How to destroy enemy siege units?

[Chosun]

Other than a direct hit form my own artillery, neither my cavalry nor my infantry can destroy enemy artillery. They can fight and kill the crews but not the machines themselves. I recall being able to do this in previous games. Am I missing something?

[Forward Observer]

Someone correct me if wrong, but I think one can destroy them after the crew is either dead or detached and routing.

I know that I tried to attach one of my idle catapult crews to a deserted enemy engine because I thought one could do this after reading a post to that effect, but instead of a hand icon I got a sword icon, so when I tried it my crew started destroying the enemy catapult.

[Laconic]

Archers can set them aflame if they're close enough. I usually don't bother, because by the time the archers are close enough to do that they're in danger of getting charged. I usually just try to sack them with my cavalry, the enemy army usually outpaces its artillery piece (except in a siege).

[ransompendragon]

If you are talking about artillery like trebuchets and catapults I have varying degrees of luck with getting my units to destroy them. It seems like spearmen and archers (alt-attack) are the best at it although I have to keep clicking to get them to do it. And yes, this is after their crews have been routed away.

If you mean rams and towers I am not sure.

[pat the magnificent]

the computer ai rarely re-mans rams after the initial crews have died or rout. an abandoned ram directly in front of your gate can be a boon sometimes.

[Matty]

Can you destroy or knock down ladders?

If you're in a fortress with multiple rings of defence, the AI will knock down the first gate and steam through and then go back and get the ram for the second gate. It won't be able to take other siege equipment through so concentrate efforts on destroying the ram.....

[Aedile Rich]

Can you destroy or knock down ladders?

Yes but it takes awhile and seems to be restricted to one ladder at a time (I'm going from memory here, I only bothered to do it once, a while ago).

I've also managed to torch enemy siege towers right at my ramparts, just as they'd completely filled up with all the enemy's best shock troop units. It was a real turning point in the battle but up until that point my focus was directed elsewhere, so I'm not sure if it was my wall archers or towers that did the deed for me.

[FactionHeir]

Ladders don't seem to be destructible, rams and towers are.
As for artillery, any unit can attack them, but msot units just get stuck doing so and don't deal any damage to them.
Best to use a depleted unit for that or they struggle to get close and attack.
Also seems that swords and daggers (besides using artillery and flaming missiles) are best for the job.

[nheero143]

the computer ai rarely re-mans rams after the initial crews have died or rout. an abandoned ram directly in front of your gate can be a boon sometimes.

Often I find myself in a situation where I'm outnumbered 2:1 and have precious little cavalry in the city. So when I see the siege equipent, I pause and determine the likelihood that the few cavalry I have can rush out the gates to destroy it. This is quite a lot of fun actually. And the infantry is quite vulnerable when holding artillery, siege equipment, ladders, rams. Light cavalry works best to outrun their heavy cavalry, retreat along the walls to let the towers do their damage, and come back to harrass the ladder climbers when they get underway. General mathem breaks out. These are my favorite battles, pulling a heroic victory out of a sure loss.

Can you destroy or knock down ladders?

If you're in a fortress with multiple rings of defence, the AI will knock down the first gate and steam through and then go back and get the ram for the second gate. It won't be able to take other siege equipment through so concentrate efforts on destroying the ram.....

I usually just go for the ram crews and try to maintain some of the outer/inner walls to keep the towers firing. Plus I don't always have enough flaming arrows to do the job.

[Aedile Rich]

Ladders don't seem to be destructible

I can assure you that they are.
Use an infantry unit and hover the cursor around the bottom of them until it changes to a sword.

[Oaty]

I'd say its bugged in many ways.

First a unit of 5 men can destroy arttillery/siege equipment much faster than a unit of 50 men or more.

Cavalry can't (or it takes too long) destroy equipment. Out of a unit of cavalry, 1 horse will attack the equipment while the rest of the unit disperses and if I had the time, the unit probably would disperse all the way to no mans land(red line). Never have gotten above 0 percent damage due to the time it takes

So far I've only had infantry able to destroy the equipment. And can take ages usually meaning it's better to wait for the timer to run out at triple speed.

This hurts the AI more, as this usually occurs when a good portion of thier infantry have been destroyed and will no longer scale the walls. So it takes ages to destroy thier siege equipment where they will will rush in thier cavalry to get cut into peicemeal while you run your infantry back up the siege equipment.

[Von Nanega]

Ladders don't seem to be destructible, rams and towers are.
As for artillery, any unit can attack them, but msot units just get stuck doing so and don't deal any damage to them.
Best to use a depleted unit for that or they struggle to get close and attack.
Also seems that swords and daggers (besides using artillery and flaming missiles) are best for the job.

Peasants do a bang up job of this. In contested areas I keep several units of peasants just for wall defense and artillery destruction. My present game Florence has been attacked 5 times. My peasants took out the arty each time.

[Steph]

Good question and nice answers. Thanks.
I was constantly asking myself how to destroy this equipment with my cavalry once they routed the crew.

Stéphane

[Chosun]

I was finally able to destroy artillery with some infantry. The thing is, as mentioned before, only 4 out of 60 men actually attacked the artillery. I just waited and waited and finally the damage meter went from 0% to 100%. No in between. I just had to make sure that it worked. Probably won't be doing it that often in the future. I don't have that kind of patience.

[stev666]

Artillery in the open can easily be run down using light cavalry, but you have to be prepared to lose em, dont even worry about actually destroying the artillery piece just kill the crew, once dead the A.I wont attempt to recrew them with a different unit. Facing Artillery in a siege is a different matter though, you more or less have to sit there and take it. However there are a few measures you can take to reduce your losses, build ballista towers, these babes can destroy most of your opponenets artillery quite often before they can breach your walls. Also if you have set up a focal point and defensive bastion for your enemies aggression, for example playing as denmark and using Hamburg to protect your scandanavian territories. Then equip that settlement with a couple of trebuchets or mortars if you have em, these weapons can really devastate the enemy before they even get close, not only this you have the luxury of selecting which units (i.e those pesky artillery units) you want to target unlike ballista towers. Also in a siege target the artillery piece not the crew as the crew using missle fire can take a long time to kill, and they will continue to shell your walls until all dead or routed off (a bit unrealistic at times when you see only one or two men super humanly push a catapult across the battlefield, and proceed to fire at the same rate as a forty man crew, well I think anyway) Another way to reduce your losses is after the first salvo of enemy fire, see what their target is and if you have archers or a melee unit stationed there get them out the way quickly, you can easily lose half a unit to a collapsing wall, once the wall is destroyed move the unit back to whats left of the wall, and ready yourself for the assault. Awesome artillery pieces such as the bassilisk can really ruin your day, however dont over estimate their importance and expend excessive resources to take them out. Yes they are devastating but if your units are in cover and you are ready to repel the assault, then just let them do their work they will make breaches and take out towers but they will likely do that any way so just concern yourself with throwing back the enemy at the breach, once more unto the breach dear friends!. yes they will cause alot of damage to your lovely city but concentrate on winning the siege, the rebuilding comes later. All in all its easy to lose your head when you see the enemies artillery demolishing your fortifications, but realistically if you stay calm and keep your units out of harms way then you will have a good chance of victory. And walls can be repaired in one turn!

Melee units can destroy artillery pieces not sure about cannons though (highly unlikey they can destroy a cannon apart for the carriage).

[Chosun]

In the thick of battle, there is no time to micromanage the destruction of artillery/siege weapons. Just have to make do with killing/routing the crew and hope they don't rally later on. I've seen enemy crews rally before and that was a pain as I thought the battle was almost over and at the other part of the map, my stationary infantry was getting pelted by an enemy catapult.

[Lord Fluffy]

This just happened to me last night. I was fighting in the streets of Milan. They had catapults, so my knights killed off the crew. Then I was trying to move my troops to meet the reinforcements in the city square, but my troops are nowhere to be found. I see just a few of them there but I was sure I had more. Sure enough those crewless catapults had blocked the street and I had 3 units of musketeers and a unit of DCKs just going in circles trying to find a way through. Meanwhile my general was getting a beating, had to peel my general off and destroy the cats. Surprisingly it didn't take too long.

[Marquis of Roland]

Why destroy the artillery pieces when A) if the crew is dead, no one can operate that artillery piece and, B) if the artillery piece is destroyed but the artillerymen get away, they come back with a brand new artillery piece in the next battle?

[Oaty]

Why destroy the artillery pieces when A) if the crew is dead, no one can operate that artillery piece and, B) if the artillery piece is destroyed but the artillerymen get away, they come back with a brand new artillery piece in the next battle?

S you dont have to wait the timer out