Artillery Pieces

[paleologos]

I have never used them, I think they are too expensive, but I can afford them now. Are they any good for their money?
What is the best way to deploy them (and employ them)?
Thanks.

[Fluvius Camillus]

In my Epeiros game, the biggest one were not very good against stone walls, in fact, they were near useless and ruined my economy. But I hear some people say that the arrow throwers are quite handy.

~Fluvius

[Cute Wolf]

especially somewhat ironical thing... the most effective artillery in EB is the cheapest arrow throwers, as it could kill enemy's armoured regimants easily and they come in 8

[paleologos]

especially somewhat ironical thing... the most effective artillery in EB is the cheapest arrow throwers, as it could kill enemy's armoured regimants easily and they come in 8

The EDU file can be easily modified. Can it be modified so that those pieces be made useful?

And are they mobile?

[Cute Wolf]

The EDU file can be easily modified. Can it be modified so that those pieces be made useful?

And are they mobile?

yeah, just increase the largest range, damage, and piece, so they'll have 4 ballistas each team... and increase the 30 minai one to have 6 and increase them with more range (but less damage)...

BTW you can also edit the projectiles_new file, to give the projectile better accuracy and wall damaging power.

[paleologos]

Are they fixed on the battlefield or are they mobile?

[Cute Wolf]

Are they fixed on the battlefield or are they mobile?

they are mobile (unlike most artillery in ETW), but as they are pushed by mere human (not horses), expect them to be insanely slow to move

[paleologos]

What do you think would be fair price for their usefulness (recruitment and upkeep) ?

I suspect that if the number of pieces per unit is modified the game will crash.

[Cute Wolf]

What do you think would be fair price for their usefulness (recruitment and upkeep) ?

I suspect that if the number of pieces per unit is modified the game will crash.

nope, no crash, I have modded that myself to my sp EDU

BTW, with default EB settings, only the lowest arrow throwers is useful (actually it was underpriced in default EB i think), but supposedly better artilerry was almost complete useless... they are overpriced and underpowered. Sapping walls with akontistai works better than getting artillery to knock them down

[Macilrille]

But in Field Battles many enemies rout at the sight of them...

[Apázlinemjó]

The cheap arrow throwers are insane general killer machines, beware them!

[paleologos]

The cheap arrow throwers are insane general killer machines, beware them!

What do you mean "cheap"?

[Duguntz]

You know, (personal opinion) artillery isn't worth a damn, their only use in the game is to make you loose your treasure in insane construction cost and upkeep. don't build them. many said : yeah, they're good to inflict fear.. well, hire any naked units and you'll cause fear for... 27 000 mnai less! they breach walls... RAMS ALSO! and they're free, also they're good against packed ennemy : not as good as massed sligners... so all in all, artillery is worthless. that was my 2 cents

[paleologos]

You know, (personal opinion) artillery isn't worth a damn, their only use in the game is to make you loose your treasure in insane construction cost and upkeep. don't build them. many said : yeah, they're good to inflict fear.. well, hire any naked units and you'll cause fear for... 27 000 mnai less! they breach walls... RAMS ALSO! and they're free, also they're good against packed ennemy : not as good as massed sligners... so all in all, artillery is worthless. that was my 2 cents

Without ever having used artillery I would assume (as a matter of fact I did assume this, that's why I haven't recruited them so far) that they are way overpriced for the weight any one unit is likely to pull during a battle. The purpose of this thread is to gather opinions and suggestions regarding the modifications that can and should (and also shouldn't) be made in order to make artillery pieces worth both their money and the unit slot they will occupy in any army. Raising and upkeep costs are very easy to tweak. What is potentially tricky is to avoid making doomsday machines out of them and therein lies the need for advice.

Also, another question about artillery: in vanilla RTW art. pieces made armies slow in the campaign map, which as far as I was concerned was enough of a disadvange to not have them. Are things better, the same, or worse with EB in this department? Is there a way to modify the speed of art. pieces in the campaign map?

[Macilrille]

They are the same or worse. Whish is the main reason I use them little as civilised faction. When you can build them as Rome, money is no problem, at this point I also sometimes build an ele or two just because I can. But arty is sooooooo slow on campaign map. Naval transport helps.

[mountaingoat]

have not used them , though one light cav suicide charge into them, and you might help out the AI economy

[paleologos]

I would like to modify the artillery in my game so that in the campaign map they move as fast as infantry. Does anyone know how I can do this?

[Apázlinemjó]

What do you mean "cheap"?

*cheapest, my bad.

[paleologos]

I would like to modify the artillery in my game so that in the campaign map they move as fast as infantry. Does anyone know how I can do this?

[Ludens]

Since this is about modifying the mod, I am moving this to the submod forum.

[Cute Wolf]

actually, I've doing some mess about artillery unit peroperties in RTW for my mod (but that was far2 away from EB timeframe), and found that Artillery, when having too accurate projectiles, or too powerful shots, could made a doomsday machine that will take down cities to smoking rubbles in no more than 30 minutes. The trick of doing a realible, but not way overpowered artillery units lies in adjusting their accuracy, damage against buildings, ammo, and crew strength, as well as making consideration with Cavalry speed and power (you don't want puny artillery crews to easily pwn cavalry don't you?).

The ballista, scorpiones, and such small artillery could works fine on their own, without being overpowered with high accuracy ammo (using 0 as accuracy value), but the area impact artillery needs to got some really deep consideration.

Therefore, the best way to made realible artillery is getting them in "moderate accuracy projectile" about 0.05-0.1 accuracy values, get some strength to really damage the walls and towers (important if you consider large and huge stone fortifications), but also keep strong, fast cavalry units so they could be effectively countered. (but in another way arround in this argument, this way, we will end up made overpowered cavalry divisions)

[paleologos]

That is all so good but does anybody know how to make artillery faster on the campaign map?

[Teucer]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I'd love to hear the justification for making artillery so unbelievably expensive in EB. They cost way more than a unit of triremes, and if I recall one unit of ships is supposed to represent a fleet (32 units - 32 ships, right?). I understand making the big guns only available at the upper MIC levels, but why are they so expensive? The materials needed to construct a catapulta or ballista are nothing special (good quality wood, carpentry tools, some specially-forged metal pieces, and horsehair for the torsion skeins). It would be hard to find someone with the requisite engineering skill to build a working engine, but shouldn't this be reflected by a limited area of recruitment and high MIC requirement rather than exorbitant price?

[Ludens]

The subject came up recently in another thread. In my opinion the cost represents two things: the wages of the siege engineers (designing, constructing and operating these machines would have required some highly advanced knowledge for the time) and the fact that they are somewhat overpowered. Siege weapons were rarely used in field battles, and it would still take weeks rather than hours to knock a wall down.

[Teucer]

thanks for the pointer... I'll check out that thread.

[belliger]

yeah, just increase the largest range, damage, and piece, so they'll have 4 ballistas each team... and increase the 30 minai one to have 6 and increase them with more range (but less damage)...

BTW you can also edit the projectiles_new file, to give the projectile better accuracy and wall damaging power.

hi cute wolf. can you explain me where to to find this 'projectiles_new file' and how to work with it?