seige equipment and arrow throwers

[gja102]

hi, I'm a bit new to EB but obviously I am wowed by its awesomeness. Anyway, a few things were bugging me about seige equipment:

1) Does anybody find any real use in their strategy for using the stone/arrow throwers? In my experience the arrow throwers are powerful but way too inaccurate, and expensive, to be any use whatosever. Similarly, stone throwers will smash a few guard towers, but why spend tens of thousands to achieve something you could do with a free-of-charge seige tower? Am I missing something? (please note this isn't a complaint, I'm not arguing for the return of vanilla RTW onagers, I'm just curious about how to use these units)

2) Guard towers: the AI seems oblivious to the fact they fire arrows, and will happily march up and down in front of them while half their army gets shot to pieces. Is there any way of weakening/removing the weapons fired by guard towers (thus helping the AI), or is it hardcoded?

3) In vanilla RTW the largest seige towers came with ridiculously powerful rapid-fire ballista weapons. Is it the same in EB? And does that mean that you should avoid building the largest type of stone wall?

4) Is there a formula for approximating starvation death when seiged in a city? I never know how many men I'll lose.

Thankyou for withstanding my barrage of vaguely-related questions.

[Chris1959]

My own preference if I fight a siege battle is to use assault towers as I like to clear the walls and sieze all gates and towers. As you say it hurts the enemy but mainly to stop me getting hit when inside the walls.
Catapults and saps can annoyingly stop you from transversing the wall! Also, artillery is the slowest unit on the campaign map.
Note I mostly play Romanii so legionairies are very good on walls.

[Maion Maroneios]

I almost never use arrow throwers myself. But when I do, I always have some Heavy Cavalry behind the crew when the enemy decides to counterattack. Don't bother using them against Light Cavalry or Skirmishers, you'll utterly waste your ammo. Use them against naked dudes, closely-packed Heavy infantry or extra Heavy Cavalry (like Cataphracts). I've also killed a General with a single shot once

Maion

[antisocialmunky]

Continuing in the fine tradtion of TW, generals are artillery magnets.

[Apázlinemjó]

Continuing in the fine tradtion of TW, generals are artillery magnets.

Well my only success in killing FM with siege engine was in MTW2. The almighty Pope was hit by a huge stone from one of my trebuchets. Byzantine Empire for the win.

[antisocialmunky]

Well my only success in killing FM with siege engine was in MTW2. The almighty Pope was hit by a huge stone from one of my trebuchets. Byzantine Empire for the win.

I've lost numerous generals in MTW as well as managed to snipe those 10 star Immortal Byzantine Brothers because of arty.

[miotas]

How long would real seige weapons have taken to knock down a stone wall in real life? Weeks? Months?

[Cute Wolf]

Never use siege engines in EB...

1) Too exspensive

2) Too weak

3) Too lame





Better

1) Starve em out

2) Mount with siege towers

3) Use Rhodians to took the defenders

[jhhowell]

1) Does anybody find any real use in their strategy for using the stone/arrow throwers? In my experience the arrow throwers are powerful but way too inaccurate, and expensive, to be any use whatosever. Similarly, stone throwers will smash a few guard towers, but why spend tens of thousands to achieve something you could do with a free-of-charge seige tower? Am I missing something? (please note this isn't a complaint, I'm not arguing for the return of vanilla RTW onagers, I'm just curious about how to use these units)

4) Is there a formula for approximating starvation death when seiged in a city? I never know how many men I'll lose.

1. Yes, I use them in my Rome campaign. Bobbin's unit card mod is helpful, telling you how many artillery pieces you get. The big stone thrower is utterly useless - one artillery piece, so it barely breaks through a stone wall's gate with its last ammo. The smaller stone thrower unit works well though, easily gets you through a stone wall with ammo to spare for suppressing nearby wall towers if need be (2 artillery pieces makes all the difference). Similarly I favor the lighter bolt throwers since you get 8 artillery instead of 4 for the heavy bolt throwers. Not every legion has artillery, but many do. Usually a light stone thrower in a city near a potential enemy, and a bolt thrower with legions on or near a frontier (standing on the bridge next to Tarsus, for example). Note that stone throwers won't get you past a heavy stone wall, so artillery can be mostly useless in Hellenic and Eastern territories. The Celts/Lusos/Germans can't build beyond basic stone walls, so stone throwers are useful in the west. For some reason the AI rarely fortifies the eastern Mediterranean coastal cities (Halikarnassus through Sidon), so that's a good use for them too. Raiding Antioch and burning it to the ground in a single turn was fun! That would be the main answer to your "why use them" question - take the city instantly, before any nearby armies can interfere. Particularly when raiding enemy homelands from the sea, as in the Antioch example. I haven't tried it yet, but they may also be useful to force those massive central European rebel armies to besiege you in the city they were supposed to defend, rather than fighting you in the open field.

As Rome, the enormous cost of artillery is a virtue, not a flaw. Factions like Baktria will obviously disagree on that point.

4. I think it's random. A few percent per turn seems typical.

[gja102]

Thanks, I didn't realise the larger versions of the catapults only had half the ammo. And I never thought of the potential for general-killing. I guess I could look at the arrow-throwers as a sort of elaborate, ancient-era sniper rifle.

(I like this talk of elephants, escpecially considering what just happened in my current campaign as Carthage. While assaulting Rome, the Roman faction leader was killed amongst the elephants, and in the cutscene it looked exactly like he'd been crushed to death by a toppling, dying elephant. brilliant death scene. do collapsing elephants squash the units beneath? or was it just coincidence they died at the same time?)

[machinor]

(I like this talk of elephants, escpecially considering what just happened in my current campaign as Carthage. While assaulting Rome, the Roman faction leader was killed amongst the elephants, and in the cutscene it looked exactly like he'd been crushed to death by a toppling, dying elephant. brilliant death scene. do collapsing elephants squash the units beneath? or was it just coincidence they died at the same time?)

Coincidence.

[Darius]

I honestly think if you have your elephants head spiked while they're on a city street, it should be all but impassable. They'd be the ancient equivalent to a road-block, yes debris and such would be easier and less expensive, but personally I'd prefer the elephant corpses.

[Labrat]

(While assaulting Rome, the Roman faction leader was killed amongst the elephants, and in the cutscene it looked exactly like he'd been crushed to death by a toppling, dying elephant. brilliant death scene. do collapsing elephants squash the units beneath? or was it just coincidence they died at the same time?)

No, I've lost generals to dying elephants as well. When an elephant dies, cavalry standing next to it often dies as well. Not sure whether the engine realizes they should be crushed, or it simply the effect of amok elephants.

[Irishmafia2020]

I lowered the upkeep cost of siege equipment so that I (or the a.i.) would use them. I really don't mind spending 10,000 on a toy, but with a crew of six, it shouldn't cost 4000 a turn to maintain... I've heard that the ballista is useful for hunting elephants, although Siege artillery slows down an army so much that I would rather just use skirmishers for that task.

[Fierro]

No, I've lost generals to dying elephants as well. When an elephant dies, cavalry standing next to it often dies as well. Not sure whether the engine realizes they should be crushed, or it simply the effect of amok elephants.

I've seen friendly and AI units get killed immediately next to dying elephants plenty of times. Elephants still fighting, not running amok.
So I would have to say that they do crush nearby units upon death.

[Apázlinemjó]

No, I've lost generals to dying elephants as well. When an elephant dies, cavalry standing next to it often dies as well. Not sure whether the engine realizes they should be crushed, or it simply the effect of amok elephants.

I guess it works like at sieges. WHen you break the walls (even if it's made from wood) and the enemy units are standing too close to it, then some of them will be crushed.

[Andy1984]

Elephants definitly kill people and cavalry standing next to them when they die, as they already did in vanilla. Killing generals by having your elephants being brought down is besides enjoyable also quite costly.

About artillery: I don't use it. I'd rather have a second army supporting my humanitarian missions than a single unit that is remarkably bad at killing people (cost-wise).

[machinor]

3) In vanilla RTW the largest seige towers came with ridiculously powerful rapid-fire ballista weapons. Is it the same in EB? And does that mean that you should avoid building the largest type of stone wall?

Yes, it's the same in EB.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

3) In vanilla RTW the largest seige towers came with ridiculously powerful rapid-fire ballista weapons. Is it the same in EB? And does that mean that you should avoid building the largest type of stone wall?

In EB, the top level of walls (Epic Stone Walls) is disabled, and so are the biggest siege towers. But the top siege towers of EB are still quite giant.

No, I never use artillery since there's always an army standing nearby the settlement you want to seize, or one that will attack you while you are sieging.

[gja102]

In EB, the top level of walls (Epic Stone Walls) is disabled, and so are the biggest siege towers. But the top siege towers of EB are still quite giant.

Cool, thanks. I was hoping the epic walls would be disabled, I didn't trust myself not to use the 'free machine-gun-ballista' exploit from vanilla, that made fighting on walls obsolete. I've come up against large seige towers, they're hefty but at least they aren't game-breaking.

Nice work EB.

[Cute Wolf]

If u don't want those machine guns, u can stop the "Fire at will" button... but using them is a BIG FUN

[Mikhail Mengsk]

I think artilleries are ridicolously overpriced in EB, i will never buy them. I will take cities by starve or by siege machines.

[Maion Maroneios]

I don't think they're overpriced, but they certianly have riddiculus upkeep. As such, I decided to lower it and guess what? The AI seems to use them on the battlefield. I know for sure the Pontioi have, when they once creamed my Doryphoroi Pontikoi.

Maion