Scorpion Towers are Overpowered

[Costin_Razvan]

In high level cities, except Barbarian ones, the defender has access to automated Scorpion towers with unlimited ammo, ridiculous damage and insane accuracy.


Here are two examples:


1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_zpzvoh-6s


This video shows two different types of city siege battles with the AI attacking. In the first battle the AI was given siege towers and ladders, it also had rams but did not use them. This is with 3.0 Beta but nothing was changed with regards to these towers,


In the first battle the AI only sends 4 units using the 2 ladders and 2 siege towers I provided for it, but due to pathfinding bugs keeps the rest of the it's army in reserve. The ladder units, which are elite heavily armored foot companions, are slaughtered before they can climb the walls. While the siege towers units don't get hit before they land on the lands, they are too hit once they get on the walls.


In the second battle the AI army is given artillery, which it does use to destroy the towers. Instead it rushes to destroy the gate and while it does manage to enter the city on account of it's large numbers of elite units: Food Companions, Shield Bearers and Hoplites, it losses 1.400 men to Scorpion Towers and barely 700 to my defenders and does not make it anywhere close to the victory points.


2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXmOdofOsj4#t=17m30s


NOTE: It's a fairly long battle here due to moronic AI landing it's troops like an imbecile and moving it's ships across my outer wall taking shots from several scorpion towers.


In this scenario you have a massive force of Kartli attempting to take one of my cities in my Spartan playthrough on Legendary. The invading force is largely annihilated by the Scorpion towers mounted on the walls.


In both these videos you see powerful AI armies unable to take high level cities from inferior defending forces due to Scorpion towers and it's own stupidity, this is especially true in the second video where it was simply the Garrison against 40 units.


This is an issue players also have to deal with while attacking high level cities without artillery. Siege Equipment such as ladders and siege towers are utterly useless as your units will be slaughtered on the walls. Rams will allow you to break gown the gate but you will still suffer massive casualties when storming the gates.


The only solution is to use artillery to knock them down, something a player can do easily: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JvUybvVcok#t=14m


They don't have much HP but the AI will not do this because even if it has artillery it will not use them on the towers.


The towers need at the very least limited ammunition like field scorpions have, which of course are also very vulnerable as is all artillery.

[Killerbee]

Agreed, I remember this one battle where I had shot the gates open and I sent in my cav - so pretty fast units. By the time they had reached the gate one unit had been entirely (!) massacred, the other one started routing. Sending in all my inf they were massacred just as easily. It makes no sense because I re-loaded (never meant to manually fight that battle anyway, just did it to show a friend) then auto-resolved. I had less casualties in the entire battle from autoreslving then I hed when just moving my troops towards the city.

[Korburss]

Catapults and proper use of them solves this problem.

[Kraxis]

"Proper use" being the important part... AI meet "proper use"... no? Hmm...

[Praetorian349]

I am inclined to agree. Some mates and I were doing a custom battle defense of Medhlan.

Me as Macedon and a mate as Rome, defending, against three mates, Arverni, Roman and Spartan players.

The opposing Roman player lost every man (mostly elite Praetorians and Syrian archers) before the walls with 90% of my actual force sitting back, relaxing inside the city centre. He managed to actually capture one of the ridiculously OP towers, to which I lost a unit of Royal Peltasts before I could reclaim it.

The other two players were held back by my Roman ally. The entirety of their first wave was destroyed by boiling oil and those towers, fighting only one unit of Praetorians holding the gateway. They then forced us back using slingers. We realised we had to retake the gatehouse after they had pushed us back. So we threw our combined weight into their men while they were travelling through the gateway. With the towers contested they rained death on both sides. We lost several units of elite Praetorians and elite Foot Companions, along with some regulars, before the towers were ours again.

With a unit of Foot Companions blocking the gatehouse, the Spartans threw their forces at the gateway. The towers killed at least one thousand men in that push alone, which lasted around 5-10 minutes. My Foot Companions merely affixed them. Then some of my Shield Bearers, having ran from the other side of the fort, where the Roman engagement had been, came around the back and killed their slingers. Game over.

I can't remember the exact stats, but they were extortionately in our favour. That was clearly caused by the towers as the amount of men given as our kills was significantly lower, perhaps half, that of the amount they lost (siege defense kills don't count as player kills).

Now, before you say they should have used siege towers, or avoided the gateways, they tried. Those towers are all over the show. And have you seen Medhlan? There is a ravine, walled in by cliff-faces, leading to the gate. You don't have many choices.

In short, yes, they are bloody OP. They should be good enough to make an attacker have second thoughts, but not good enough to wipe out armies, making them the main focus for both sides during the entire battle.

[Praetorian349]

Oh, another thing. The Roman player I was fighting took a second tower. But I used flaming arrows and took it out before it actually did any damage.

Given enough time they do fall to flaming arrows and other fire damage, such as artillery. So that is one counter. But it is not always feasible. And when it isn't feasible the only alternative is an utter massacre in the process of trying to take it.

[SirRobin]

Your video doesn't show the problem well, because you keep zooming and panning around. I was trying to get an idea of the casualties but you just didn't give me time to get an overview.

From what I could see, the towers are NOT overpowered. Some casualties, yes, but that's to be expected when attacking a fortified city.

[Costin_Razvan]

From what I could see, the towers are NOT overpowered. Some casualties, yes, but that's to be expected when attacking a fortified city.

Then you probably ignored the casualty list at the end.

My units killed 700 men. The Towers killed 1400.

[daelin4]

But we can't tell whether you are just blabbing out speculative nonsense and using the casualties list at the end to prove it. That's not how you demonstrate properly.

Anyways, this isn't really a problem in SP, though for a very stupid reason: they don't appear in siege maps at all.

[Costin_Razvan]

That you can't tell because I move the camera too fast for you is your own problem from your perspective, not mine, test it out in a custom battle or single player where they do appear in every tier 4 eastern, Hellenic or Italian city and see how it goes.

[craziii]

they are the reason why I have a min of 2 siege units in my offensive armies.

why do some of u guys think they don't appear in campaign? all lvl 4 province capitals have them. they hurt bad!

[wulfgar610]

Historically the Romans maxed out on artillery positions going by the walls of Lugo. The story goes a single ballista shot was enough to scare away a barbarian horde.

[Alkaline Earth]

Not gonna lie that wall looks intimidating to try and climb up and attack! I wonder how they did it back then omg.

[crzyrndm]

A) If you know theyre broken for defending, then don't use them if you don't want them. Ballista/cannon towers in M2, high level castles in Shogun, probably something in the original rome (Been too long ), Empire, and Napoleon as well. High level fortifications have always been gamebreakingly rediculous with a human defender.

B) If you're attacking a settlement with a 4th level central structure, then make sure you have artillery unless you want an overly large butchers bill. The towers are highly accurate and pierce soldiers (M2 ballista towers with much higher accuracy) so wide and shallow formations are recommended if you do have to run the gauntlet.

[wulfgar610]

Not gonna lie that wall looks intimidating to try and climb up and attack! I wonder how they did it back then omg.

Lugo was perhaps the receiving city for the produce of nearby Spanish precious metal mining, hence the best of provincial walls. Originally it would have been surrounded by moats as well. Theory is in something like this a relatively small garrison could hold off much larger opponents. Which is why starving the defenders out was such a popular recourse. Such towns often fell because of treason. Many provincial walls where much less than this, merely earthen mounds with a short wall on top. In the last days of the Empire with it's regular armies gone, they could still control barbarian movements from such fortifications. There's limitations of modeling this sort of reality into the game because of one year turns and the lack of sufficient mirco scale.

TWR2 paints the map in broad strokes, so Costin might have a case in terms of game play.

A fault of the game is where large armies on both sides were involved, the battles took place outside the city at some strategic point. If you let a large force besiege your city, that left the besiegers in control of the hinterland and the defending army was trapped.

[Costin_Razvan]

A) If you know theyre broken for defending, then don't use them if you don't want them. Ballista/cannon towers in M2, high level castles in Shogun, probably something in the original rome (Been too long ), Empire, and Napoleon as well. High level fortifications have always been gamebreakingly rediculous with a human defender.

You can't choose NOT to use them unless you don't upgrade your cities. Also it's not my problem the developers can't balance the game.

Exploits should be fixed.

B) If you're attacking a settlement with a 4th level central structure, then make sure you have artillery unless you want an overly large butchers bill. The towers are highly accurate and pierce soldiers (M2 ballista towers with much higher accuracy) so wide and shallow formations are recommended if you do have to run the gauntlet.

Of course artillery works, but it's the only thing that really works.

[Korburss]

You can't choose NOT to use them unless you don't upgrade your cities. Also it's not my problem the developers can't balance the game.

Exploits should be fixed.



Of course artillery works, but it's the only thing that really works.

Yes, Artillery is the only thing that works, as it should be. Mind you, this game does try to be a little bit accurate and historically you either starved the defenders, bombarded them until they surrendered, or brought ten times as many men and expected a bloodbath.

[crzyrndm]

You can't choose NOT to use them unless you don't upgrade your cities. Also it's not my problem the developers can't balance the game.

Exploits should be fixed.

So dont build the fourth level then. It's not worth it most of the time anyway other than for the ballistae towers.

I wouldn't call being able to heavily fortify a position an exploit. The fact that the CAI wont build siege weapons is a problem, the fact the BAI wont use the siege weapons against the towers is a problem. Fortifying your position (or the AI doing so) is not a problem. I would have far more problems with not being able to heavily fortify if I so choose (namely because the AI also couldn't).

Siege defences aren't meant to be fair.

[kelvintyk]

To me this overpowered scorpion tower thing isn't the worst part. For some odd reason, capturing these scorpion towers doesn't stop it from firing at my men. Capturing seems to work for me on arrow towers, yet scorpion tower continues firing at my men despite being captured by me. This essentially meant I had to capture victory points while under fire from scorpion towers while running there. Y'all coulda guessed that didn't end well.

[Korburss]

Doubled.