Is it only me or cannon towers are weaker then ballista towers?

I prefer to play a long and slow campaign with much buildings. So I keep Bordeux and Toulouse as citadels controling the advance of spaniards untill take Central Europe. So those 2 citadels repelled 1000s of spanish attacks and when the gunpowder was invented I happily built cannon towers there.
But... since I build the cannon towers they seems prety useless - they usually can't destroy a single siege machine quite unlike the ballista towers.
And yes, I man them - obviously, because it is the same attack over and over again with the same defenders.

Cannon towers are definitely stronger. I faced Mongols with ballista towers in my game and Timurids with Cannon towers. There was a huge difference in kills.

For the cannon towers, the first salvo took down 3 elephants. The Timurid cav force was cut to shreds very quickly as their rams and siege towers were all destroyed. Against the mongols, the ballista towers killed slower.

Castles or cities?

Incidentally - I'm pretty sure I've had huge cities without having built cannon towers (and way before the invention of gunpowder) laying waste to invaders with cannon...

If you check the buglist you'll notice that cannon towers sometimes shoot ballisae bolts and vice versa.

Odd :P

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Originally Posted by sapi

If you check the buglist you'll notice that cannon towers sometimes shoot ballisae bolts and vice versa.

Odd :P

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And it seems no fix for this in the incoming patch:-(

how you know? the patch tread on the .com of yesterday was just a fake..
We don't have a official list of fix at the moment , so lets hope


btw: any modder has checked if it is fixable by ourself?

The problem with the Cannon towers from my experience isnt that they don't do major damage..it is that they are not accurate...or shall I put it like this..

"They can't hit a cows backside with a banjo" lol

Also notice how flamed arty is all over the show also...

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Originally Posted by Barry Fitzgerald

The problem with the Cannon towers from my experience isnt that they don't do major damage..it is that they are not accurate...or shall I put it like this..

"They can't hit a cows backside with a banjo" lol

Also notice how flamed arty is all over the show also...

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I saw the siege army cannons were pretty accurate in hitting the same point of the wall untill it breached. Meanwhile my cannon towers (which had 4 times more cannons then the siegers) were plowing the empty fields.

I've got cannon towers repelling Milan once every few turns in Milan. Most of the time Milan uses two siege towes, and most of the time the Cannons take both out before they reach the walls. Sometimes one makes it to the walls.

Havent had a whole lot of high end settlment sieges but citadels are pretty bugged

A regular citadel fires arrows, a citadel with ballista towers still fires arrows and a citadel with cannon towers fires ballistas at least that's what's happened so far in campaign and also attempts in custom battles.

As far as cities all has worked correctly for me at least so far in campaign and custom battles.

Large cities can have ballista towers, huge cities automatically get the ballista towers with the ballista towers being a prerequiste for cannon towers.

So to get the cannon shots from the towers (what ever they are) I have to build only ballista towers in the cities and cannon towers in the castles? Or the opposite?

Listened quite carefully during the last siege - fortress with cannon towers. The sounds wes definitely of ballistas, not cannons. what the towers really shot I don't know - I am quite confused now. What the towers shot looked as firebolts wich set the siege tower in fire.

When I played Byzantium, my ballista towers fired cannon balls at all cities, but not at castles. However, when I played Spain that didn't happen. It might be faction specific or area specific, since the game usually has the Byzantines lumped into either the Eastern European or Greek areas with all their stuff. The Spanish buildings list as Southern European, but for some reason their cannons are northern European. Go figure.

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Originally Posted by Handel

Listened quite carefully during the last siege - fortress with cannon towers. The sounds wes definitely of ballistas, not cannons. what the towers really shot I don't know - I am quite confused now. What the towers shot looked as firebolts wich set the siege tower in fire.

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The towers appear to get extra ammo while there is siege equipment in range, at least in the higher end settlements. You'll see only regular shots coming out when it is only troops but if it's a siege tower/ram or an artillery piece that wondered too close, you'll see the regular ammo fired plus a flaming shot.

So how to distinguish when there is are cannon shots and when there are ballistas shots? How they look? Besides sounds, which can be bugged too?

Range is the big difference. Ballista towers sometimes don't have enough range to reach from the walls to the enemy's setup line (the closest point of their deployment area). Cannon towers can reach most of the way to the edge of the map. If they start firing at everything as soon as the battle starts, you have cannon towers. Plus, you can sometimes see the cannonballs flying.

One strange thing I found out when I was playing as Byzantium. I had just captured Venice (around 1150, 1year/turn) and the next turn I was besieged by an HRE half stack. Next turn they assaulted, since they had catapults with them. I fought the battle on the battlemap. The moment i hit "start battle" I hear cannons firing. I thought i was mistaken until I saw their catapults getting destroyed in a few seconds. And it was 1150! Did anyone else see that? Maybe they did it so that Venice (historically being impegnerable) is hard to capture?

Pause the game right after they fire, then you can check if the projectiles are cannonballs or ballistas.
I have had the same issue with both cities and castles.

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Originally Posted by majesticchapel

Pause the game right after they fire, then you can check if the projectiles are cannonballs or ballistas.
I have had the same issue with both cities and castles.

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Plus the great big crashing sounds and screen shake are usually a clue that there's cannonry afoot...

Did you know that only huge walls get to fire cannons with only ballista upgrade.On large walls, it just fires balista bolts. Cannon tower upgrade seems redundant coz it doesnt improve anything. And castle walls will always shoot ballista no matter whether its ballista or cannon upgrade.(This needs a major fix)