Siege weapons

[Sand]

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.

[quackingduck]

personally i hate fighting in the streets so i usually wait out sieges anyways.

[Beefy187]

Balistas are quite useful... Well in RTR anyways