Lighting up a siege ram...

[Rozanov]

Lighting up rams

Ballista towers seem to do the best job at close range. (But cannons can, if you're lucky destroy rams at long range

Archers using fire arrows are so inaccurate that they rarely hit anything specific. If you have the towers it's sometimes better to fire normal arrows at the unit pushing the ram so it has to continually stop and replace the men at the wheels. (Normal fire is both more accurate and has a faster rate of fire.) That gives your towers more time to finish the ram off.

(A lot also depends on the armour of the men pushing the ram though, weather conditions, experience of archers, type of archers, layout of approach to entrance, number of towers in range, how many other targets are in range etc etc)

If you check the damage done to a ram on its approach, you'll notice that a volley of fire arrows usually does 1-2% damage, ballistas do several times that. nb rams can catch fire with as little as 20% damage, but others carry on with much more. (Are there 2 different scores for damage on rams - fire damage and ordinary damage?) (Once alight the usually keep burning until they disintegrate - but don't ask me what the critical value is for that.)

[Agent Smith]

Lighting up rams

Ballista towers seem to do the best job at close range. (But cannons can, if you're lucky destroy rams at long range

Archers using fire arrows are so inaccurate that they rarely hit anything specific. If you have the towers it's sometimes better to fire normal arrows at the unit pushing the ram so it has to continually stop and replace the men at the wheels. (Normal fire is both more accurate and has a faster rate of fire.) That gives your towers more time to finish the ram off.

(A lot also depends on the armour of the men pushing the ram though, weather conditions, experience of archers, type of archers, layout of approach to entrance, number of towers in range, how many other targets are in range etc etc)

If you check the damage done to a ram on its approach, you'll notice that a volley of fire arrows usually does 1-2% damage, ballistas do several times that. nb rams can catch fire with as little as 20% damage, but others carry on with much more. (Are there 2 different scores for damage on rams - fire damage and ordinary damage?) (Once alight the usually keep burning until they disintegrate - but don't ask me what the critical value is for that.)

Actually, fire arrows do NO damage to rams. The damage from fire arrows to rams is caused by them catching fire. You can fire at a ram all day and it will never go above 0% damage.

I'll have to try taking out the "pushers" next time. I'll see if five archer units can at least accomplish that...

[Rozanov]

Agent Smith wrote:

Actually, fire arrows do NO damage to rams. The damage from fire arrows to rams is caused by them catching fire. You can fire at a ram all day and it will never go above 0% damage.

With all due respect Agent Smith you are talking rubbish.

I have just done a simple experiment which you are at liberty to repeat.

Set up a custom battle with english as defenders (faction 2) and scots as attackers (faction 1). Have a simple settlement with wooden walls.

Equip english with 3 bog standard longbowmen and the scots with 1 unit of rabble and a ram.

Fight as last man standing.

At start of battle run your three archer units out of the settlement and put 2 one side and the other to the other side of the gate. Put all on skirmish mode and use fire arrows.

Aim at units at ram as it approaches the settlement.

For a while not much happens. The rabble push the ram to the gate, the archers fire and maybe kill the odd scotsman. Scotsmen then attack the archers.

As the archers are split, at least one unit can keep firing.

In my experiment after 1 unit had fired about half its quota and having done no damage, the ram caught alight and quickly burnt to a cinder.

After the initial couple of seconds when no damage was done to the ram, the only fire directed at the ram came from the archers, nowhere else.

So. Yes archers can destroy rams with fire arrows, given time.

My surmise is that there must be a flag that is set to ram_not Burning at the start of the battle and then (perhaps randomly or after a certain number of hits - I'll let those who delve into the deeper mysteries of the prog to let us know) the flag gets set to ram Burning and away it goes.

[Agent Smith]

Agent Smith wrote:



With all due respect Agent Smith you are talking rubbish.

I have just done a simple experiment which you are at liberty to repeat.

Set up a custom battle with english as defenders (faction 2) and scots as attackers (faction 1). Have a simple settlement with wooden walls.

Equip english with 3 bog standard longbowmen and the scots with 1 unit of rabble and a ram.

Fight as last man standing.

At start of battle run your three archer units out of the settlement and put 2 one side and the other to the other side of the gate. Put all on skirmish mode and use fire arrows.

Aim at units at ram as it approaches the settlement.

For a while not much happens. The rabble push the ram to the gate, the archers fire and maybe kill the odd scotsman. Scotsmen then attack the archers.

As the archers are split, at least one unit can keep firing.

In my experiment after 1 unit had fired about half its quota and having done no damage, the ram caught alight and quickly burnt to a cinder.

After the initial couple of seconds when no damage was done to the ram, the only fire directed at the ram came from the archers, nowhere else.

So. Yes archers can destroy rams with fire arrows, given time.

My surmise is that there must be a flag that is set to ram_not Burning at the start of the battle and then (perhaps randomly or after a certain number of hits - I'll let those who delve into the deeper mysteries of the prog to let us know) the flag gets set to ram Burning and away it goes.

You COMPLETELY msised what I said. Of course archers can catch rams on fire. I've been saying that throughout the entire thread.

What I said was, if you hover the mouse over the ram, the damage to the ram will ALWAYS say 0% no matter how long you fire at it with fire arrows. It isn't until it catches fire from said fire arrows that the damage percentage begins to increase. The catching fire does the damage, the fire arrows do not.

[TinCow]

It does seem to me that fire-ballistas light up rams and towers more often than anything else. Cannons seem to be almost useless against rams, in my experience, but they work wonders on towers and the enemy army. When it comes down to it, you simply need to remember that, unlike in RTW, you cannot count on destroying all their siege equipment. You can get some, but you had better prepare to defend your walls and a breached gate, otherwise you're in trouble. If you defend your gate area and then manage to burn the rams, all the better... move your gate defenders to the walls.

If you can't defend the walls and the gate at the same time, I suggest you do what damage you can and then retreat to the streets or the town square.

[Wodeson]

In my experience Ballista Towers are best at stopping rams, while Cannon Towers do perhaps slightly better against Seige Towers.

One of the best tactics I've found against a ram is to increase the time it spends inside the towers' fire zone by using a suicidal cavalry sally to temporarily halt the ram's progress.

Such a cavalry sally can also work against ladders, towers and artillery.

[Rozanov]

Agent Smith

I'm pleased we agree that fire arrows can cause rams to catch alight.

And that once alight the damage increases.

And that non-flaming arrows on their own won't damage a ram.

(but we have yet to work out exactly what triggers the catching fire, and whether being damaged by ballistas makes them more flamable.)

---

As for cannon towers - well if you're lucky and the AI army has a couple of units of siege artillery that it uses in an attack, then your towers will fire a mixture of fire and solid shot at the artillery units. Luckily the rest of the AI army is usually nearby and that means rams and siege towers also get hit.

In one battle the Pope was "attacking" marseilles (IIRC) that I was holding as England. Settlement had towers that fired cannon balls and flaming shots. Pope sent forward 2 trebs and a couple of mortars to attack my walls - and they made a couple of holes in them before they were destroyed. But so were 5 rams and a siege tower. All rather pointless as the gates had been opened and they could have simply streamed in before I got my defence organised.

Interestingly once the siege artillery is destroyed the towers stop shooting as the rest of the army is officially out of range - even though they have been killing 50% of the army whilst "out of range". (The joys of over-shooting and bouncing cannon balls.)

Firing at a moving target cannon are pretty hopeless, unless the target is a slow moving mass of troops.