siege weapon field tactics

Hi folks. Just wanted to open up a discussion on people's experience with all roman siege weapons (yes, even the non ornager ones) during field battle (NOT sieges).

I personally found most siege weapons to be too *damn* slow to be effective. With my fighting style I need something more along the lines of a mortar than a howitzer. (light enough to move with the troops but packs enough punch to suppress/route the enemy)

So far that role has been filled by 2 cretean archers and 2 roman archers (i'd use 4 creteans, except I try to limit my cretean archer losses if battles happen to turn out bad since I don't reload a botched fight. just adds more realism and impact to the war losses). But since this is a thread about siege weapons strictly, I was tooling around with repeating ballistas but not having much success (the range is too short).

I like ballistas in spqr and rtr, as they have increased the weapon:unit ratio to more realistic levels, making the units useful.

Personally I just find theres nothing as satisfying as having a few units of scorpions bombarding the enemy general. And nothing as cinematic as hitting him when hes charging and watching him literally fly accross the screen in his death animation.

I have found artillery to be a waste of money out side of sieges, they just don't do enough damage unless the AI puts its troops in 1 big clump and sits still, all in all in a field battle i'd rather an extra unit of archers, or cavalry, or infantry, well anything really except skirmishers

Repeating ballistas usually are good for forty kills a game for me. It's the fact that those kills are of the hardest enemy units that makes them worth while. Spartans, Bastarnae, Generals, you name it, they kill it.

Maybe its because my artillary are crewed by raw recruits and they can't hit a barn door from 3 paces.
I have completely ceased artillary production because of the dissapointing results they give in field battles, the fact i can usually wait 1 turn to assault a city (or even better send a spy or 2 into the city to open the gate for me), and finally they slow the army down on the campeign map (unless of course you plant the army on a boat, which is not always possible).

Perhaps i should get a pantheon of mars and a top level artillary builiding place (?!?) and try some 3 chevron repeating ballistas

I only use them when defending, not attacking - because as you said they are just to slow.

Also in vanilla RTW I also practicly never used them, only since RTR have I started.
More machines a unit make them worth their money, especially the repeating balista's
Still in RTR I also just use them for defending ~;)

:balloon2:

Unless you train them with +3 experience, artillery is only good in sieges. On the field, I never use balistas, as my Archers are good enough. If I happen to have onagers in my army I tend to go straight on the offensive with the rest of my units, thereby keeping the onagers well away from the action, and any enemy cav.

I rarely use any form of ballistas instead when I field artillery I use scorpions. I only wish they reloaded quicker but then I agai nI don't because it would be like some sort of ancient machine gun.

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Originally Posted by Garvanko

On the field, I never use balistas, as my Archers are good enough.

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What happens when you come up against heavily armoured troops (cataphracts) or two hit point troops?

In middle game I start to move 2 ballista with my armies, the additional morale hits on the enemy makes battles much shorter. I will also use a standard 2 (merc) hoplite, 2 ballista or onager, 2 archer unit for bridge duty. Its a small enough force not to cost much, but heavy enough to destroy enemies attempting to cross with almost twice as many units.

mfberg

I barely use siege weapons, and when I do I generally use Onagers.

Once when using repeating balistas as my general was charging he reared his horse to do the whole sword waving troop encouragement bit and was hit by a balista shot (my own). Needless to say it killed him and his bodygaurd routed soon after that. IMO the friendly fire potential of siege weapons is too great for anything less than Onagers with flaming shot or Onagers vs. walls to be used, and they should only be used before you send your troops in.

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Originally Posted by dgb

What happens when you come up against heavily armoured troops (cataphracts) or two hit point troops?

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I lose.

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Originally Posted by dgb

What happens when you come up against heavily armoured troops (cataphracts) or two hit point troops?

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Use some form of elite spearmen, and shoot the 2 HP units twice as much?

I haven't found them too useful either. Range is good but as soon as you get one hit off the AI just starts running its troops all over the place and its hard to get any good hits in. Sometimes they just start outright charging which makes the siege units completely useless because friendly fire chance is just too high.

I generally only use artillery as a chokepoint defense, for example, on bridges.

Having scorpions hit anything on the bridge from the wide while your onagers hit their ranged weapons pretty much is an unstoppable combo, especially with any kind of phalanx blocking the bridge.

Although cruel and probably has no chance of making it past the game censors, it would have been nice to be able to fling dead and or live bodies with your siege weapons in order to greatly reduce the enemy morale (or piss them off really badly). As a variation you might even go as far as flining diseased animal or human corpses, thus being able to induce plague at will. An offset to the potential destructive powers of this could then be something like everyone in the same stack as the artilary of the damned would suffer morale penalties and has higher risk of contracting disease. Also the artilary can only load up on fresh "ammo" after a battle by collecting corpeses. (yes, I realize this is almost like that warcraft 3 unit. I hate warcraft 3 with a passion).

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

I only use them when defending, not attacking - because as you said they are just to slow.

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On the contrary, I find siege weaponry to be extremely useful when attacking, especially the Onager class. If you are attacked, usually the enemy rushes or moves towards you rather soon, which leaves you very little time to exploit their abilities due to the horrible hit percentage and friendly fire (I think most of you know how it feels to have an important unit hit straight into the back by a flaming pot [?]).
If you are on the offensive, the enemy tends to occupy the highest availabe ground and wait for you. Well, let him --- shoot him to pieces resp. ashes with your onagers (deploy more than two to really bring them into effect) whose missiles have a greater range than any of their archers'. Keep your machinery protected by a line of spearmen in case the enemy abandons his position.
Not only is this a nice spectacle if you use flaming missiles, but it will likely grant you a much easier victory than otherwise because all you basically have to do is to clean up afterwards, preferably with your cav. Just cease fire soon enough to let your troops get towards the enemy safely.

Sitting out victories .... nice thing.

@cruix,
if you are out for that special kick: okay, machines won't so, but British Head Hurlers. The heads could have been made more distinct, though.

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Originally Posted by cruix

Although cruel and probably has no chance of making it past the game censors, it would have been nice to be able to fling dead and or live bodies with your siege weapons in order to greatly reduce the enemy morale (or piss them off really badly). As a variation you might even go as far as flining diseased animal or human corpses, thus being able to induce plague at will. An offset to the potential destructive powers of this could then be something like everyone in the same stack as the artilary of the damned would suffer morale penalties and has higher risk of contracting disease. Also the artilary can only load up on fresh "ammo" after a battle by collecting corpeses. (yes, I realize this is almost like that warcraft 3 unit. I hate warcraft 3 with a passion).

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Not only is that a ripoff of Warcraft III it is also way to far out. I think they wanted the game to be 'somewhat' historical. This may have happened before historically but it would not have been widely used.

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Originally Posted by Krauser

I think they wanted the game to be 'somewhat' historical.

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~:eek: :dizzy2:
Warpigs?"
Wardogs?
Egypt?

I think they've failed that one allready, they may as well wreck it completely.

I always use seige weapons (when available) for both offense and defense. I use onagers to pound the enemy reserves and cav and repeating ballistas in the center of my front line to break any heavily armoured units. They're not necessary in order to win of course, but its more fun to have em.

Once in a while when I feel like it! I put 3 units Of onagers w/ my army. when I meet a worthy foe, I usually have them use their flame ability and see their little barbarian Bodies go to a crisp. Then after the battle is done I send my wardogs to feast on their Flesh. ~:handball:

I have tried using ballistas against elephants but they seem to be aiming for the driver and they always miss. Does anyone know how to fix this with some mod?

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Originally Posted by YoungMaster

I have tried using ballistas against elephants but they seem to be aiming for the driver and they always miss. Does anyone know how to fix this with some mod?

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i believe this may be the historical origin of that saying about not being able to hit the side of a barn.

If the wall is stone or higher, a few siege towers does the heart good. And the walls bad.

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Originally Posted by Kourutsu

If the wall is stone or higher, a few siege towers does the heart good. And the walls bad.

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where the heck do you get walls during a field battle??? I did say "not sieges" on the very first post.

Not just onagers are good for attack, I actually found that the other siege weapons work better when you attack than when you defend. Whenever I defend with siege weapons the AI always rushes my position no matter what.

When I attack the AI only rushes sometimes. Plus as mentioned before the siege weapons are excellent for driving the enemy off the hill.

The best non-siege use for these units would probably be attacking bridges, because you can use lesser units for defending bridges.

The only other thing I use siege weapons for is killing elephants, which they don't do very well, except onagers, but even they're barely adequate, and this is with temple of mars pantheon. I need to kill at least a significant percentage of one elephant unit and the onagers maybe kill about 20-25% of them.

I tried using scorpions on elephants; the elephants just charged and stepped on them. 2 scorpions + 2 archers vs. 1 war elephant = 2 dead scorpions + 2 dead archers.

I find siege weapons very effective during battles as well, both in attack and defence. Siege weapons are an absolute must for your bridge defence armies and its always useful to have 2 onagers in your invasion forces. I also find it extremely useful to have siege weapons (usually a wide array) for your defence forces inside frontier towns that get invaded often (especially if you have stone walls), onagers are good at taking out siege towers (if your lucky enough to hit them) relatively quickly, and you can places balistas inside your walls facing the gates/wall breaches to give the enemy hell when they inevitably get inside your city through those small chokepoints. The effect they have on morale make them particulary good I think.

Other good points about siege engines:
- burning as much of those gallic cities to the ground, just because you can.
- getting lucky and hitting the enemy general and getting a cheap easy kill.
- that great feeling you get when your onager fireball gets a direct hit on an enemy phalanx
- cheap and easy kills on elephants (again if your lucky)
- the fact it mixes up battles a bit more cause of that big risk of the fireballs smashing into your own troops instead of the enemy
- they're fun

that's quite counterproductive, from my POV. But that's just my personal bias.

a) why would you want to burn all those gallic cities to the ground when all that eventually happens is that you'll have to repair the damned barbarian buildings again? They don't disappear off the 'town' display, they just show up as 100% damaged, and will deprive you of retraining and public order facilities that you eventually have to spend on. Obviously you weren't listening to Marcus the Centurion's admonition: Your objective is to capture the city, not destroy it.

b) Cheap easy kills are okay, it's exciting, but is it worth taking up one entire unit card (or two, in your case) just so you get that 5% chance of hitting the enemy general?

c) I wholeheartedly agree on this one. Just that, well, most of the time they're too damned inaccurate anyway to hit. So not worth the time, the risk, the expense, and the lower mobility of armies and manoeuvre with siege weapons to burden the movement.

d) More likely (read the post just before yours) the stupid elephants will just step on you. It's dumb to hope to kill elephants with lucky hits--you'd need at least 13 of them. Spook them, maybe. But not kill them.

e) I fail to see why you're so excited about friendly fire. Most people on this forum are searching for ways to minimise FF.

f) ...and they're practically useless in most contexts.

In the campaign, the AI likes to have some siege weapons on hand so I usually try to counter that with my own seige weapons. Besides, its fun to see the people go up in flames and cry out ~D

I keep 1-2 Onagers behind my archer line which is behind my frontline to take out any artillery on the field.