Best anti-personnel artillery is ?

**Quillan** · 01-02-2007, 15:47

As the Spanish, I had one battle where I had 2 small armies against one. The army I attacked with was 4 jinetes and 2 mounted crossbows. The reinforcement army was a single swordsman militia and a basilisk. I pinned the rebels with the main army and had enfilade fire with the basilisk. Bowling for rebels, a dozen men per cannonball, right down the line.

**katank** · 01-02-2007, 18:07

That's just beautiful. It matches with my general experience that artillery typically has problem finding range (further or closer) while they are pretty good with regard to left-right alignment. Thus, for best results, shoot at flanks.

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 01-02-2007, 19:22

Hey, with a name like Forward Observer, of course he's going to be good with artillery.

I like the Serpentine - it makes me feel like I'm playing NTW or something. And it can double as a pretty destructive siege engine.

**Shahed** · 05-12-2007, 19:45

Yeah, thanks to him I'm using ballistae for the 1st time ever. Thanks FO.

**pike master** · 05-13-2007, 05:45

1 rocket launcher
2 monster ribault
3 serpentine
4 catapult with flames( just plain annoying, causes post trauma episodes from rome 8( ]

**Furious Mental** · 05-13-2007, 15:23

I think it depends what you are doing. In most situations I would say rockets, but if defending a bridge I would say serpentines because they can carve through dozens of soldiers with each shot.

**Pater Familias** · 03-25-2008, 23:09

And just a word from the Kingdoms side of the fence:
Mangonel.
My first battle with one (having not really read the unit description), I targeted an 8-star general on the other side, hoping to dent his scary big bodyguard unit before we got to the serious business. As I watch, the projectile goes up, the projectile goes off midair, and a ball of flaming goo lands on the enemy general and another mounted knight next to him.
Cut to the "God be praised, we have killed the enemy general" scene.
Back to the main battle screen: The bodyguard routs on the spot ... the rest of the enemy army (a vast collection of militia, largely, made imposing by the general's command points) routs w/in about 30 seconds, lock, stock and errr, barrel.

It went from a tense battle to a slaughter in the first shot. Now I know it's not always going to be that precise, but what an introduction.

**Eikon the Magistrate** · 03-27-2008, 18:21

Ballista and Culverin

the ballista is amazingly accurate. after breaking a hole in a wall ill position it in the correct angle and let it get some chevrons while it minces thru the flanks of the defending AI.

Technically the basilisk is a later wep so it should be better than the culverin...but ive never really used it i like the look of the culverin better I guess.

**Pater Familias** · 03-28-2008, 00:07

Originally Posted by Eikon the Magistrate

Ballista and Culverin

the ballista is amazingly accurate. after breaking a hole in a wall ill position it in the correct angle and let it get some chevrons while it minces thru the flanks of the defending AI.

Technically the basilisk is a later wep so it should be better than the culverin...but ive never really used it i like the look of the culverin better I guess.

Playing Spain in the Americas, the culverin in a siege almost seems like cheating. You knock a couple of big holes in the walls and the AI huddles in the central square. Then you turn on the exploding shot and it literally never misses the horde, who don't run for cover or counter attack ... I might have to try a harder difficulty level, because it was way easy on Medium.

**IvarrWolfsong** · 03-27-2008, 17:48

any artie being used by the ai in stainless steel

love the mod but the GPS satelite driven targetting array of on those trebs makes me bananas

The biggest blob of death I ever caused was with an onager. I was Antioch and the Turks were attacking me in the mountains near Damascus / Jerusalem. They were all squished into a chokepoint as they came up the mountain pass. The onager barrel didnt explode and instead landed right in the middle making a big flaming blob of turk-ka-bob. It was over a hundred dead or so because the onager had ~150 kills. Most of the enemy army routed but was rallied by the Sultan's brat.

The flip side is that the enemy came again and was wiped out by my armenian archers and heavy inf. The 3 units of archers had over 200 kills each... I could have scrapped the onager and got more Glendale archers.