Flaming missiles?

[fritsje5]

Do you use flaming missiles all the time or just when u are getting besieged?

I used to be a real flaming missiler but after having experienced a few times without them I got myself thinking, these fire at least 10 times as quick as flaming missiles while in a siege u may want to consider killing as many of your enemy before they reach the gate and taking into consideration the fact that there is a very unlikely chance that u will manage to burn their rams and towers before they get to you(my personal experience) so my question to you is; what to use best?

[Viking Prince]

Flaming arrows are not as accurate. If you want to kill units, do not flame.

Of course, flame the seige equipment. This will not be effective with one archer unit, but three are usually successful for me using Retrofit Mod. The tower flaming when at the wall is really effective with the elite unit on the stairs. One archer unit at point blank often works (remember to disable skirmish mode).

Remember, if the ram flames, then the gate is safe. With only a tower or ladders, the enemy cav will remain outside. Well worth the chance in my opinion.

Also, I find it useful to flame the general's bodyguard and other cav. This is especially good if two units are close. The riders may not take the hit directly, but the horse is still vulnerable.

I agree the arrows are fired quicker when flaming is disabled. I have not been able to see where the morale loss is a big factor for me either.

[Old_Scratch]

Siege equipment and trebuchets or catapults are difficult to set alight. I usually just use regular arrows when defending a siege. Flame arrows can be useful for their morale damage though. I'll try to combine flaming arrows with hand gunners or naffatun for a pretty big morale hit.

[fritsje5]

Flaming arrows are not as accurate. If you want to kill units, do not flame.

Of course, flame the seige equipment. This will not be effective with one archer unit, but three are usually successful for me using Retrofit Mod. The tower flaming when at the wall is really effective with the elite unit on the stairs. One archer unit at point blank often works (remember to disable skirmish mode).

Remember, if the ram flames, then the gate is safe. With only a tower or ladders, the enemy cav will remain outside. Well worth the chance in my opinion.

Also, I find it useful to flame the general's bodyguard and other cav. This is especially good if two units are close. The riders may not take the hit directly, but the horse is still vulnerable.

I agree the arrows are fired quicker when flaming is disabled. I have not been able to see where the morale loss is a big factor for me either.

I usually try to get rid of the ladders and the towers, after that the enemy just have their ram and when they start streaming through ur gate u can post ur archers at the gate house pounding volleys on the enemy units below, while u have ur pikemen/spears waiting for them on guard mode.

This may prove trickier due to the fact that u cant burn ladders, but I usually get my cavalry outside so I can run them down.

Another option could be maybe to have some good meleeing archers up there, so if they get up their ladders they will be easily routed after which u can return to the business of butchering the eager units just outside the gate

Naffatun at the Gatehouse would really rock btw

[Khassaki]

I do it backwards, I never use flaming missiles in seiges. The higher rate of fire is good for thinning units, and then I withdraw from the walls and fight in the streets mostly if I have stakes. I don't usually bother wityh a lot of archery anyway. Meeting ladder climers with good melee units and towers by letting tem on the wall and charging them from two directions. That way the attackers are accross the full width of the wall and I can have archers or javeling fire at them safely while they are in melee with my guys.

In the field I just have 1 or 2 under strnegth units use fire to help cause panic.

[Strom]

It depends on circumstance. For example if you have archers shooting from the wall onto missile cavalry doing a cantabrian circle then it's better to have them on flaming arrows as regular arrows are accurate enough to miss every time.

If you're shooting into heavily armoured units then flaming arrows are better as long as you can shoot for quite a while, and shoot fairly straight. If you can only shoot for a short time then non-flaming is better unless you think you can break their morale. Sometimes I'll start off the battle shooting regular arrows then switch to flaming if it looks like I'm going to run out of arrows before I run out of things to shoot them at.

If I am confident that I will be able to exhaust all of my arrows (e.g. I'm fighting an inferior force at a bridge) then I will typically use flaming arrows as I believe they have a slightly higher kill count per arrow fired and jack up the battle speed so it doesn't take forever.

[Spamostoc]

Flaming arrows only when I know the odds are 15:1 and I'm just fooling around. So, no never.

[duda]

Depends on many factors...Against armored, slow and tigh formation units? Flaming...Against loose formation? Normal...If the enemy is glitched, flaming...If it's DARTHMOD, normal...Agree with STROM

[clandestino]

I use them all the time against lightly armoured troops ( light mail-heavy mail ) cause if the arrow don't pierce their armour it will set them on fire for sure, there's also a moral penalty for troop receiving flaming shots I think. In the sieges there is a pretty good chance to set rams on fire with flaming ammo but it's harder to inflame tower by my expirience.

[LordCrockett]

This is something i was about thread. I honestly think that flaming arrows are a waste of time , i mean the morale damage to the enemy deosnt show that much and i NEVER set alight rams with the archers , its always the towers shooting arrows.
Why would i give up the supurb strenght of a Longbow shot for a flaming missile?To me its just to make night fights look good

Flaming Missiles

[duda]

Kind of true

[Viking Prince]

Yes, I admit it. If it is foggy or night, I want to use a few volleys of flame because it looks great. It even gets the cat's attention.

I fing towers are easy ro torch. Two peasant archer units, one point blank in front have nearly always been successful.

Rams are a bit harder, but usually its just easier to sally out and run down the peasant unit pushing the ram if they are not protected.

Question: In Shogun (my only prior experience) weather dramaticly affected archer performance. Same here even though you only have visual hints to the weather before deployment? If so, does this affect the flame effectiveness?

[Cmdr_Sdxo]

Sometimes because it looks damn cool and if I want to take screenshots.

For practical reasons : When I'm defending against overwhelming odds and my only chance of survival is to make the enemy rout.

[Walternat0r]

If an enemy sallies from a seige flaming arrows work quite nicely as the reduced unit sizes (usually) and the packed in retarded ai means that their moral goes to pot and you through your cavalry at them, they all start running, seige over. More effective against rebels and garrisons with no generals obviously.

[Sodbuster]

Any slight drop in enemy morale is helpful. If I can send a unit from eager to steady before they even engage my eager unit, I can usually rout them within 10-15 seconds of engagement. The best thing to do is to shoot at the guys on the flanks (the flank with the militia or other low morale units on it preferably) and rout that flank right away, then roll up the rest of them.

[syntax_error]

I use them almost all the time. The only time I don't is when my flank archers are on the enemies shield arm and I need the accuracy and speed.

And since I normally go into battle with six to eight units of English Longbowmen, the inaccuracy and reloading speed is of little consequence.

[dr_guerra]

During night battles, flame arrows are more accurate. They also do more damage and have a good morale penalty. I mostly just use them to burn down towers and battering rams. You have to get good quality archers to properly do it, as peasant archers are just awful.

Also, I did a night battle against the Mongols, and I only had spears and archers with flaming arrows. Man it was beautiful.

[Viking Prince]

Recently, I had a small skirmish. A small force escorting a few ballistas to a town met up with some rebels. There were two units of heavey spear cav plus a bunch of the usual minor rebel annoyances. The cav stayed up on a hill just daring me to charge my armored spearmen. So I set the ballistas up and fired. I was not getting much effect. I flipped to the flaming option and began knocking off 2 or 3 with each shot. End of cav problem and then end of the rebels.

I guess part of the lesson is change tactics when you are not getting good results.

Also, the flaming ballista did look kind of good. Or to quote dr_guerra, "Man it was beautiful."