Question about trebuchet ammo

[riuk881]

Started a new vanilla campaign as the HRE and i happened upon the cow ammo for the trebuchet. what does it do?

[John Doe]

I'm not sure if troops directly hit dies or not, but troops around will get infected and will display an alternative color (greenish IIRC), those will rout easily.

[riuk881]

okay. thanks John!

[Kaiser Nonsense]

Yes, it greatly drops their morale.

[Gil-Gandel]

Be careful not to walk your own troops through the green miasma - cow stench affects friendly troops perfectly well.

"Fetchez la vache!"

[Silverheart]

Since I like zooming in a lot, I´ve noticed that the rotten cow ammunition also kills soldiers that are hit directly.
However, it's never more than 1-3 soldiers, and if the shot lands just an inch to the side of them, they're only affected by the rotten air.
So, if you want to use it for killing troops, it's pretty much worthless.

The rotten cow ammunition is useful for siege defence, though, where you can launch the cow carcasses at the enemy forces, hopefully littering the ground in front of the gates and breaches so that all advancing enemies are affected by the stink. The carcasses stop working after some time, though (like 15 min or so)...