How to "arm" your towers

Have you ever noticed those little flags on the towers of your walls? Have you ever noticed that not all towers have flags?

Your towers, much like siege equipment, must be manned in order to work! Having a huge citadel does you no good if you do not have the men to man the walls and operate the tower weaponary.


In order to man your towers, a unit must simply be placed directly adjacent to them. Your men may be placed either on the walls or on the ground, but must be close enough to the tower to make the faction flag appear above the tower.

I only discovered this after a month of playing!


Did this help you?

I voted "No," but in fairness to you DA, if I had seen this post 3 days ago I would have voted "Yes." I've been playing for much longer than one month, and I only just discovered this myself on the weekend.

I'm a dork...

:shame:

It was documented and mentoned when the game came out actually, but still useful for the newbies to have as a reminder.

Going to have to vote gah on this one. There's yet to be a thread devoted to it, but it's been covered quite alot. Was one of the big sell points, known about before it went gold. Truly though it does make those peasants and town militia useful for something though.

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.:2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.:2thumbsup:

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He's referring specifically to Ballista towers and Ballista crews. To man a Ballista tower you have to park your ballista and it's crew on the ground next to the tower.

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

He's referring specifically to Ballista towers and Ballista crews. To man a Ballista tower you have to park your ballista and it's crew on the ground next to the tower.

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Okay, who broke the wrong-o-meter?

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Originally Posted by Elmar Bijlsma

Okay, who broke the wrong-o-meter?

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Care to be more specific?

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

Care to be more specific?

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What happens if you do not park your ballista crew next to a ballista tower? What if only peasants are manning the ballista tower? does it not work?
I think the question is, does the ballista crew add anything additional to a functioning ballista tower?

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Originally Posted by Chosun

What happens if you do not park your ballista crew next to a ballista tower? I think the question is, does the ballista crew add anything additional to a functioning ballista tower?

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Then the Ballista cannot draw a line of site to the enemy and cannot fire on them.

If you man your Ballista tower with a ballista and it's crew, then your ballista may fire on the troops outside your walls.


I don't think you get arrow fire from a tower if you don't have missile units manning it but, I don't know that for a fact.

Kraggenmoor, your towers will fire regardless of who is nearby. The projectile fired by a tower is entirely dependent on what type of tower you built in that city/castle. There isn't any LOS issue either, on the walls or behind them, the towers fire isn't influenced in any way.

i noticed this before... that when you dont place your troops on the near the gate for example but immediatly on the square, the gate towers wont shoot... thats when i discovered that you had to keep your troops near the wall... though i hadnt seen the flags...

ELmar, the direction the the tower shoots at is definitly influenced. its set from the beginning and is the same every time you play the map... atleast for ballistas... i thought arrow fire had a wider (not longer) range but ballista's can only shoot in the direction they face... when you zoom in on your towers you see the ballista placed... when you walk out of his firingrange it wont hit you...

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Originally Posted by The Stranger

ELmar, the direction the the tower shoots at is definitly influenced. its set from the beginning and is the same every time you play the map... atleast for ballistas... i thought arrow fire had a wider (not longer) range but ballista's can only shoot in the direction they face... when you zoom in on your towers you see the ballista placed... when you walk out of his firingrange it wont hit you...

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Two issues are being confused here.

Kraggenmor seems to be saying that you must have ballista crews manning your ballista towers, and missile troops manning your arrow towers if you want them to fire ballista bolts/arrows. This is not the case. You can have peasants manning your towers if you want, and the towers will still fire their missiles.

As to your point, I believe that arrow towers at least will fire arrows at enemy troops even if they have entered your city and are behind the towers. I'm not sure if the same is true for ballista or cannon towers.

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Originally Posted by Goofball

Two issues are being confused here.

Kraggenmor seems to be saying that you must have ballista crews manning your ballista towers, and missile troops manning your arrow towers if you want them to fire ballista bolts/arrows. This is not the case. You can have peasants manning your towers if you want, and the towers will still fire their missiles.

As to your point, I believe that arrow towers at least will fire arrows at enemy troops even if they have entered your city and are behind the towers. I'm not sure if the same is true for ballista or cannon towers.

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My experience:

I built Balista towers and they did not fire balista projectiles until I parked a Balista next to the tower. After doing that, I was able to select the balista unit, set it a target and even get flaming missiles if toggled the balista unit on the ground to use fire.

In instances where I have no missile troops in the besieged location and troops on the wall, I have not noticed missile fire from the towers. I remember thinking that it was quiet appropriate not to get missile fire without missile troops present.

I don't know what is "supposed" to happen but, this is how it works on the unmodified, patched version of M2TW that is installed on my machine.

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Originally Posted by gardibolt

I posted 'yes' because although I knew you had to have troops by the towers, I thought they had to be up on the walls. If they can man the tower by being down on the ground, which is much safer, that's certainly useful information.:2thumbsup:

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Heres a good tactick for deffending citadels have your cavlary stand next to the towers on the first ring and pull all your men back to the second ring and man those walls. When it looks like your front walls are gone pull your cavalry back to the second ring fast when the enemy gets near that way you get the maximum amount of casualties to the enemy from your towers without loseing a single man. Doing that even with a small garison against a full stack of mongals ive never lost the second wall and wiped out there entire army on a VH/VH campaign.

You can do the same sort of thing for cities aswell use the cavalry to man the towers and then use pike/halbred/spearmen to block the main street directly facing the gate near the city square with archers/crossbowmen just to there rear. The towers will do maximum damage this way without any loses and you get plenty of time to setup your spearwall & schiltroms to grind the enemy down in the main street.

Trust me they defintly work ith any unit. set up a quick seige battle in custom battle with a single unit of spear militia on each side and a Ram on the attackers side. Make yourself the defender and put your spear militia unit on the wall above the gate itself. the towers on eithier side will shoot, (includingh flaming arrows).

@Kraggenmor seriously Carl is telling you the truth the towers dont work that way any unit can man them.

Hi,
I have done many battles in which I had no missile units and I still got arrows out of my towers, and fire arrows that burned the battering ram. Now I dont have a lot of experience with ballista towers or cannon towers but I doesnt seem like you would have to have a cannon or a ballista there to fire them....Tho like I said I havent, I think, ever fought a battle with ballista or cannon towers.

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Originally Posted by zulukiller

@Kraggenmor seriously Carl is telling you the truth the towers dont work that way any unit can man them.

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I am not saying any one is being less than truthful, nor am I saying what I experience daily is the only way it works.

What I am sayin is just what I said:

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Originally Posted by Me

I don't know what is "supposed" to happen but, this is how it works on the unmodified, patched version of M2TW that is installed on my machine.

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Towers are bugged, especially castle towers. With Castles, Ballista towers fire arrows, and cannon towers fire ballista bolts. They don't seem to fire cannonballs. CA said this was going to be fixed in the last patch, but it clearly wasn't.

Krag, the ballista-next-to-a-tower thing was likely a coincidence if it happened in a castle. It doesn't matter what you man the towers with, if they are cannon towers they will fire cannonballs even if you have peasants on them. Heck, you can even man towers with cavalry if you put them on the streets below.

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I am not saying any one is being less than truthful, nor am I saying what I experience daily is the only way it works.

What I am sayin is just what I said:


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Originally Posted by Me
I don't know what is "supposed" to happen but, this is how it works on the unmodified, patched version of M2TW that is installed on my machine.

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We actually posted around the same time so I didn't se the bit you quoted, however i have no problem with what your saying. it isn't my expiriance, but that dosen't mean it's necesserilly wrong, others might want to remeber that and be less harsh on you IMHO.

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Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

Have you ever noticed those little flags on the towers of your walls? Have you ever noticed that not all towers have flags?

Your towers, much like siege equipment, must be manned in order to work! Having a huge citadel does you no good if you do not have the men to man the walls and operate the tower weaponary.


In order to man your towers, a unit must simply be placed directly adjacent to them. Your men may be placed either on the walls or on the ground, but must be close enough to the tower to make the faction flag appear above the tower.

I only discovered this after a month of playing!


Did this help you?

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I got that during the first day... :inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by The Medieval 2: Total War Manual

Defensive fortifications need to be manned in order to be activated - It is not enough to simply build the fortification in the first place.
- If a unit of the defending faction is near a tower or gatehouse, the defensive missiles there will fire on enemy units that come into their firing range
- It is possible for the attacker to take control of fortifications once they gain control of the central square

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So that's how it's supposed to be.

The second point is actually rather interesting, as it suggests that the irritating issue of defending units not using towers on captured walls may in fact be a 'feature'

concerning ballista towers:
I noticed them firing boulders.... more like a catapult tower then, eh?

There's tons of bugs with the towers - what you saw was ballista towers firing cannons :P

Another notable bug is that huge cities get ballista and cannon towers for free with the default walls and lose them when they upgrade :P

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Originally Posted by sapi

There's tons of bugs with the towers - what you saw was ballista towers firing cannons :P

Another notable bug is that huge cities get ballista and cannon towers for free with the default walls and lose them when they upgrade :P

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That hasn't been my experience.

I fought a battle last night in a huge city that was in the process of but had not completed constructing ballista towers. The towers fired nothing but arrows. The city was attacked again a few turns later after the towers were complete, and they fired ballista bolts.

thanks for info