How do you use onagers?

[Wausser]

I never use them, they slow my army down, and as stated in this topic: not effective enough

[ReluctantSamurai]

There's one faction that can benefit from their use in field battles.......Carthage. For some reason, the designers didn't give Carthage foot archers (although archers sit in the towers atop War Elephants) and slingers just don't cut the mustard in my book.

Onagers are helpful in those bridge defense battles where you don't have archers but your opponent does. You can't just stuff the bridge without coming under arrow-fire, so you hold your troops back out of archer range and let your onagers thin out those archers.

Once in a while, you get lucky and land one or two shots into the foot units massing to cross the bridge and create a HUGE amount of casualties. But, as has been mentioned, a bit of luck is involved so don't base your entire strategy on them.

If you find yourself defending a very high hilltop, they can be murder, as their effective range is enhanced and sitting high uphill from your own troops reduces the risk of friendly fire.

As has already been mentioned, they make a fun diversion, but don't rely too heavily on them.

[Spartan198]

In field battles: I position them behind my heavy infantry (hoplites, legionaries, etc.) and let them shell advancing forces, then cease fire and retreat them after the hand-to-hand combat begins.

In siege battles: I auto_win most sieges because I'm not very good at them, but in the specific case of forts, I use onagers to take out nearby towers (they wreak havoc on my flanks), then once that's done, I'll just set them and archers to flame projectiles and fire at will and let them shell the troops inside until they're out of ammo, then retreat them all and send infantry and horses to finish off the few that remain. Gives new meaning to the word "killbox".

[SubRosa]

I avoid using Onagers in field battles if I can help it. My typical field army is a full stack of units, plus a second stack with a few replacement units of each type I have, a few Peasants, and two Onagers. The first stack does all the fighting. The second one just tags along behind and rotates fresh units in to replace those that take losses. The Peasants are there for a quick garrison for whatever cities I may take.

When I come to a city I bring the Onagers up to the first stack so I can assault immediately. I use them to knock a hole in the walls directly across a street going to the town square, then knock down the towers flanking it. Then I go straight in, not having to worry about fire from the towers.

[Spartan198]

Hmm...I think I might try the "reinforcement" stack method.

Gods know I've fought more than one army to near complete annihilation just as I reach those outlying lvl 1 provinces...

[SubRosa]

It is a trick I learned playing Carthage. I built a Great Armament to take on Rome. All Sacred Band, Long Shields, and War Elephants. Needless to say I could not retrain most of them in Italy. So after every battle I started to carefully merge my depleted units (so I did not lose any units, or lose experience in them). Then I would send the weakened left-over units back to Carthage to retrain. The reinforcements waiting in the second stack would then come up to fill out the ranks. When the units retrained in Carthage they would come back to the front and join the reinforcement stack.

That gave me a full-strength army at all times, even though I had to go back all the way to Carthage to retrain. It takes a lot of micro-managing though, as you have units going back and forth all the time.

[Xander77]

I'm actually fairly fond of onagers, except for the part where they slow down my advancing army. They're bloody good on defense and when you don't have to move your army much (Italy with highways).

There are basically two things that can happen in a field battle. Either the enemy sprints to avoid the onager fire - which means you can skip the stupid "enemy army finds the nearest hill and stays there while you find a way to properly catch them" portion of the battle. The enemies arrive at your lines worn out (if not exausted) and give you plenty of time to maneuver your cavalry behind their lines. If you have a decent "archers shooting them along the way + front lines to give them a stern welcome" they are very likely to start a chain rout.

Other option? They hang out at onager range (or right outside it, which means you have to inch forward - then either option 1 or they hang out at onager range). And you get a bunch of free kills, some morale loss for every unit... and you onagers get slightly more accurate with xp.

Nearly ignored is the matter of using onagers on siege defense in a wooden wall settlement. Sally forth, and stick your onagers near the walls. The enemy army usually tries to bugger off to one corner... but since most of the map is taken by your settlement, they can't go outside onager range without retreating completely. Free kills. A lot of them, if you get enough onagers. Works really well against somewhat archer poor armies (romans etc). For BI hordes you really want stone walls - no way to use onagers, but great for archer duels with an unfair advantage).