Siege weapons

**overweightninja** · 12-09-2007, 23:01

Not usually worth the expense IMHO. Give them a try for yourself and see though, you can always reload a savegame or something

**Decimus Attius Arbiter** · 12-09-2007, 23:06

I'm thinking money cheat right now. You gotta RP it I think since the total running costs are too much for their use. If they were the death star, I'd want it to blow an entire faction to smithreens. *applause for Peter Cushing*

**MarcusAureliusAntoninus** · 12-09-2007, 23:52

They are really expensive and not really worth the cost, but the main negative against siege equiptment to me is their movement speed. They will make any army they are in only go 80% of their top speed.

**Sand** · 12-10-2007, 00:17

I use em, but I tend to keep em to 1-2 units tops, depending on how many fronts Im running and how much money I have to burn. I have 2 in my current Mak campaign that I built quite early on my game - one is in Egypt finishing off the Ptolemies and the other is currently in Persia, closing in on Persepolis. They really help on blitzes because you in one turn you move up to the city, storm it with artillery, move up reserves to garrison, then next turn off you go again to take another city.

A good idea is to get their crew a bit nobbled in an easy battle - 50% casualties or so. Reduces their upkeep without really affecting their usefulness.

They do slow you down to a degree, but they save you the turn spent sieging so at worst it evens out. When campaiging in coastal areas [Egypt, near east, agean/turkey] I tend to move the artillery by sea from target to target whilst the army moves by land. In campaigns where this isnt practical [ such as Babylon/Persia], the artillery goes in to the reserve stack and is led by a family member with movement boosting traits/ancilliaries. It pretty much moves faster than the main stack at that point.

Theyre *very* expensive especially in the early game, but I think they pay off. Just dont even bother trying to use them in field battles - theyre next to useless if knocking down walls isnt involved. You need to use them carefully as well - large numbers of Archers are a complete pain to deal with, and youll need to save ammo to take out tower/gatetowers around the breach as well but if you pick a good spot and approach correctly everything should be fine.