A while back I overestimated my single ballista's ammo capacity, and targeted some towers before banging on the gate or opening a breach. Mistake. I ran out of ammo before the gate broke. So I had to resort to archers and peltasts. Because these troops work on a different aspect of the gate ("Fire Damage" vs just plain "Damage"), they had to start over at 100%, and it took a long time. I had several units firing to spread out the casualties, and they still took a lot of damage, one unit came close to routing. No doubt in my mind that if I'd used a single unit, they would've been massacred and/or routed long before the gate burned, and probably the second and maybe third sacrificial lamb as well. It worked for me, but was expensive enough that I'll always try to ensure I never have to do it again.

None of this is a rant at all...I like it this way. I made a mistake, had to go with a suboptimal tactic, and paid a pretty hefty price. Not only were my missile units pretty beat up, but they used up nearly all their ammo (7 units worth; 3 peltast, 4 archer). They were out of the fight afterwards. That's how it should be.

This was during Patch 4...I can't remember and am too lazy to go look...did they perhaps "rebalance" missile troops gate-burning capacity with that patch?