilarious?

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Never use ram against stone walls and up..... time to let your peasants dig instead!:furious3:

Well, actually siege towers are best manned with gaesatae / tidanotae.... try to get their service.... it really worth! (Maybe some other kind of elites works as well)

Nah, I prefer to have the rams destroyed instead of the towers. It's a pain to reallocate the majority of my forces from the walls to defend the now-destroyed gate because the enemy decided to drop whatever they were carrying/pushing (ladders, towers) and rush over to the gate where they can wait to be roasted by boiling oil... which, I suppose, is somewhat funny in a sense.

Phalanxes aren't effective on walls though. :-D

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

Phalanxes aren't effective on walls though. :-D

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Which is why I prefer to fight them on walls and not at the gates. :beam:

No one here ever set Epirote Elephants on fire?

I'll tell you a story lads.
Epirus seemed set on taking Athens from me.
They didn't bother their arse with siege equipment and just sent in elephants...

What they didn't count on was the bloody boiling oil that cooked the elephants alive one by one as they lined up to the gate.... Ironically, had I autoresolved, I would have lost...

My observation is that siege equipment catches on fire more easily if hit from a side, rather than directly from the front. :2cents:

From what I've seen, they seem to have a completely random chance for lighting on fire. Sometimes the first volley sets them on fire and sometimes it will take forever. One time, I had my archers firing at a tower while it unloaded its troops and it caught fire at the last moment and burned down just after the last guy jumped onto my wall.

I also agree that hitting on them in the sides seems to be most effective.