Gate oil effectiveness

[bmolsson]

Can't you see the KFC sign on top of the gate ?? Their oil is always hot.....

[SwordsMaster]

IMO the oil isnt overpowered. MAybe less frequency could be a good point, but think about elephants. I tried. I only lost 1 elephant to oil (normal elephants, not armored beasts) and I had them knocking down the gate for a while.

I think an armored war elephant would suffer no damage at all and just go rampaging into the city.What I dont quite get is why soldiers with huge shields dont use them to protect themselves from the oil...

But thats a different question

[Medieval Assassin]

I haven't seen oil yet, I'd rather use ladders.

[Siris]

You got your elephants to go insdie? Mine in multiplayer, always just, stay on the outside, wont go inside...

I was thinking, that if I could get the gate's open, and sucessfully get elephants inside, it'd be like this, say, vs. SPQR at the Roman gates:

Roman Commander: (the men lined up by the gate, because the ram has been battering it, and its about to be opened) You are soliders of Rome, no matter what comes through that gate, you will stand your ground.

Gate is thrown open, and suddenly, (at least) four armoured elephants run in, and make the elephant noise (like a scream), charging for the Roman line.

The Roman Commander suddenly has a look of awe, shock, & terror (like Gandalf in LOTR Minas Tirith Seige, when the Trolls came in).

The elephants charge straight into the Roman line, throwning dozens of troops 50 ft. in the air, smashing many more into the walls, crushing dozens beneath their feet, and the archers shooting down upon them. (like when the trolls went in & started kicking Gonder's @$$) lol, that was the effect I wanted, but instead, the elephants just stand outside, not going in!

[SwordsMaster]

The trick with the eles is not to order them to attack a unit, but run thru it and once all of the beasts are in the city, then you can click on attack. There seems to be some pathfinding problem when you want to move them into the city.

Personal guess is that if you click on ATTACK, they try to get in formation first (but they cant coz the gate is so narrow) so they just run around the gates getting tired and getting their pachydermian backs shot.

If you just click somewhere inside the city, they'll just get there first and then reform, which allows them to go thru the gate one at a time.

Thats what I deduced from my observations....

[Red Harvest]

Elephants are not a valid test of oil effectiveness (nor archers.) Elephants are oddball units with high multi hit points. Plus they will penetrate most defender formations regardless. With all other units you get stuck standing their meleeing with oil pouring on you. Elephants go on through the enemy defenders, so they take some losses of their multiple hit points, but nowhere near like any other unit would. The elephant unit will be part way through before the oil even starts.

[Empedocles]

I suffered an oil devastating attack the other day trying to capture Menfis.
Egyptians had lost a serious of battles in their eastern frontier when I saw Menfis had only 320 defenders! So I decidied to take a chance with my 550 army and attacked.
I charged and their axe men were the only ones defending the gate so it took me a lot of casualties to pass them trough (they routed at the last moment and it came as a surprise for me) I inmediatly took the gate so the damn oil stop killing my men.
When I looked around I see that I had 150 men left and they were all in 7 or 6 units!!! I decidied not to retreat and by the time I reached the central plaza their general moved and made all my army retreat.

So, oil is waaaayyy too powerful in the game, but gates are just fine.
I have few questions left:

a) is a command where I can tell two units to merge and became one? Because a line of 25 legionaries is not as good as a one of 50!
b) the sapping of walls can be stopped by the defenders? Because now I only do two sapping and breach the wall! They can't stop me!

Diego, from Argentina

[Red Harvest]

There is no "on battlefield" unit merge that I am aware of.

Sap points can be destroyed although I've never seen it happen.