Why do... (missiles kill more than artillery)

[mor dan]

regular bowmen or crossbowmen cause more casualties than advanced siege equipment?with heavily armoured troops comprising a front line, i tested 4 pavaise crossbow units along with 3 ribaults, and the ribaults did a little more than half damage. their fire rate doesn't seem to be too far apart. obviously they have a significantly higher damage rating, as well as the ability to take out a row of men rather than just one at a time.

i started the battle as close to the begin line as possible to ensure their army wouldn't have already spread formation, so i could get max casualties, but the Crossbows were still heavily more efficient. the ribaults caused little fear among the charging armies.

[econ21]

Please try to use more descriptive thread titles so people can choose whether they want to read it - "Why do..." is just uninformative.

[Musashi]

120 crossbow bolts > 36 ribault shots.

[Zanshin]

The benefits of artillery are not killing speed but range and damage to structures.

It's like comparing a cavalry unit to a ram.

[mor dan]

ribaults are called long range, yet they kick in later than Crossbows or longbows. so that kinda refutes "longer range".

they are rated 63 power and 5 against buildings, so they aren't meant to damage buildings. they are meant to kill massive amounts of troops in a bottleneck situation.

we aren't comparing bows and such to canons. we're comparing them to the earliest versions of a gatling gun. i don't expect the ribault to have a higher accuracy rating over long range. i do expect it to kill faster when it hits, and when a line is formed directly in front of it, yes, the accuracy should be so high based on the wide range in which it can fire and hit a target.

i'm not comparing battering rams to cavalry as i wouldn't expect cavalry to take down a wall or a battering ram to damage enemy units. i am asking why one ranged unit that is considered advanced technology is worse than the older technology. these techs wouldn't have been introduced to the battlefield if they were...

A) wholly inefficient, causing little or no damage to either numbers or morale

or

B) wholly ineffective, doing little damage in numbers or morale when it actually strikes.

why would you waste men and training on technology that in no way helps? units that line up in front of a ribault should be mowed down like my grass in the summertime. especially at a range of less than 30m. seeing enemy siege weapons meant for subduing your infantry and cavalry should automatically cause a change in tactics in open field combat, not a charge into it. a 60 man unit charging closed formation into a ribalut should sustain heavy casualties. the fact is, they don't. this makes the siege weapon useless by comparison, so why would you bother building one?


my apologies for not being more descriptive in the title. i was asking a question, and the title suggested that. i will be more complete in the future.

[Oaty]

Ribaults are quite a morale killer IMO. The thing you have to remember is that custom battles uses multiplayer stats and is not always comparable to what you run into in a campaign. Also try using 1 unit of archers to compliment the ribaults. Archers will cause an extra morale hit. Also in the campaign, a general usually leads the human army, throw in there experience on top of that and you have some very accurate ribaults.

[mor dan]

i was using a general unit along with them, parked right near the ribaults. the stats i've listed in here are based on the stats given in the custom battle. but if what you say is true, then none of the tests run in custom mode are effective measurements of the combat ability of units.

[Frantz]

there is no advanced siege equipements in 1400 !!!!!! artillery was almost useless at that times in open field battles ( see Fornovo or Bosworth for example ) ... in the conquest fo islamic spain the spanish used their quite advanced artillery only for Sieges ..

So its historically accurate !! ( guns and catapults even too accurate on the battlefield in mtw 2!! )

[troymclure]

After playing alot of custom bridge battle maps (:)) i have to agree about the ribaults, they're fairly useless.

Seige equipment, designed to attack troops only that fires slower and has a shorter range than xbows... not much point at all.

Serpentines on the other hand can be very effective. On a bridge battle it's not at all uncommon for the serpentines to score as high as the xbows. Whereas ribaults will probably only kill a quarter that either of those two would.

[mor dan]

there is no advanced siege equipements in 1400 !!!!!! artillery was almost useless at that times in open field battles ( see Fornovo or Bosworth for example ) ... in the conquest fo islamic spain the spanish used their quite advanced artillery only for Sieges ..

So its historically accurate !! ( guns and catapults even too accurate on the battlefield in mtw 2!! )

there's no need to shout or get excited about it. this answers the question of why, it just makes me question why they would use such things if they rarely worked and had no accuracy. it would seem a total waste of time and energ.

[Kobal2fr]

How did you fire your ribault ? "constant" firing or barrage ? The ribault as I understand it is supposed to be more of a shotgun that a gatling, and the monster ribault even more so. They're supposed to open up close, with all barrels at once, for shock effect. Nasty surprise when set-up right behind a door you already suffered to breach :

"One second you're full strength, the next half of your mates are dead. Funny times we live in, heh ? I believe now's the right time for one of your guys to wet himself, drop his gear and scream "Run for the hiiills", mate.", would be the wry ribault crewman battle-cry.

Or you can use them the other way round of course : breach the door, then open a huge can of "Hello, Sailor !" on the defenders massed behind it.

Sure, they can also be used as field rifles, but that's a fringe benefit, not their primary use. Now, I haven't actually used any yet, so I'll sit down and shut up. But keep that in mind when using them.

[JeffBag]

Or you can use them the other way round of course : breach the door, then open a huge can of "Hello, Sailor !" on the defenders massed behind it.

Thirty-six barrels point-blank seems to be the worst thing to see when those almighty walls come crashing down.

[dopp]

Well most of the gunpowder artillery you get is meant for use against castle walls and such rather than shooting men. The two exceptions are the ribault, which is more like a close-in defense weapon meant to defend the other pieces with a really slow reload time and the serpentine, which is actually pretty good so no problem there. The ribault can actually be pretty good when it works properly (it suffers from the musketeer LOS bug and thus rarely gets to fire). It fires all the barrels off and takes an age to reload, so it's more of a one-shot thing. I killed half a unit of chivalric knights (40 fellows) with a single salvo once. I used to put them on the flanks of my battleline, but that just tempts cavalry to go after them and they get massacred. They should really be held in reserve and fired to support or break up a charge.

Historically, cannon are rarely found on the battlefield at this time and are restricted mainly to sieges. This is in part because they are still rather inaccurate and slow-firing, but more importantly because they are a) too expensive and few in number to make more than a token contribution to any battle and b) too heavy to move around easily in an age of bad roads. No galloper horse artillery in 1530, unfortunately. Artillery doesn't become a major battlefield factor for a few centuries more, when they become much lighter, much cheaper and much more numerous. Artillery doesn't become the lethal 'hammer of god' until the invention of shrapnel and high explosive shells, which is way, way in the future.

Anyway, think of the cannon more as 'siege guns' and use serpentines against people. CA has actually been thoughtful enough to implement explosive shells for the siege guns (very primitive ones and not very powerful), so you can use them to kill people, just not very well. It's more like a bonus so they can actually do something in a regular battle. When used against walls, however, you will find that a single salvo can demolish virtually any wall or tower it hits.

If you really, really want to use them against people, more experienced crews are a bit more accurate, I believe. They get experience for destroying towers and walls as well as troops.

[Aquitaine]

I've used ribaults with good effectiveness in defending against AI sieges, particularly in cases where I've had to fall back from the walls into the city square (I don't think I ever set foot in my own city squares in RTW, so this is already an improvement).

Plant the ribault on the end of the street leading into your square with an infantry unit near it in case anybody gets brave enough to break through, and it will usually get about two rounds of shooting in -- enough to put someone from 'eager' to 'shaken' or 'shaken' to 'broken', and then a couple fire arrows and an infantry charge later, you're okay.

My goal in 90% of all battles is not to kill off as many of them in actual fighting as it is to break their ranks, and the ribault has its place for that. I don't know that I would include it in a late-game full stack army, though, just because having a couple of cannons or culverins or serepntines will usually do the trick, but the ribault is available so much earlier that I got some use out of them.

[Hashashiyyin]

maybe it has something to do with the fact they they are SIEGE weapons? as in they are meant to knock down walls, not formations of troops.

I understand some of what you are saying though, their accuracy is horrid and should be increased. that would go a long way to helping them be practical in non-siege situations.

[Kobal2fr]

God, will you people read before commenting ? He's talking about ribaults, ribaults are NOT supposed to knock down walls since they are, along with serpentines, anti-personnel only arty.

[JeffBag]

I have found ribaults to be most useful when you are camping a bridge; let them clump up into some gigantic mass, and when the time is right, let lose a barrage and watch the ridiculous number of kills that you get. As a bonus, they should instantly rout too, letting your army capture the rest of the survivors.