Lighting up a siege ram...

Alright, I'm getting frustrated.

I am playing as Russia and I am loading up some of my volatile cities in central Europe with a militia army consisting of five archer militia units (along with others). I get sieged and assaulted about every other turn in the current game, but at first I figured it would be easy to light up the siege rams with five full salvos of flaming arrows raining down.

Wrong.

I rarely, if ever, can get sieqe equipment to catch on fire, even in clear weather. Does anyone have more success with this? Is it a function of missile damage, and my archers just aren't powerful enough?

The few times I've had to burn seige equipment has resulted in a very disappointing success rate.

For some reason the AI seems to be far more successful however.

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For some reason the AI seems to be far more successful however.

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That would be "balance," I'd say. ~;)

Don't count on buring rams or siege towers. Counter them at the wall/gate. If you can burn them, great. But don't base your defense on that as even cannon towers are very unpredictable at destroying them (if a lot better!) Unfortunately, we get led to believe out fire arrows will be as effective as the AI's. They are not. I estimate they are 1/2 to 1/3 as effective. I've had three rams in a row go up in smoke in one siege, had to withdraw. Meanwhile I'm lucky to burn one in three when defending.

Get high damage melee units on the walls to counter ladders and towers, and stack spears at the gate or breach on "guard." Plow high damage melee units into the flanks of the assaulting troops at the gate/breach. Save cav for emergencies, or wait until they are storming and send them outside from another gate to charge into the rear of the assault force. Nice routs that way.

A few archers are good. Flaming arrows have nice morale effects and killing off some of the arriving troops is always nice. And they can do wall defense in a pinch against less than high-quality troops. They get big defensive bonuses on the walls against storming troops.

At a minimum you can make the enemy pay 3+ to 1 losses for your garrison. You can hold against 1:3 odds with a decently composed garrison, and higher is possible with experienced troops and good generalship. And luck can make a large difference too. The quality of the walls or castle play a role too. As do the more advanced towers.

I find that the ability to burn siege equipment goes up as you fall back farther into settlements. Of course this is useless in a settlement with only one wall but in castles I find it alot easier to burn a ram once it enters the castles first set of walls. I've literally tried like crazy to burn a ram at my first gate and don't even damage it. But I I've burned plenty of rams at my second gate in about the same time it takes the AI to burn my down.

Using Longbows in Jerusalem will produce vastly greater results than peasant archers in Russia. It all depends on range and weather conditions. Just remember to focus every ranged unit on one single piece of equipment, usually the ram as they rarely employ the backup. Then they will swarm the walls unorganized, where you can slaughter them. (And slaughter your FPS rate, as this always causes substantial lag :wall: )

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Originally Posted by vonsch

That would be "balance," I'd say. ~;)

Don't count on buring rams or siege towers. Counter them at the wall/gate. If you can burn them, great. But don't base your defense on that as even cannon towers are very unpredictable at destroying them (if a lot better!) Unfortunately, we get led to believe out fire arrows will be as effective as the AI's. They are not. I estimate they are 1/2 to 1/3 as effective. I've had three rams in a row go up in smoke in one siege, had to withdraw. Meanwhile I'm lucky to burn one in three when defending.

Get high damage melee units on the walls to counter ladders and towers, and stack spears at the gate or breach on "guard." Plow high damage melee units into the flanks of the assaulting troops at the gate/breach. Save cav for emergencies, or wait until they are storming and send them outside from another gate to charge into the rear of the assault force. Nice routs that way.

A few archers are good. Flaming arrows have nice morale effects and killing off some of the arriving troops is always nice. And they can do wall defense in a pinch against less than high-quality troops. They get big defensive bonuses on the walls against storming troops.

At a minimum you can make the enemy pay 3+ to 1 losses for your garrison. You can hold against 1:3 odds with a decently composed garrison, and higher is possible with experienced troops and good generalship. And luck can make a large difference too. The quality of the walls or castle play a role too. As do the more advanced towers.

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You see, that is part of the difficulty of Russia. You need to focus on settlements early for the cash (there is a lack of it in the steppes) so you are forced to field militia armies to protects cities. The best you can do in that department, for the most part, is Spear Militia (no cav bonus and no schiltrom) and archer militia. Maybe crossbow militia if your city is far enough along. Sometimes, it's just not feasible to supply your frontline cities with heavier infantry from far away castles...

Destroying rams is pretty much impossible until you start developing the defensive towers, at which point it becomes more or less inevitable. I suppose that a siege or cannon unit placed outside the gates could manage it, but I've never tried that tactic. I find the best tactic for handling rams sans defensive towers is to send out a melee unit to engage the unit guiding the ram until the enemy's ladders reach the wall. The A.I. will almost always abandon their other siege equipment and try to send their whole army up the ladders, where they're easy pickings for even Archer Militia to rout. As a bonus your towers and unengaged missile units can pick off a lot of the enemy soldiers clustering about at the ladders' feet.

So I'd always recommend keeping at least two melee units in any garrison (one to occupy rams and the other siege towers). Cavalry are preferable for this, since they can take out more of the enemy in a charge, then retreat behind the gates with little loss. However, not every nation can field cavalry from cities, but infantry will work as well.

Heh, on this topic, I just had Hungary backstab me and send a small army to besiege Kiev from Iasi. I was 3 turns away with significant reinforcements. I didn't think it was an issue because I had 3 militia archers and 2 militia spears and a wooden wall. I could see 4 units in their army, one a general (which was not good). So they besieged, stormed first turn after arriving. And the odds were 1:3 against me! Turns out one of the other units was dismounted knights (chivalric, I think). The others were spear militia and Croat axemen. No big problems there. Because their army was so small, they only had a single ram.

I, of course, put all three archer units on the wall shooting fire at the ram. As it got to the gate, it started drizzling! I figured I had serious trouble. But I'm used to stone walls more than wooden (I don't seem to have those for long!) and didn't realize archers on the walls can still shoot at the ram when it's working. About 60 seconds after it started bashing, it started smouldering.

Must be the team of Orthodox priests that just arrived to pray.

But Agent Smith reminded me of something I'd noted in the past and forgotten. Russia's spear militia don't get the cav bonus. Ouch. Sounds like they're really town militia in disguise. At least their main enemies don't use much cav... err, wait! Well, the Danes don't!

I'd rather just wait with all of my infantry at the gate than burn down the ram. While my infantry is holding and killing the massive charge into the city, my cav just swings outside and charges into the back creating insta mass rout

i can always get towers to burn, not rams

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Originally Posted by Crazy Larry

I suppose that a siege or cannon unit placed outside the gates could manage it, but I've never tried that tactic. .

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In deployment phase it is anything but impossible...

Later, after battle starts, moving your siege weapons or artillery out a side door will take longer than the siege towers or ram will take to reach your walls

So I think it's a :no:

Lighting up rams

Ballista towers seem to do the best job at close range. (But cannons can, if you're lucky destroy rams at long range

Archers using fire arrows are so inaccurate that they rarely hit anything specific. If you have the towers it's sometimes better to fire normal arrows at the unit pushing the ram so it has to continually stop and replace the men at the wheels. (Normal fire is both more accurate and has a faster rate of fire.) That gives your towers more time to finish the ram off.

(A lot also depends on the armour of the men pushing the ram though, weather conditions, experience of archers, type of archers, layout of approach to entrance, number of towers in range, how many other targets are in range etc etc)

If you check the damage done to a ram on its approach, you'll notice that a volley of fire arrows usually does 1-2% damage, ballistas do several times that. nb rams can catch fire with as little as 20% damage, but others carry on with much more. (Are there 2 different scores for damage on rams - fire damage and ordinary damage?) (Once alight the usually keep burning until they disintegrate - but don't ask me what the critical value is for that.)

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Originally Posted by Rozanov

Lighting up rams

Ballista towers seem to do the best job at close range. (But cannons can, if you're lucky destroy rams at long range

Archers using fire arrows are so inaccurate that they rarely hit anything specific. If you have the towers it's sometimes better to fire normal arrows at the unit pushing the ram so it has to continually stop and replace the men at the wheels. (Normal fire is both more accurate and has a faster rate of fire.) That gives your towers more time to finish the ram off.

(A lot also depends on the armour of the men pushing the ram though, weather conditions, experience of archers, type of archers, layout of approach to entrance, number of towers in range, how many other targets are in range etc etc)

If you check the damage done to a ram on its approach, you'll notice that a volley of fire arrows usually does 1-2% damage, ballistas do several times that. nb rams can catch fire with as little as 20% damage, but others carry on with much more. (Are there 2 different scores for damage on rams - fire damage and ordinary damage?) (Once alight the usually keep burning until they disintegrate - but don't ask me what the critical value is for that.)

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Actually, fire arrows do NO damage to rams. The damage from fire arrows to rams is caused by them catching fire. You can fire at a ram all day and it will never go above 0% damage.

I'll have to try taking out the "pushers" next time. I'll see if five archer units can at least accomplish that...

Agent Smith wrote:

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Actually, fire arrows do NO damage to rams. The damage from fire arrows to rams is caused by them catching fire. You can fire at a ram all day and it will never go above 0% damage.

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With all due respect Agent Smith you are talking rubbish.

I have just done a simple experiment which you are at liberty to repeat.

Set up a custom battle with english as defenders (faction 2) and scots as attackers (faction 1). Have a simple settlement with wooden walls.

Equip english with 3 bog standard longbowmen and the scots with 1 unit of rabble and a ram.

Fight as last man standing.

At start of battle run your three archer units out of the settlement and put 2 one side and the other to the other side of the gate. Put all on skirmish mode and use fire arrows.

Aim at units at ram as it approaches the settlement.

For a while not much happens. The rabble push the ram to the gate, the archers fire and maybe kill the odd scotsman. Scotsmen then attack the archers.

As the archers are split, at least one unit can keep firing.

In my experiment after 1 unit had fired about half its quota and having done no damage, the ram caught alight and quickly burnt to a cinder.

After the initial couple of seconds when no damage was done to the ram, the only fire directed at the ram came from the archers, nowhere else.

So. Yes archers can destroy rams with fire arrows, given time.

My surmise is that there must be a flag that is set to ram_not Burning at the start of the battle and then (perhaps randomly or after a certain number of hits - I'll let those who delve into the deeper mysteries of the prog to let us know) the flag gets set to ram Burning and away it goes.

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Originally Posted by Rozanov

Agent Smith wrote:



With all due respect Agent Smith you are talking rubbish.

I have just done a simple experiment which you are at liberty to repeat.

Set up a custom battle with english as defenders (faction 2) and scots as attackers (faction 1). Have a simple settlement with wooden walls.

Equip english with 3 bog standard longbowmen and the scots with 1 unit of rabble and a ram.

Fight as last man standing.

At start of battle run your three archer units out of the settlement and put 2 one side and the other to the other side of the gate. Put all on skirmish mode and use fire arrows.

Aim at units at ram as it approaches the settlement.

For a while not much happens. The rabble push the ram to the gate, the archers fire and maybe kill the odd scotsman. Scotsmen then attack the archers.

As the archers are split, at least one unit can keep firing.

In my experiment after 1 unit had fired about half its quota and having done no damage, the ram caught alight and quickly burnt to a cinder.

After the initial couple of seconds when no damage was done to the ram, the only fire directed at the ram came from the archers, nowhere else.

So. Yes archers can destroy rams with fire arrows, given time.

My surmise is that there must be a flag that is set to ram_not Burning at the start of the battle and then (perhaps randomly or after a certain number of hits - I'll let those who delve into the deeper mysteries of the prog to let us know) the flag gets set to ram Burning and away it goes.

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You COMPLETELY msised what I said. Of course archers can catch rams on fire. I've been saying that throughout the entire thread.

What I said was, if you hover the mouse over the ram, the damage to the ram will ALWAYS say 0% no matter how long you fire at it with fire arrows. It isn't until it catches fire from said fire arrows that the damage percentage begins to increase. The catching fire does the damage, the fire arrows do not.

It does seem to me that fire-ballistas light up rams and towers more often than anything else. Cannons seem to be almost useless against rams, in my experience, but they work wonders on towers and the enemy army. When it comes down to it, you simply need to remember that, unlike in RTW, you cannot count on destroying all their siege equipment. You can get some, but you had better prepare to defend your walls and a breached gate, otherwise you're in trouble. If you defend your gate area and then manage to burn the rams, all the better... move your gate defenders to the walls.

If you can't defend the walls and the gate at the same time, I suggest you do what damage you can and then retreat to the streets or the town square.

In my experience Ballista Towers are best at stopping rams, while Cannon Towers do perhaps slightly better against Seige Towers.

One of the best tactics I've found against a ram is to increase the time it spends inside the towers' fire zone by using a suicidal cavalry sally to temporarily halt the ram's progress.

Such a cavalry sally can also work against ladders, towers and artillery.

Agent Smith

I'm pleased we agree that fire arrows can cause rams to catch alight.

And that once alight the damage increases.

And that non-flaming arrows on their own won't damage a ram.

(but we have yet to work out exactly what triggers the catching fire, and whether being damaged by ballistas makes them more flamable.)

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As for cannon towers - well if you're lucky and the AI army has a couple of units of siege artillery that it uses in an attack, then your towers will fire a mixture of fire and solid shot at the artillery units. Luckily the rest of the AI army is usually nearby and that means rams and siege towers also get hit.

In one battle the Pope was "attacking" marseilles (IIRC) that I was holding as England. Settlement had towers that fired cannon balls and flaming shots. Pope sent forward 2 trebs and a couple of mortars to attack my walls - and they made a couple of holes in them before they were destroyed. But so were 5 rams and a siege tower. All rather pointless as the gates had been opened and they could have simply streamed in before I got my defence organised.

Interestingly once the siege artillery is destroyed the towers stop shooting as the rest of the army is officially out of range - even though they have been killing 50% of the army whilst "out of range". (The joys of over-shooting and bouncing cannon balls.)

Firing at a moving target cannon are pretty hopeless, unless the target is a slow moving mass of troops.

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Originally Posted by Rozanov

Agent Smith

I'm pleased we agree that fire arrows can cause rams to catch alight.

And that once alight the damage increases.

And that non-flaming arrows on their own won't damage a ram.

(but we have yet to work out exactly what triggers the catching fire, and whether being damaged by ballistas makes them more flamable.)

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Ok, I'm glad we're relatively on the same page now, although, again, the damage will never go above 0% until the ram catches on fire. :2thumbsup:

I haven't tried ballistas yet, but I did notice something the other night when I was playing a siege. It happened in a castle, while my other experiences were mostly in towns. This castle, however, had a gate structure that looked like a square missing one side with the gate at the bottom. This allowed me to fire onto the sides of the siege ram instead of having to fire head on with archers on a straight wall.

The siege ram caught fire extremely quick in this scenario. I don't know if it's because the arrows are more accurate because the profile of the ram presents a larger target or if the castle tower arrows were more effective. Either way, the ram didn't get more than halfway to the gate before it was a goner.