Cows and catapults.

[Caesar_julii]

Can you launch animals from catapults and trebuchets? I think that that would be awesome. Anyone know?

[Comrade Alexeo]

Yes, you can launch cows from trebuchets. They'll cause a morale drop (and go SQUISH! when they land )

[TinCow]

Fetchez la vache!

[hoom]

Ni!

[Peasant Phill]

I could be mistaken, but somehow I thought that it would be possible to fling cows into castles during sieges to start diseases.

But I could very easily be wrong as I don't know how it would work in the game.

[abdecken5]

perhaps cities/castles under seige will take bigger loses if you have catapults that can fire diseased cows over the walls but personally i want to see them in battle arcing majestically through the air... reminds me of an old amiga free ware game called cow wars similar to worms

[alpaca]

Yes, you can launch cows from trebuchets. They'll cause a morale drop (and go SQUISH! when they land )

Not true, they go: Moo! Splat! At least they do in chapter 5 of the MTW2 preview videos

[Lusted]

Well CA do like their little bits of comedy they put into their games.

[RTKBarrett]

Would it surprise anyone if that possibly may have been edited footage?

[alpaca]

Well I surely hope it is... I mean, mooing carcasses? What the hell?

[ProudNerd]

I know its in battle because in the sounds of you extract them there a general yellows catapults ling cow! So its battle not in the campaign map. I think i remember reading somewhere that it makes the enemy sick and they dont fight as well, probably just lowers their attack/deffense but you'd think it would have an effect on your troops also when you atack.

[Bagpuss]

any 'killer rabbit' in sieges ..lol...lol ;)

[LadyAnn]

The Mongols started that trend and it was said that once they sent dead corpses into the beseiged city that the Black Death Plague started...

Annie

[MSB]

Is this thread asking if you can launch cows from catapults in M2TW or is it asking if catapults were historically used to catapult cows?

[Watchman]

The Mongols started that trend and it was said that once they sent dead corpses into the beseiged city that the Black Death Plague started...

Annie

Eh, the practice was well known and widespread since far before anyone had heard of some bloke named Temujin. The Chinese in particular seem to have made a bit of an art form out of coming up with nasty crap for siege engines to toss. Human Excrement Bombs, anyone...?

Anyway, the occasion you're thinking about is a Genoan trading outpost on the Crimean peninsula the Mongols besieged. They were suffering from the plague themselves I understand, and figured they'd share it with the defenders by lobbing infected corpses over the walls. In due time the Genoans then brought it home, and the rest as they say is history.

[TheImp]

Download and watch the video there: http://www.worthdownloading.com/dow...id=1957&id=9229

We can clearly launch cows, amazing

[TheImp]

Well, it could have been even better, like launching your enemies on their own walls. Rock&roll!

[Sarmatian]

It could be potentialy very unbalancing cause english would be able to launch mad cows

[alpaca]

Why should they launch perfectly edible and healthy food?

[Spino]

Why should they launch perfectly edible and healthy food?

Most of the time the stuff they launched was neither edible or healthy. More often than not they used the bodies of dead animals whose carcasses were already be in a state of decay. This would guarantee that a whole host of vermin had taken hold in the carcass and would be scattered all over the place when the body impacted on the ground or a building. Even if the body was recently killed the explosion upon impact would be sufficient to scatter the pieces wide and far enough to attract an unusually large number and assortment of vermin to the scene, thus increasing the likelihood that an outbreak of disease would occur.

[TheImp]

"Another Mongol tactic was to use catapults to launch corpses of plague victims into besieged cities. The disease-carrying fleas from the person's body would then infest the city, and the plague would spread allowing the city to be easily captured, although this transmission mechanism was not known at the time."
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege

Surely, in middle-age era, people knew some ways to have great fun!

[alpaca]

Most of the time the stuff they launched was neither edible or healthy. More often than not they used the bodies of dead animals whose carcasses were already be in a state of decay. This would guarantee that a whole host of vermin had taken hold in the carcass and would be scattered all over the place when the body impacted on the ground or a building. Even if the body was recently killed the explosion upon impact would be sufficient to scatter the pieces wide and far enough to attract an unusually large number and assortment of vermin to the scene, thus increasing the likelihood that an outbreak of disease would occur.

Ah yes, irony is so hard to spot over the net