How come there is no Onagers in RTR...

I know Catapaults were invented around 200BC, so it is not possible to have them until the marian reforms . But you can't even get them in a skirmish . How come. It makes it too hard too knock down a stone wall .

Onagers were ahistorical in the way CA presented them. They did exist, but were rare and nowhere near as nasty as in the game. They were also practically immobile (despite wheels, it was hard to transport them over large distances) and were really only used in sieges late in the RTR time period.

So the RTR team removed them. If you want to knock down walls, use sapping points, or do the manly thing and fight your enemies yourself

I just figured out that balistas can break a stone wall (bit unrealistic, metal vs stone?), slowly... very slowly. So i figured thats onagers replacements.

I't actually does not matter to me since I use, sometimes, balistea on wooden walls and do the manly, charge the stone walls, thing. Just love the carnage that is a close fight on the battlements (sigh).

I prefer to keep the walls intact, anyway. That way you don't have to worry about the enemy counterattacking the next turn.

But if you let them attack, they they all swarm the breach and ignore everything else. Easier to trap them, then

Catapults were used in seiges exclusivly during that time, they were never used in battles untill much later. Thats why RTR took them out...

This is a good example of how RTR is technically wrong and is taking the fun out of this game. Catapults were used in seiges - this is a historical fact. Archimedes used them in the defence of Syracruse. This was no insignificant battle but a part of a major campaign for this period of ancient history. Besides, there is nothing more entertaining than watching the enemy die in agony as they burn to death due to the flaming catapult fireballs.

If RTR wanted to be truely historical, they would have included giant mirrors so that the greeks could have burned Roman ships at sea...(read discussion below)

Archimedes played a major part in defending his natal city of Syracuse against a protracted Roman siege, as the designer of a host of weapons and machines to repulse the attackers. These fall into three main categories: a) cranes (or 'claws') that lifted enemy ships out of the water and dashed them against the rocks, b) catapults of every size and description that hurled bolts and stones varying distances, and c) the mirrors that focused sunlight on the ships and set them alight. This latter invention has become legendary, and much has been written about whether such a thing could in fact have been possible in the time of Archimedes. Most experts, and particularly foreign experts, were persuaded that the construction of such a system was a myth, despite the weight of literary evidence supporting the story, until engineer Ioannis Sakkas succeeded in demonstrating that it was indeed possible. Sakkas used 70 copper-plated glass lenses, with diameters ranging from 1.70 to 0.70 metres, and his experiment was carried out at the Palaska Training Centre on the island of Salamina on November 6, 1973. Sakkas placed his 70 lenses in a circle, and succeeded in focusing the sun's rays on a small boat, built in the same way as Roman craft and equipped with the same sort of materials, lying 55 metres away. In less than three minutes the boat was ablaze. Sakkas' experiment was reported around the world, and caused quite a stir. Three previous tests had also produced satisfactory results, and together they confirmed that Archimedes did indeed set fire to Roman ships. While we do not know the full effect of this conflagration, the psychological impact on the enemy must have been terrible. That, of course, is why his feat acquired the status of a legend and is still talked about to this day.

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-The Technology Museum of Thessaloniki

The RTR team never said that onagers/catapults were never used. I certainly never said it, nor have I seen it said.

But how often were they used? Using an example like Syracuse is all well and good - but that's only one example, and is exactly the same sort of thinking CA used when they added incendiary pigs to the game (they *may* have been used in, what, one battle historically?). And making them a recruitable unit is unrealistic, too. I'd imagine that there were more battles that used them than just at Syracuse, but I'd also imagine that they were made at the site of the siege like siege towers and ladders currently are. Since siege weapons are hardcoded and I don't think there were any non-sieges that used them, then you're best off removing them altogether as any other way would simply be ahistorical.

And the mirrors? So? That would get represented in a ship's stats; so for Greeks, their ships may have these mirrors...but that would also remove room for other weapons and more men, that other ships would have. Therefore, it would be safe to use the same stats for Greek ships as other factions. It's not like you would be able to see them in battle, anyway...

The problem here is RTR philosophy. You attempt to be more realistic by deleting stuff. Wow, that takes a lot of talent, just don't allow catapults, and then somehow this is more realistic. This completely ignores the fact that catapults were indeed used. If RTR was so bent on making catapults more realistic, they should have modified them so that they could only be used in seiges instead of deleting them in total. Of course, that takes more work, much better to take the easy road and delete them altogether, thus denying the gamer the use of one of the most enjoyable units in the game.

Fortunately, it is relatively easy to repair this abomination by adding the onagers in again on your own, which I consistently do for every version of RTR that comes out.

This completely ignores the fact that catapults were indeed used. If RTR was so bent on making catapults more realistic, they should have modified them so that they could only be used in seiges instead of deleting them in total.

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Find a way to do that and I'll give you a cookie. It can't be done, so the next best thing is to remove them altogether otherwise the AI builds stacks of them and uses them in field battles - which is simply wrong from a historical viewpoint.

The problem here is RTR philosophy. You attempt to be more realistic by deleting stuff. Wow, that takes a lot of talent, just don't allow catapults, and then somehow this is more realistic. This completely ignores the fact that catapults were indeed used.

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Not 20 foot high nuclear missle firing ones.

Also before you critizise the RTR team for all their hard work you might want to know what a catapult is.

Wouldn't it be possible to build Onagers as Siegeequipment? They would, of cours take very long to be constructed, and I agree...they should be immobile.
Oh. And if we are picking at deleting units. What about Auxilias after Marius? As Garrison?

I play RTR 6.3 and i have onagers? ut oh

LoL, Onagers aren't something to be missed by me. Why?
1. More often than not, they seem to either miss the enemy, do little/no damage, or hit my own troops (especially with fireballs).
2. They drastically reduce travel distance for an army.
3. They're mainly supposed to be used against walls, right? Well, I've had enough time to figure out that the walls are not too well defended. There are gaps in the arrow ranges between towers, and as long as you keep your siege towers AWAY from the gates, you're fine.
4. Conclusion: Onagers ARE fun, but in the long run, not as useful as Ballistae or just plain old troops.

P.S. A catapult is actually anything that flings an object, basically; your arm throwing something, a Ballista, an onager, a piece of wood on a pole being used to throw a penny...it's all the same.

Bello Gallicum said:

Wouldn't it be possible to build Onagers as Siegeequipment? They would, of cours take very long to be constructed, and I agree...they should be immobile.
Oh. And if we are picking at deleting units. What about Auxilias after Marius? As Garrison?

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As I've said twice in this thread now, siege equipment is hardcoded. You cannot change siege equipment in any way, shape or form.

At all.

None.

You get the idea

You know Onagers really didn't come in to proper use until the time of the invasion of britain. It's a shame that so much is hardcoded in RTW...but what can you do!?! I think RTR made the right choice, it's the choice i made for TFT.

Some links on the subject...
http://www.romans-in-britain.org.uk/mil_roman_battle_tactics.htm
http://members.lycos.nl/onager/onager.html

chaos said:

The problem here is RTR philosophy. You attempt to be more realistic by deleting stuff. Wow, that takes a lot of talent, just don't allow catapults, and then somehow this is more realistic. This completely ignores the fact that catapults were indeed used. If RTR was so bent on making catapults more realistic, they should have modified them so that they could only be used in seiges instead of deleting them in total. Of course, that takes more work, much better to take the easy road and delete them altogether, thus denying the gamer the use of one of the most enjoyable units in the game.

Fortunately, it is relatively easy to repair this abomination by adding the onagers in again on your own, which I consistently do for every version of RTR that comes out.

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Well if you arent satisfied the way RTR is realistic go play vanilla and have your uber arcani ninjas.. This is a free world(or most of it is) and you have the right to choose what you do. Simply give good sources(firsthand sources writen by someone who lived during the period) that they were commonly used and youll have em back.

I guess you can't read...

chaos said:

This is a good example of how RTR is technically wrong and is taking the fun out of this game. Catapults were used in seiges - this is a historical fact. Archimedes used them in the defence of Syracruse. This was no insignificant battle but a part of a major campaign for this period of ancient history. Besides, there is nothing more entertaining than watching the enemy die in agony as they burn to death due to the flaming catapult fireballs.

If RTR wanted to be truely historical, they would have included giant mirrors so that the greeks could have burned Roman ships at sea...(read discussion below)

Archimedes played a major part in defending his natal city of Syracuse against a protracted Roman siege, as the designer of a host of weapons and machines to repulse the attackers. These fall into three main categories: a) cranes (or 'claws') that lifted enemy ships out of the water and dashed them against the rocks, b) catapults of every size and description that hurled bolts and stones varying distances, and c) the mirrors that focused sunlight on the ships and set them alight. This latter invention has become legendary, and much has been written about whether such a thing could in fact have been possible in the time of Archimedes. Most experts, and particularly foreign experts, were persuaded that the construction of such a system was a myth, despite the weight of literary evidence supporting the story, until engineer Ioannis Sakkas succeeded in demonstrating that it was indeed possible. Sakkas used 70 copper-plated glass lenses, with diameters ranging from 1.70 to 0.70 metres, and his experiment was carried out at the Palaska Training Centre on the island of Salamina on November 6, 1973. Sakkas placed his 70 lenses in a circle, and succeeded in focusing the sun's rays on a small boat, built in the same way as Roman craft and equipped with the same sort of materials, lying 55 metres away. In less than three minutes the boat was ablaze. Sakkas' experiment was reported around the world, and caused quite a stir. Three previous tests had also produced satisfactory results, and together they confirmed that Archimedes did indeed set fire to Roman ships. While we do not know the full effect of this conflagration, the psychological impact on the enemy must have been terrible. That, of course, is why his feat acquired the status of a legend and is still talked about to this day.

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-The Technology Museum of Thessaloniki

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More evidence on the extensive use of catapults during the RTR time period...

CATAPULTS in Greek and Roman Antiquity

Catapults were invented about 400 BC in the powerful Greek town Syracus under Dionysios I (ca. 430-367 BC). The Greek engineers first constructed a comparatively small machine, the gastraphetes , sort of a crossbow. The gastraphetes was powered by a specially large composite bow. The military effect of the new weapon during the siege of Motya (Sicily) 397 BC encouraged the Greek engineers to enlarge the machine further. They put a larger gastraphetes on a carriage and added a windlass to cock the heavier machine. Certain physical barriers prevented further enlargement of the composite bow. Therefore in mid-fourth century BC torsion springs were introduced instead of the composite bow. The torsion spring consisted of a bundle of rope made from horse-hair or sinew. Such a spring could be enlarged indefinitely. The new catapults were equiped now with two torsion springs powering the two arms of the catapult. Very soon the new design superseded the old gastraphetes machines. Alexander the Great already employed torsion spring catapults on his campaigns. All Hellenistic armies and all powerful Greek cities soon owned a park of torsion artillery. Inscriptions from the Chalkothek on the Acropolis of Athens first mention torsion spring catapults there about 330 BC. - In the 3rd century BC the two main types of catapults were standardized: the euthytonon for shooting arrows and the palintonon for throwing stone balls. They now could be built after the standard calibration formulae layed down in contemporary technical treatises. In this form Carthage and Rome also adopted the heavy weapons.

The Palintonon - Stone Throwing Catapult

Stone-throwers were built from mid fourth century BC onward, but only after serveral stages of development the mature standard type of the palintonon appeared in the third century BC. The reconstruction sketch drawn after the text of Philon, Belopoeica shows a heavy palintonon for throwing 1/2 talent (ca. 13 kg) stone balls. The total weight of this weapon was about 3 metric tons, the weight of the elastic ropes of the two torsion springs alone ca. 330 kg. In contrast to the euthytonon the palintonon could easily be dismantled into the main components: the two torsion springs with their wooden frames, the long stock (table, ladder and slider) together with winch and pulley, also the carriage. Because of the heavy weight and the sheer size of the palintonon dismantling was indispensable, otherweise the machine could not have been transported over the often poor and narrow roads of Antiquity. The stone balls were fired generally in a flat trajectory, not in a high one as often mistakenly assumed in modern literature.

Ancient Technical Treatises

From the 3rd century BC onward Greek and Roman engineers published detailed treatises describing catapults. Most of them were provided with technical text figures . They supply basic knowledge for the understanding and reconstruction of the weapons. The most important are: Philon, Belopoeica - Heron, Belopoeica - Vitruvius, De Architectura vol. X.10-12 Pseudo-Heron, Cheiroballistra.

The texts are published with English translation in: Marsden 1971

They existed, but were not used frequently enough to warrant the RTR team to waste a unit slot for them. They were not used in field battles, either, meaning the only realistic way you can have them in the game is by making them siege equipment. And that is hardcoded, anyway.

And the "stone throwers" you pointed out above, they would have been nowhere near as large as the ones presented in RTW. 3 metric tons is about the equivalent of 2-3 normal-sized cars, and the 13kg stone balls they throw? That's what, 25lbs? Not all that heavy, really; certainly not as large or heavy as the ammunition used in RTW.

So, come up with a way to implement them as siege equipment, and the RTR team may consider its use. Using it as a buildable unit would simply be unrealistic.

I personally restored the Roman onagers for my Roman campaign just because it's fun to use them in sieges. With Archer's burn mod, I love torching a city right before I send in the legionaries.

Cheexsta:

They existed, but were not used frequently enough to warrant the RTR team to waste a unit slot for them

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You are absolutely wrong. All Hellenistic armies and all powerful Greek cities owned a park of torsion artillery. Inscriptions from the Chalkothek on the Acropolis of Athens first mention torsion spring catapults there about 330 BC.

Trajan:

I personally restored the Roman onagers for my Roman campaign just because it's fun to use them in sieges. With Archer's burn mod, I love torching a city right before I send in the legionaries.

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.

I do exactly the same thing. Fortunately this RTR faux pas, which is factually wrong and also takes the fun out of the game can be easily repaired by adding the catapults back in. riginal:

I see RTR Catapults comming up...

The total weight of this weapon was about 3 metric tons, the weight of the elastic ropes of the two torsion springs alone ca. 330 kg. In contrast to the euthytonon the palintonon could easily be dismantled into the main components: the two torsion springs with their wooden frames, the long stock (table, ladder and slider) together with winch and pulley, also the carriage. Because of the heavy weight and the sheer size of the palintonon dismantling was indispensable, otherweise the machine could not have been transported over the often poor and narrow roads of Antiquity.

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They were immobile! We have no way of modeling such a weapon at present into RTR without these weapons appearing in tactical field battles where they were never used, and without being able to move about the field of battle in a way that is totally inaccurate. In the end the world is a lot more realistic without uber-catapults of flaming death than it is with them.

I'm sure if the game wasn't nearly as restricted by the hardcode as it is currently there would be an accurate historical version of a catapult for use during sieges, unfortunately that isn't possible in Rome:Total War.

All Hellenistic armies and all powerful Greek cities owned a park of torsion artillery.

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Let's make this clear.

Catapult = any artillery that flings a missile. Includes onagers, ballistae, trebuchets, etc.
Torsion spring = twisted bundles of animal sinew and/or horse hair to use as propulsion for a missile in a catapult.

Now, the onagers that you have re-added to the game use a single torsion spring - this is the arm of the onager. Or, rather, the twisted bundle of animal sinew and/or horse hair that is used to propel the arm. Etiher way, your onagers only have a single one.

See, your own source twice says that the Greek ones used two torsion springs. This, to me, describes exactly what a ballista is; a catapult that uses two torsion springs to pull two pieces of wood which in turn pulls another string which throws the missile (usually a spear, later adapted to throw rocks).

So you have misinterpreted your own source, quite badly too. The catapult that the Greeks used were not onagers as they are in the game, they are, in fact, ballistae.

But I will concede on one point...onagers sure were fun to use

People, their is a difference between catapults and Onagers.

That is correct. One is a category, the other is a specific type of weapon from that category.

So using a reference to a "catapult" as a reason for re-adding onagers is incorrect. The "catapult" as described in Chaos' sources is merely a ballista or scorpion (in the game), not an onager.

Onager is the Roman name for a one armed tortion catapult. The Greeks had these catapults way before they were in common use by the Romans. In 210 BC Philo of Byzantium referred to one arm throwing machines (Pol 91.36). Later Romans versions were referred to by the Romans as "onagers".

It is interesting to note that the largest stone-thrower on record, a three-talent (78 kilogram) machine, was built by Archimedes who died in 212 BC.

There were unique devices produced by Archimedes such as a catapult that used steam power and in principle was a canon. It was described by Cicero in a manuscript discovered in a church library by Francisco Petrarch (1304 -1374). Petrarch collected Greek and Roman manuscripts neglected in various libraries for many centuries. The Cicero manuscript later was used by Leonardo Da Vinci who called the device "Architronio" in honour of Archimedes.

If RTR wants to be more realistic they should permit the Greeks in Syracruse the option of producing steam cannons. This could be done using the "hidden resource" feature.

How many times were steam cannons used.....once that we know of. There are literally thousands of different technologies, weapons, and deviations upon deviations of different units throughout history and the 280 year time span of RTR. We'll be happy to add them all if you can develop proper scripts, unique models for each unit, unique animations, skins, etc. Then, to maximize accuracy, the hardcode must be broken and severely modified.
And, as its already been stated, the 'onagers' were not battlefield units but siege weapons (the modification of which is severely hampered by hardcode for rtw 1.2) If you can can create a patch that allows onagers to be used in sieges only please tell RTR! Otherwise, the decision has been made by the historians at RTR.