Destroying Seige Equip.

**ddenny4478** · 12-17-2006, 14:51

This may be a stupid question but how on Earth do you get your bowmen to destroy seige equipment? The AI destroy's my ram and towers on a regular basis but I never seem to be able to. Recently I had a force of 10 bowmen with just about every single unit targeting the enemy unit with the ram and I wasn't able to destroy the seige equipment. What do I need to do?

**Shahed** · 12-17-2006, 15:04

Use flaming arrows.

**Ars Moriendi** · 12-17-2006, 15:20

Originally Posted by ddenny4478

This may be a stupid question but how on Earth do you get your bowmen to destroy seige equipment? The AI destroy's my ram and towers on a regular basis but I never seem to be able to.

You don't need to do anything special, just make sure the "flaming arrows" special ability is turned on and keep shooting. Sometimes you get the ram burning, sometimes you don't.

Originally Posted by ddenny4478

Recently I had a force of 10 bowmen with just about every single unit targeting the enemy unit with the ram and I wasn't able to destroy the seige equipment. What do I need to do?

Weird, with 10 archer units against a single, slow moving unit, the rammers should've been dead (if not on fire) before they reached your gate.

**Stig** · 12-17-2006, 15:32

On this subject, what I don't get is that I can't destroy a tower with one unit of archers and the AI can. Do I place my units wrong or something? Or am I just an idiot?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**katank** · 12-17-2006, 16:44

The AI appears to have unfair advantages with regard to siege equipment. I've had my rams destroyed by a simple wooden wall before while my stone walls with 2 units of archers using flame often doesn't burn down their ram.

My only guaranteed ram killing solution appears to be using ballista towers where the blastwave from the shots inevitably wreck it.

**Zenicetus** · 12-17-2006, 19:19

Originally Posted by Stig

On this subject, what I don't get is that I can't destroy a tower with one unit of archers and the AI can. Do I place my units wrong or something? Or am I just an idiot?

You might be seeing the combined effect of archer fire and ballista/cannon towers.

If your defending archers are crowded around the gate they might be too far from the nearby towers to trigger their firing (in M2TW you need units near towers to make them fire). You want to see flags showing on all your towers in range of incoming siege towers and rams, which means they're "turned on." If you don't have enough archers spread out on the walls to trigger that, then place some of your ground troops at the base of the towers to trigger them. And try to upgrade to ballista or cannon towers when you have that option.

**Joshwa** · 12-17-2006, 19:55

The stupid trajectory that most wall archers shoot their arrows at means that hardly any arrows actually hit as well!

**BigTex** · 12-17-2006, 20:47

Originally Posted by Joshwa

The stupid trajectory that most wall archers shoot their arrows at means that hardly any arrows actually hit as well!

Use thinner lines. It works like that in battle, too. Anything past 3 lines and you risk the archers having a huge trajectory. This also happens when you have crossbowmen, and sometimes regular bowmen, behind a unit. Keep your arches down to 2-3 lines deep.

**Handel** · 12-17-2006, 21:44

Originally Posted by Zenicetus

You might be seeing the combined effect of archer fire and ballista/cannon towers.

And try to upgrade to ballista or cannon towers when you have that option.

Do not upgrade to cannon towers. They are bugged and are useless. The huge cities shoot with cannons and the castles always shoot with ballistas no matter what you have build. The ballista towers in large towns work as ballistas and in some large towns don't work at all.
And no fix in this patch.