How to destroy enemy siege units?

[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?