Siege Towers

[Lochar]

I noticed sometimes when I make them, in some battles they look reinforced and sturdy and in others it looks the same as always. Is their a different to their armor or anything? and what causes the more advanced looking towers?

Also I noticed a top floor that has a viewing slit, were these for archers or just the person directing the tower? I thought it would be fun to camp some archers in it, but no go.

Also on a side question, does anyone have a good tip for cavalry? I find myself micro managing them since they wont withdraw from charges. I tried using a waypoint charge, but this doesnt seem to work, not sure what has to trigger in the battle for them to advance to the next waypoint.

[Productivity]

The type of tower is controlled by the type of walls. This has the effect of making it easier to defend a normal stone wall, than it is to defend an epic stone wall.

The top floor has different things on it, controlled again by the type of wall, at epic you have a repeating ballista, not sure what it is as you go down. Again this makes it easier to defend a normal stone wall. The whole siege towers automatically upgrade depending on wall type is just dumb.

[Quietus]

noticed sometimes when I make them, in some battles they look reinforced and sturdy and in others it looks the same as always. Is their a different to their armor or anything? and what causes the more advanced looking towers?

I think it is related to the wall you are attacking. Larger and Epic stone wall gives you with the built in ballista (also don't bother building ladders, since they can't be used here). In a regular stonewalls you get a normal siege tower and you can use the ladders.

Also I noticed a top floor that has a viewing slit, were these for archers or just the person directing the tower? I thought it would be fun to camp some archers in it, but no go.

They actually fire by itself. just enable the fire-at-will button, and they will shoot at the enemy on the walls that are within range.

Also on a side question, does anyone have a good tip for cavalry? I find myself micro managing them since they wont withdraw from charges. I tried using a waypoint charge, but this doesnt seem to work, not sure what has to trigger in the battle for them to advance to the next waypoint.

Just use the pause button so you can direct multiple commands. You have to get used to it since they made the game uber fast.

Just make sure you charge at the enemy back (while pinning the enemy upfront with another unit).

You have to manually click to move away and recharge back. But if you hit them at the back, they normally would rout on contact anyway.



edit: oops took too long to answer

[lars573]

The slit is where the archers for small towers and the ballistas in larger towes fire from. The unit pushing the tower mans the archer/ballista in the tower. To use them just make sure that when you attach a unit to the tower to turn on fire at will. If you attach a unit with a ranged attack, like legionaries and forrester warbands, make sure that their fire at will is turned off before attaching them to the tower then turn it on once it is. As for cavalry tips well try this for a set up
HI=heavy infatnry unit (legionaries, pikemen, hoplites, swordsmen)
LI=light infantry unit (archers skirmishers)
HC=heavy cavalry unit
LC=light cavalry

HC LI Siege unit LI HC
LC HI HI HI HI HI HI HI HI LC
LI

This set up allows the light cavalry to drive off skirmishers and other light cavalry. Also the light cavalry can flank and raid as possible. The heavy cavalry should be kept in step with but slightly behind your main infantry line. So that when the time is right it they can be the hammer to the infantry's anvil.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Ooh, ooh, the epic and large wall siege towers!! They come with the ridiculous insane machine-ballista!!! The machine-ballista is the greatest thing before sliced bread!! It fires at a rate of something like 5 per second, and just knocks entire enemy units off the wall within seconds.

[Lochar]

heh thnx for the info guys, finally finished my first campaign in the long mode and never knew those damn towers actually fired back...... Maybe I will go back to clean the map up just to test them out. I love sieges and I just can bring myself to try doing the no tower mods because of that.

My last battle with SPQR was the best ever, since they usually have 3-4 stacks of full armies, I brought all my main attacking forces from all the fronts and parked them adjacently, when I attack they had a few reinforcements with 1k+ troops (normal troop size) and so did I, I let the AI field their reinforcements so that I could get the whole army in the playing field. It was a blast, the vast size of all those troops running around was just awesome.

The funny part tho, was that you'd expect the system to slow down with all these troops and my settings for detail up, but it was opposite, it was like I was playing on a advanced speed, very hard to keep up.

The siege was anticlimatic tho as he was left with 200-300 troops left to defend rome.

Now that my feet are wet, debating which to try next and also boost the notch up a bit.