New Artillery for .8

[fatsweets]

I haven't seen any posts regarding the new artillery for .8 and just wanted to see what everyone thought. I love the new balistas, practically the whole city starts burning when you have one of these firing randomly with fire enabled and the stone thrower takes out gates in one shot sometimes. Sorry I can't remember the names. Good job EB Team on the artillery.

[Shigawire]

Unfortunately the models aren't changed from vanilla.. until we can add custom siege artillery animations..

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Do the Romans not have any artillery? I have gone up against them, but can't make them.

I can't wait till they look different/awesome though!

[keravnos]

Shigawhire has done a magnificent job in here, as well. It is pity that artillery is SO limited by the RTW engine, or you would see... all of the different siege engines in action.

[Zaknafien]

The Romans have quite a bit but not until post-Marian I believe. Roman siegecraft was never very complicated until the later era, with circumvallation and earthen-ramps being the most prodigiously used methods--aside from the most popular--treachery.

[Shigawire]

The Romans were slow at adopting the advances in siege warfare in their armies. Their first recorded use of a crude siege tower (turris ambulatoria) was in 210 BC, when the Romans had been impressed with the Macedonian siege train of Philippos V. Although they had began constructing their own siege artillery earlier in 105 BC with smaller manufacture, first recorded mass-scale production of siege artillery didn't begin until 80-75 BC, when Caesar's personal siege engineer MARCVS VITRIVIVS POLLIO (Vitruvius) and his team started setting things in motion.

In the beginning of the republic, the Romans were generally VERY slow at learning new things.
But later on the Romans become really quick learners.

In the 1st and 2nd punic war, the Romans didn't construct any siege artillery, even though they were fighting Qarthadast, a nation with the experience of 300 years of more-or-less constant siege warfare in the island of Sicilia. Sometimes when the Romans captured a city from the Qarthadast or the Greeks (Syracuse and settlements in Macedonia), they got lucky and captured a large stock of siege artillery. In one instance we even know exactly how many they captured, at the capture of Carthagena in the 2nd Punic War, it is recorded:
120 catapults (arrow-throwers) of the largest sort, 281 smaller ones, 23 large ballistae (stone-throwers), 52 smaller ballistae

Circumvallation (CIRCVMVNNITVS) was not so groundbreaking as most believe though. The Romans just took use of an old Greek stratagem from the Peloponnesian wars (430s BC), when they called it "PERITEICHISMOS." The difference was that the Greeks built stone circumvallations which took time, whereas the Romans built wooden circumunnitus at a breathtaking pace. Of course, the Romans fighting the Gauls had that luxury, since Gauls were really backwards in the art of siege warfare. Greeks fighting Greeks did not have that luxury. In the East, Romans were more weary about building wooden circumunnitus, since that was where the art of siege warfare had originated. A different beast alltogether.

[Kull]

Shigawire is telling you "why" (which is much more interesting), but here is "when" and "how":

Beginning with the Polybian era, the Romans should be able to "recruit" Greek siege engines out of high level Regional MICs in certain cities (such as Syracuse). By the Marian era, you can build your own Roman siege engines in Italian homeland provinces (high level faction MICs). By the Augustan era, you can get them in almost every province of your Roman Empire.

[Caveira]

Is there any hope for new siege models/skins/animations? I was very disapointed when I found the giant greek siege engines were... ballistas :(

[jedispongee]

Just so you guys know, CA's new CAS utility allows for the creation of animations of I recall correctly. Perhaps a light at the end of the tunnel?

[Shigawire]

Ah splendid. I asked about that in a thread about the new CA CAS exporter and now I read that it's confirmed.

This greenlights siege animations. I decree that we must pursue siege models and animations at ramming speed!

[Teleklos Archelaou]

What about our earlier siege engines that were created? Do we still have them?

[fallen851]

Uhh... so what is the verdict?

Will we see new siege weapons soon?

[Shigawire]

Early to say fallen.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Shigawire is telling you "why" (which is much more interesting), but here is "when" and "how":

Beginning with the Polybian era, the Romans should be able to "recruit" Greek siege engines out of high level Regional MICs in certain cities (such as Syracuse). By the Marian era, you can build your own Roman siege engines in Italian homeland provinces (high level faction MICs). By the Augustan era, you can get them in almost every province of your Roman Empire.

I built a typeIV government and then as many local MICs in Syracuse, but there were no seige weapons available for recruiting. (As the Romans, after the Polybian reform.)

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Shigawire is telling you "why" (which is much more interesting), but here is "when" and "how":

Beginning with the Polybian era, the Romans should be able to "recruit" Greek siege engines out of high level Regional MICs in certain cities (such as Syracuse). By the Marian era, you can build your own Roman siege engines in Italian homeland provinces (high level faction MICs). By the Augustan era, you can get them in almost every province of your Roman Empire.

I was looking at the EDB and it would seem that the Polybian era seige weapons do in fact exsist, though with an error. There are seige weapons under the Polybian era home barracks. That barracks can only be built in Italy, though Italy doesn't have any of the required resourses. I believe the seige weapons were acidentally put in the native MIC and were meant for the regional MIC.

[Fondor_Yards]

Anyone else find it funny that the upper end stone throwers fire the old onager stone ammo, which is half the size of the stone thrower itself? *And much bigger then the little hole it fires out of*

[cunctator]

As Shigawire said it is unfortunately not possible now to have engines with their real size. A 1 Talent stone projector as our upper end machines should look like this:

[Fleeb]

Wow, you could launch a person from that thing.

[Shigawire]

That is a reconstruction of Vitruvius' ballista at a siege I can't remember the name of..

And that's just 1 talent (29kg)

Imagine the 3-talent...