Sieging Rome - huh?

I was wondering if someone could provide me with an explanation of the following:

I am sieging Rome as the Scipii. I have two units of ballista, which is just enough to bring down one large stone wall, and no other siege machinery nor artillery. However, once I get to the 100%, the wall collapses, my ballista run out of ammo, and a few seconds later I get a "close defeat" scroll and the battle ends?!?! The timer was not even down to 2/3, the wall fell, the old men of the SPQR are ripe for taking, and I get the defeat scroll even before any engagement 3 times in a row?

What gives?? :angry:

Perhaps you need 1 final hit beyond 100% to make the wall completely collapse. Right now it looks like when the ballistas run out of ammo, the game judges that you can't possibly break the walls down (I'm assuming you have no other siege weapons) so the battle automatically ends. Not sure on this though, that's very weird.

did the walls totally broke down or just a peace, cause i needed 12 large onagers to break down 2 pieces of epic wall

Do have the battle time on? I find they are actually shorter than smaller battles. Twenty three minutes!

So I reloaded and let the AI sally forth. Funny thing is, the reinforcements seemed to be ALWAYS delayed. Of course, the AI was crushed and everyone inside the building disappeared. It must be fixed so the Ai reinforcements actually appears.

Also, after I attacked the Scipii, the Senate outlawed the two other factions. :dizzy2: So ALL three factions were outlawed....

NO it just happend to me just now. I think the game engine just figured u had lost all ur missile for ballista and had no other way to enter the city walls. Crummy test if u ask me. They shouldve accounted that you already knocked down the walls and can proceed inside.

Let the AI sally then. Take them out in the open field. They always sally when they are superior in numbers.

It is fairly difficult to fight through a large city full of elite units with reinforcements, arrow towers and with very little time.

If you wait another turn, they will likely sally anyway. Just post the bug in the sticky thread, perhaps it will make its way to CA's attention. ~:cool:

Why on earth use balistas>?

you must be at the stage that you can produce onagers by now?

And yes if you run out of ammo on seige weaps before you make it 101% thru the wall the game tells you are defeated.

No point in hacking away at the walls with swords eh?

I've experienced a lot of wierd things when assaulting large cities, I swear the fucking game cheats for itself. I've had ladders that I've constructed disappear, "destroyed" gatehouses shoot at me, soldiers run in every direction but hrough the gate or breach, and have not been allowed to shoot at walls with my onagers. But what really pissed me off is when I had just layed siege to Rome and had ordered towers built. On their turn, the defenders sallied out, all 163 of them, I thought great, this is going to be easy, but when the battle map came up they never came out and I had no siege equipment yet with which to assault the city. I was pissed!

-Silius Sodus

The best cheat I have seen from the AI is from a few pre-patch sieges.

I had built four towers to attack with. All four rumble towards the walls and in one case there was no archers and in another there was one unit of archers. In the first case (Rome actually) one tower began to burn when it had suffered about 10 firearrows from the gate, while the others took many more and still rumbled on.
In the other case the archers focussed on one tower (but failed to kill it), but to their great luck another tower collapsed from about 10 firearrows from the gatehouse again.

I must say I have been a bit puzzled as it what happend to my two towers, and I have been very happy that I had four towers.