It seems to me cannon towers aren't worth it

[firedragom]

I don't know if it is just me, but I have noticed something with cannon towers. They are really powerful and kill whatever they hit, but it seems like they are so inaccurate, they aren't really worth it. It just seems like ballista or arrow towers do more killing. I was curious to know other peoples opinion on cannon towers.

[rich19]

I have found that cannon towers utterly destroy siege towers before they can get close. So yes, I consider them useful.

[Bob the Insane]

It depends... I have a problem with both ballista and cannon towers in that they lose a lot of infantry killing power over the arrow towers. And a real killer is that the can not fire sideways or backwards (probably a good thing with cannon towers though) so provide no assistance to defending wall tops as the arrow towers did.

But then again, it is nice to see those siege towers and rams crumbling on their way in. Pity their is no solid defence against ladders other than "more men"...

[firedragom]

Yeah it does do good vs. siege towers and rams, but then again with 5 or 6 archer units firing flaming arrows and arrow towers firing flaming arrows, it gets the job pretty well done too, and you can still kill soldiers. I feel like it really shouldn't be a trade-off, since you are not choosing between the diffrent towers, it ought to be an upgrade accuracy wise and power wise. But oh well, the game can't be perfect for everyone.

[Wilhelm The Mediocre]

The Cannon Towers work wonders on the passive AI whenever you choose to sally forth. The fools just stand in their formations as the cannon strike them down. How very tragic...

[Seymour]

I personally find cannon towers invaluable. First of all, they're pretty good at assassinating the general from great distance, so you can start the routing chain reaction before your gate troops even take a hit.

Second of all, they just turn the enemy into puree if they ever do anything other than head straight for the gate. If you find a way to delay your enemy, you can let the towers do most of the work (make sure to keep all the towers in front manned). I keep a couple of various horse units in the city just for the purpose of harassing the enemy and buying time for the cannons to do their work.

Finally, if you're not above exploiting passive AI when sallying, then you can just keep luring the enemies into the range of cannons, and once again, they're done without every doing any damage to you.

[lobo76]

I find the incredible range of the cannon towers to be invaluable. The passive AI is one thing... with musketeers just outside the wall detering anyone that comes near the wall..

I just luv guns! :D

Yeah it does do good vs. siege towers and rams, but then again with 5 or 6 archer units firing flaming arrows and arrow towers firing flaming arrows, it gets the job pretty well done too, and you can still kill soldiers. I feel like it really shouldn't be a trade-off, since you are not choosing between the diffrent towers, it ought to be an upgrade accuracy wise and power wise. But oh well, the game can't be perfect for everyone.

I find fire arrows to be hard to use. My archers seems to block by the walls themselves so that they have to fire the super arc shot, which hits nothing unless you get lucky. How do you kill off a ram with those kind of shots? And the ram is probably the only thing I care to fire on. With the siege towers and ladder, any tom dick and harry troops can handle any army that lands on thw walls.. but if they mass rush the gates, it is much harder to stop them.

[Cadwallon]

Cannon towers are the only thing that enables you to stop the mongols and more to the point, Tamerlame! I wish I'd saved it - but as the Turks, I had my jannissary musketeers and archers combined with cannon towers defending Antioch - my capital. I think by the end of the battle, around 50 elephants including cannon elephants lay dead in the killing ground near the front gate.

I think that my Capital did fall in the end - once they make it through the gates with multiple stacks (assuming the passive ai is fixed) not a great deal can stop them (as turks in general lack spear units...). I did capture it back two turns later though. Once they were significantly reduced, and allowed me to build up other strong points at bridges and the like until I just needed to mop them up. The appearance of mercenary elephant units is also a great help once your opponent's elephants are reduced to a reasonable number.

So yeah - cannons towers are great. Though they can be a blunt instrument when you are pursuing a defeated enemy away from your city/fort though....had a couple of general's die that way .

[Eng]

I don't know if it is just me, but I have noticed something with cannon towers. They are really powerful and kill whatever they hit, but it seems like they are so inaccurate, they aren't really worth it. It just seems like ballista or arrow towers do more killing.

If they dont hit get more targets change the scale to huge and look how accurate they are now

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Cannon towers are the only thing that enables you to stop the mongols and more to the point, Tamerlame! I wish I'd saved it - but as the Turks, I had my jannissary musketeers and archers combined with cannon towers defending Antioch - my capital. I think by the end of the battle, around 50 elephants including cannon elephants lay dead in the killing ground near the front gate.

I think that my Capital did fall in the end - once they make it through the gates with multiple stacks (assuming the passive ai is fixed) not a great deal can stop them (as turks in general lack spear units...). I did capture it back two turns later though. Once they were significantly reduced, and allowed me to build up other strong points at bridges and the like until I just needed to mop them up. The appearance of mercenary elephant units is also a great help once your opponent's elephants are reduced to a reasonable number.

So yeah - cannons towers are great. Though they can be a blunt instrument when you are pursuing a defeated enemy away from your city/fort though....had a couple of general's die that way .

Handsome fellow... (@ Cadwallon)

Bridges + Artillery also stop Mongols. See my battle replays thread for examples.
Heavy infantry + mountain/valleys also stop Mongols.
Surrounding Mongols stacks with 2 or 3 stacks also stops Mongols.
Crusades stop Mongols. Jinetes spammed also stops Mongols. Heavy cavalry spam also stops Mongols. (Out-Mongol the Mongols)
Longbowmen spam stops Timurids. Artillery + bridges = dead elephants.

EDIT: And Tiberius makes us triplets.

[Tiberius maximus]

well cannon towers in the citadales havent been real reliable, but that maybe due to the fact that i dont have any patches.

but in cities they have saved my @$$ plenty of times especially against the hordes.

[Apostrophe]

Yeah it does do good vs. siege towers and rams, but then again with 5 or 6 archer units firing flaming arrows and arrow towers firing flaming arrows, it gets the job pretty well done too, and you can still kill soldiers. I feel like it really shouldn't be a trade-off, since you are not choosing between the diffrent towers, it ought to be an upgrade accuracy wise and power wise. But oh well, the game can't be perfect for everyone.

But some nations have really poor archers and Scotland has no archer militia
so with them i always build towers as soon as they are available.

[joe4iz]

I guess I never tried the sally forth route before. I may have to exploit that against the Timurs.

I have held Acre against the Mongols invasion using cannon towers. Other cities fell but if I could hold that Citidel ,to borrow a phase from LOTR, "they would break like waves apon that rock". Worked especially well if you can garrison a reenforcement group on ships outside the city. Nothing is more satisfying than beating 3 full Mongol stacks.

[icek]

lol, if you sally out you can kill anyone with cannon towers. Before they even react they lose half of siege machines.

[Mete Han]

once in a battle I sieging a city which had cannon towers. With the first two shots they killed my two generals. I rest my case...

[crpcarrot]

since its an upgrade ideally we should retain the previous arrow and balista capabiliies. it would make assaults more difficult for human players as well

[Betito]

Regarding crpcarrot's post:

I would like a slight variant of what you suggest. I explain myself:

I'd like ballista towers retaining the arrow capability
I'd like cannon towers to get new musket, or arquebus shooters instead of arrows

My fear is that it might overpower the city's or castle's defense, whatcha think?

[firedragom]

Yeah I see guys, cannon towers range is really invaluable. In one heavy rain scene, it was pretty cool because the enemy was attacking with trebuchets and my cannon towers were shooting so far, I actually could not see the trebuchet burn to the ground :)

On another note, does heavy rain effect the ability of something to catch fire?

[jepva]

Once you have cannon towers, your city is virtually untakeable. Once the enemy lay seige, atttack (sally) against them. The passive AI will sit there getting mowed down. After about 75% of the time has elapsed, send your troops out to chase off the remnant. I have never lost a settlement that had cannon towers.

[firedragom]

Well jepva I see how that would work, but it kind of takes the strategy out of it. I try not to exploit the dumb AI as much as possible (although I do break down sometimes)

Oh well, maybe eventually AI will be powerful enough and bugless enough to really create a truely challenging game.

[jepva]

Fire Dragon - I agree totally - It becomes repetitive and boring, but if/until they can devise a more sophisticated AI seige/sally response, we're stuck with it. Even without cannon towers, four archer/CB units with some cavalry and infantry support can go out a side gate, line up on the beseiging force's flank and rout them (Mongols and Tims excepted, due to large number of missile units and more aggressive fighting mode - which raises the obvious question - if they can make the Mongs and Tims so aggressive in combatting a sallying fource, why not the other factions). The only alternative is to not sally out at all - which is almost as artificial conceptually.

[crpcarrot]

Regarding crpcarrot's post:

I would like a slight variant of what you suggest. I explain myself:

I'd like ballista towers retaining the arrow capability
I'd like cannon towers to get new musket, or arquebus shooters instead of arrows

My fear is that it might overpower the city's or castle's defense, whatcha think?

if cannons get muskets it wll be overpowered. however if muskets can replace the arrows (assuming the arrows stay with each upgrade) at a quite large cost of upkeep it might be a balanced upgrade.

[Slaists]

well cannon towers in the citadales havent been real reliable, but that maybe due to the fact that i dont have any patches.

but in cities they have saved my @$$ plenty of times especially against the hordes.

Well, without patches the "cannon towers" are actually "balista towers" and vice versa (the highest level of towers becoming balista towers and canon towers appearing instead of the balista towers even before the gunpowder age) unless you fix it yourself.

[firedragom]

Well, maybe they will fix the passive AI problem along with the numerous other bugs with the next patch or Kindgoms or something.

Does anyone know if another patch is even in the works, or if Kindgoms will fix some of these bugs?

[rainkloud]

Does anyone know if another patch is even in the works, or if Kindgoms will fix some of these bugs

No and No.

As far as cannon towers are concerned I prefer their reload rate to be a lil faster to compensate for the fact that you don't get archers or ballistas.

[The Stranger]

it shouldve been like mtw1 which had all the towers implemented at the end (if not mistaken) atleast there it was better since you could upgrade walls AND its towers seperately.