ballistas or cannons vs units?

[PittBull260]

i always use a few artilerry weapons in battles. I have found out, in my case, that ballistas do better than cannons versus units (not buildings). I think it might be because the ballista reloads faster? i'm not sure. i just wanted to see what u guys know from your past experiences.

[PBI]

Yep, reloads faster and is much more accurate. The only problem is range, cannons are the only unit which can pound an enemy army turtling on a hill from halfway across the map. Ballistas have to get just outside arrow range to start firing. But they still usually get a lot more kills than a cannon thanks to their far higher accuracy; in theory the cannonball should do more damage, but in practice both will take out a whole column of the unit they hit, and most of the cannonballs will miss so the ballista ends up getting more kills.

In theory, the cannon will rack up far more kills if you can get enfilade fire on the enemy line, allowing them to pretty much tear up the whole line in a single shot. But cannons are so slow moving and battles over so quickly that I've never had the chance to do this. Also the AI usually seems pretty hot at chasing down undefended siege units. You can sometimes get some use out of cannons in sieges to bombard the mass of units in the center (besides the obvious use for knocking down the walls), but in field battles they are a bit disappointing.

Really, to have cannons that are useful on the battlefield, you either have to play the Americas campaign, or mod them yourself to up the accuracy. To make them really good, give them grapeshot to replace their secondary fire, although this makes them way too powerful.

[Quintus.JC]

I only use cannons for siege assults, gun powder units are unreliable compared to good old melee infantry.

[LadyAnn]

How about trebuchets? Better range than Balista?

Annie

[Old Geezer]

Trebuchets literally cannot hit the broad side of a barn. Ballistas (with flaming bolts) stay effective until there are no more elephant units to be had. They are a pain to take into battle but a few gold chevroned ballistas should be very helpful in causing elephants to run amok. (I have never had higher than a silver chevroned one, but I can dream.) Also they don't make all that loud nasty noise or pollute the environment as much as big ole cannons.

[PBI]

The point of trebuchets is the cows. One or two cows directly in the path of the enemy army will do more damage to morale than a cannon or ballista will, and thanks to the huge are of effect the hideous accuracy doesn't matter. Any kills it manages to get with normal ammo once the cows are gone is a bonus.

I'd say that purely thanks to the stinky cows, the trebuchet is the only siege weapon that is worth the unit slot on the battlefield, outside of specialist roles such as skewering elephants (wherein the ballista is really just a poor substitute for javelins).

Plus, biodegradable ammunition. Can't get much more non-polluting than that.