what are you thoughts on artillary

[RHYS4190]

im not sure what people think about artillery, iv tested them, and I feel the scorpions a bit up compared to the ballista it mobile, but it really miss's to much, the ballista seems to be inaccurate as hell one shot really recks things when they hit.

what are people thoughts.

[Summary]

im not sure what people think about artillery, iv tested them, and I feel the scorpions a bit up compared to the ballista it mobile, but it really miss's to much, the ballista seems to be inaccurate as hell one shot really recks things when they hit.

what are people thoughts.

As far as artillery is concerned, a decently consistent accuracy wasn't achieved until about the 18th to 19th Century. Even as far as missiles were concerned, the strategy wasn't to aim and fire but rather point in a direction and fire a lobbed volley en masse that would overwhelm the enemy. Of course later on bow designs from India, China, other Eastern regions as well as the European cross-bow had more accuracy, and there was a greater need for marksmanship. Artillery back then were more useful against larger targets like cities and buildings. A unit or regiment of 10 men would be virtually impossible to hit.

[spirroouu]

Well I think the artillery is mostly overpowered in this game, this is for several reasons:
1. You can control the artillery yourself which basically means you can completely destroy the enemy army if you are used to it by aiming at big masses of units when defending a fort for example.
2. They rarely run out of ammo if you aim yourself all the time, if you put them in fire at will they will of course run out pretty quickly.
3. You cna usually destroy 1-2 wall segments, making it a massacre afterwards.

[Cope]

I like the artillery models, but I think they are little out of place on the battlefield. I just have trouble imagining an army lugging giant ballistae around with them. I wish that CA had made them constructable (like ladders and Rams) during siege battles: that would have made more sense to me.

That being said, I actually think that they are amongst some of the most difficult units to balance in the entire campaign (both for historical and game play reasons). This is because if you don't give them a decent amount of accuracy and power then you need to bring a fair few for them to be effective in siege battles. If you do give them decent accuracy and power however then they become overpowered against both infantry and walls. Also for my money, it is way to easy to destroy walls with naval artillery. Just spam six ballista ships and the wall is down in 2 seconds. However, if the ballistae aren't balanced in this way then it would mean that a single unit would not be able to breach a wall (which would mean you'd have to spam them for them to be useful).

[Blasphemer.]

Inaccuracy of artillery really bothers me, but it is historically accurate...

[Butan]

I think the artillery is mightily fine in DeI, basically its battle-useless but siege-worthy.

But for the same rason spirroouu mentionned, the first person shooter option should be disabled, its completely overpowered.
House rule for realism : dont use that option.

[Alu10]

polybolos and scorpios are useless. i wrote that once and now i write it again: they cant destroy even little fort walls with scorpios flame arrows while with torches you need 2 seconds and the wall is breached. they do like 1-2% damage on one part of the wall. Ballistas are fine though.

[Cope]

Once someone can remove torches from this game I will die happy.

[Humble Warrior]

Once someone can remove torches from this game I will die happy.

Someone's removed torches!? thinking of trying this Mod, if only for the realism and less howitzer like artillery. They are way too fast and accurate in vanilla.

[Post Hoc]

With one lithobolos unit in an army, it is virtually impossible to loose a battle. That's why i limit myself to only one unit per campaign. It is very easy to rack up 2000 plus kills with it.

[RHYS4190]

it a petty the scorpions suck then there the most practical i think they where actually pretty good historically they where not cannons though, but i really can't justfy them in this game.

[antred]

it a petty the scorpions suck then there the most practical i think they where actually pretty good historically they where not cannons though, but i really can't justfy them in this game.

And they used to be pretty darn good in Rome 1.

[Butan]

Truth be told I've never used much artillery on DeI since they removed it almost entirely. Except the occasional lithobolos and walled siege defense artillery.


From what I read in this thread, and I trust the opinion of most of the mod users here, it seems that there is still some balance to be done with polybolos and scorpios.

[RHYS4190]

Well the real romans used a lot of artillery and some how they made it work, iv heard that a lot of university's have tried making them for experiments but they never really been that good the onglour for example they just could not make it strong enough with out braking after a few shots, maybe the romes had different tree's back then which are now extinct.

though I think scorpions from records where really feared weapons and where deadly.

[Summary]

Well the real romans used a lot of artillery and some how they made it work, iv heard that a lot of university's have tried making them for experiments but they never really been that good the onglour for example they just could not make it strong enough with out braking after a few shots, maybe the romes had different tree's back then which are now extinct.

though I think scorpions from records where really feared weapons and where deadly.

A lot of things that were done in the past cannot be replicated today. Blacksmiths/Copper-smiths used to make evenly dense helmets and armors without a single vacuum bubble, this is also very hard to replicated without the help of machinery. The peoples of days old had some knowledge that has not been recorded, and therefore, such secrets are long lost. They can be retrieved or re-discovered/re-invented if there is enough resources to do so, but there simply isn't because they did it because their life depended on it, we are doing it out of fascination, it's not quite the same.

Regardless I still doubt that Roman artillery were the howizters of the ancient world. Like I mentioned before, accuracy and emphasis on it came at a much later era.

[Butan]

Regardless I still doubt that Roman artillery were the howizters of the ancient world. Like I mentioned before, accuracy and emphasis on it came at a much later era.

I also believe it was more the "fear" effect of artillery which was great: being 1 man in a group of 10 000 shields you from certain death, but when the 10 000 is the target it also means that you have a chance to die, and I guess the prospect of being brutally impaled by a projectile coming at a hundred miles per hour was not a good thing even just seeing your mates suddenly dying at your side was enough to possibly unman soldiers, as cannons would in the napoleonic wars for example.

More classic ranged projectiles like arrows/javelins/stones/lead were also definitively "fear" weapons which had a terrible effect on cohesion and morale, which prepared for further devastating melee.

The problem is forever the engine of the game which doesnt allow for a 100% realistic approach of battle, we need the artillery to be a bit more accurate and damaging so that we can use the "sustained casualties" and "under fire" flag as the proper "fear" effect of such weaponry. It needs to hit and it needs to kill some to be of use in Rome 2 battles

[RHYS4190]

though caeser did use quite a lot of artillery in gaul just to even the odds.

though just using a bunch of guys with long bow probably are going to do a better job. artillery is useless if it not mobile, other thing that annoying is a lot of the time these people where really stupid, like for example the projectiles they used for catapults usually was the biggest thing they could shoot, no one seemed to have the idea of using lot of really small projectiles maybe put in a canister to hold them together when you fire them.

they did the same thing hundreds of years latter granted they had invented canister shot for cannons but they never thought, hay let put lot of little shot into are muskets that way we will never miss!.

[RHYS4190]

maybe some one should make a giant ogre or some thing like that with a sling that throws cannon balls, that be cool.