siege weapon field tactics

[Afro Thunder]

What happens when you come up against heavily armoured troops (cataphracts) or two hit point troops?

Use some form of elite spearmen, and shoot the 2 HP units twice as much?

[Krauser]

I haven't found them too useful either. Range is good but as soon as you get one hit off the AI just starts running its troops all over the place and its hard to get any good hits in. Sometimes they just start outright charging which makes the siege units completely useless because friendly fire chance is just too high.

[CMcMahon]

I generally only use artillery as a chokepoint defense, for example, on bridges.

Having scorpions hit anything on the bridge from the wide while your onagers hit their ranged weapons pretty much is an unstoppable combo, especially with any kind of phalanx blocking the bridge.

[cruix]

Although cruel and probably has no chance of making it past the game censors, it would have been nice to be able to fling dead and or live bodies with your siege weapons in order to greatly reduce the enemy morale (or piss them off really badly). As a variation you might even go as far as flining diseased animal or human corpses, thus being able to induce plague at will. An offset to the potential destructive powers of this could then be something like everyone in the same stack as the artilary of the damned would suffer morale penalties and has higher risk of contracting disease. Also the artilary can only load up on fresh "ammo" after a battle by collecting corpeses. (yes, I realize this is almost like that warcraft 3 unit. I hate warcraft 3 with a passion).

[Krauser]

Although cruel and probably has no chance of making it past the game censors, it would have been nice to be able to fling dead and or live bodies with your siege weapons in order to greatly reduce the enemy morale (or piss them off really badly). As a variation you might even go as far as flining diseased animal or human corpses, thus being able to induce plague at will. An offset to the potential destructive powers of this could then be something like everyone in the same stack as the artilary of the damned would suffer morale penalties and has higher risk of contracting disease. Also the artilary can only load up on fresh "ammo" after a battle by collecting corpeses. (yes, I realize this is almost like that warcraft 3 unit. I hate warcraft 3 with a passion).

Not only is that a ripoff of Warcraft III it is also way to far out. I think they wanted the game to be 'somewhat' historical. This may have happened before historically but it would not have been widely used.

[Productivity]

I think they wanted the game to be 'somewhat' historical.

Warpigs?"
Wardogs?
Egypt?

I think they've failed that one allready, they may as well wreck it completely.

[SpencerH]

I always use seige weapons (when available) for both offense and defense. I use onagers to pound the enemy reserves and cav and repeating ballistas in the center of my front line to break any heavily armoured units. They're not necessary in order to win of course, but its more fun to have em.