Quote Originally Posted by FactionHeir
Fire arrows do work, but are very ineffective.
Just have a few archers with fire arrows on standby near the enemy's spare rams and wait for his main ram to burn. The AI will then come by with a unit to pick up the spare ram which is quite far out of the range of your towers and you can watch it burn.
I agree. I had an enemy ram crew assault a low-level settlement (just picket fence walls that archers fire over almost flat) that had a U shaped approach to the gate. The ram made it up to the gate, but got stalled there as the fire-arrow-shooting peasant archers I had deployed on the sides of the U continuously burned the ram crew (it was really hilarious, just when they'd be ready to swing the ram again, the archers would immolate 3+ more guys and replacements would saunter forward). It went on like that for a while, but eventually the ram did catch on fire. This may be noteworthy because it looked like those low-level towers couldn't have been shooting the ram while it was at the gate, and the next closest 2 were decidedly out of range and possibly even unmanned. I don't remember what the towers' max angle of fire looks like (though I know I read it in the files at some point), but I'm guessing ~45 degrees, which would definitely have ruled them out if it is the case. The ram was basically at the base of the towers, more like a 75 or 80 degree downward shot.

But yeah, my experience basically says the fire arrows do work, though it's very poorly on anything except men (which isn't all that bad: I find it joyful to watch animated men catching on fire, for some reason).