Artillery as Seige Defense?

[Armoryk]

Is there a way to get Ballistas, Scorpions and even Onagers to work well in seige defense? They can't be put on the walls and in stone-walled cities they seem to be particularly useless because they can't get a line of sight and stay within range. With larger walled cities should I just scrap the artillery, or am I missing something?

You really ought to be able to put Ballistas and especially Scorpions up on the walls!

[vale]

I believe you should get rid of it, since artillery don't work very well in the city while being seige, they just help the enemy more by hitting your own wall and some how damage your wall.

[Mayfield The Conqueror]

Once you get stone walls seige engines for defence are worthless.. wooden walls and palisades they work fine though. Your only choice is to keep upgrading those walls to get better defences.

[Productivity]

Long road, repeating ballista at one end, arcani in a side street. Use the arcani to pin the enemy while the ballista goes to town on them.

[Lancome]

I believe you should get rid of it, since artillery don't work very well in the city while being seige, they just help the enemy more by hitting your own wall and some how damage your wall.

Not really you can still use ART to defend you cities on stone walls if you place them on a stop that wont hit you own walls. Now if you are using Epic then I suggest to take them out of the city. I remember that I assaulted a Epic wall and I was in Testudo formation But somehow where I was still lossing men. It also looked like if they where getting hit by bolts when I was pounding at the city gates.

[professorspatula]

Onagers can be used behind stone walls and sometimes large stone walls, but not on the comedy Epic walls.

It can be tricky placing them right, but those onagers can destroy incoming siege towers with little fuss, as long as you don't use the silly flaming ammo which will probably just see you destroying your own walls. Just don't expect the onagers to do massive damage to enemy infantry though.

[edyzmedieval]

Too bad there aren't any Organ Guns...

[Marquis of Roland]

You don't need to put ballistas or scorpions on the walls, your stone walls already have ballistas that shoot from the towers and the gatehouse (and they never run out of ammo).

If you still want to use artillery for defense, march them out of the city, put up a spear wall, set them up behind, and let fly. For best results march them right under your gatehouse (where you will probably have all your missile troops concentrated on top anyways) for added fire support if AI ever decides to attack your art.

[Armoryk]

I knew the stone walls had flaming arrows and ballistas, I just like to pick my targets to concentrate missile fire, and the wall vs beseiger is AI vs AI--they don't always shoot at what I want them to shoot at.

And I've never had much luck with my ballistas and scorpions behind a spear wall. I end up with skewered spearmen. How close/far should I place the spearwall and what thickness in ranks. (Or were you only talking about Onagers, Roland?)

[antisocialmunky]

If you can set up a kill zone using a hole in a wall(which you can create with your own artillery my targeting enemy close to your walls) you may be able to funnel all the enemy into a tiny area that is in range of all your artillery.

Artillery + Funnel = death. Phalanx + Funnel = invaders on a stick. Think bridge battle. Same idea, make all the enemy go through one point and zero as much artillery as you can at that.

[Marquis of Roland]

Depends on how many units of spear you have. (if you have pike units add 1-2 to the rank depth)

2 units - not much choice here. Put them in 4 ranks deep (unless there's heavy cav or elephants, etc.), that should be able to give you a broad front (for 2 units).

3-5 units - place your spears in a staggered, lambda formation (an upside down "V") with the center units on 4-5 ranks and the flanks even deeper. This way your flanking troops can be concentrated instead of half the unit not being able to fight in a flanking attack.

more than 5 units - same as above, but put any units beyond 5 in the rear as a ready reserve.

Your onagers should be immediately behind the spear wall. In fact, put them right in front of the gateway in case they need to run back into the city =). I've never used ballistas or scorpions so I don't know how high they can arc their fire, but I am going to assume (through common sense) that they can't, so I wouldn't use them, unless you fancy pulling them THROUGH your spear wall to retreat and attack, because the AI will almost always attack if you have your artillery out front.

As I said before, keep your units as close to your wall as possible. Your towers and gatehouses provide excellent supporting fire for against any enemy unit that tries to attack the spear wall. Center the middle of your formation DIRECTLY in front of a gatehouse, and have your archers on the adjoining walls for even more fire support. And yes, its a shame that the wall's defenses are AI controlled, but in my vanilla game, they always tend to shoot general's units first (any other kind of unit is random; they've picked

You will need some light cavalry to chase down the units sensible enough to run away