Ballistas - Worth the trouble/cost?

[Gurak]

Never seem to get much value out of these things, and they slow down the army to boot.
A unit of decent archers seems to give better bang for the buck.


Am I missing something, or are they basically a waste of time for non-seige battles?

[paradamed]

They are great for killing beasts (trolls, mumakils, etc) and are good at bridge battles too.

[Gurak]

They are great for killing beasts (trolls, mumakils, etc) and are good at bridge battles too.

I have had some success with bridge battles, and sieges, though they don't seem to do much better than a decent archer unit on the whole.

As far as trolls go, I really had high hopes to use them as Olog Hai snipers, but I have never once been able to get a kill. Those bad boys are just too fast.
(my biggest success was a single hill troll who was bogged down crossing a river with his mates, the rest of whom crossed unscathed and minced my spear militia...)

In my recent encounter with mumaks, two units of Ballista managed to get one mumak, though to be honest, I'm not entirely sure it wasn't killed by heavy cav charge at the same time.

Overall, they are have been a major disappointment.
Perhaps I'm using them wrong? Does it make a big difference if they have a direct line of sight as opposed to firing over my line?
Please tell me the secret to using these 'super(?)' weapons effectively!

I should point out that I'm running MOS1.6.2, though I don't think the stats have been changed from vanilla.

[Rad]

They're pure gold if you can bear their limited movement on the campaign map. I used them in siege battles to pick off enemies at walls before going in with towers and rams. They did GREAT.

[Dutch-Balrog]

They are 100% worth it if you use them properly. :]

[the lightning legion]

They are 100% worth it if you use them properly. :]

i don't suppose you would like to elaborate

[Dutch-Balrog]

i don't suppose you would like to elaborate

Basicly you need to station armies that have ballistas on battlefields that have chokepoints, like the rammas echor, a river crossing, or siege battle (especially if you let them sally out).
They are also very valueable against trolls, balrogs and mumakill, aswell as units that have a very closed formation and are hard to kill in melee (Gondorian or Elven infantry for example).
They are also very good against enemy artillery.

They would be pretty useless though when you are outnumbered against the enemy in the early campaign on field battles, since there won't be any trolls or mumakill or anything like it.

Just a few examples, but i think you'll get my points.

[Flinn]

ballistas (and catapults) are actually OP in TATW, due to the fact that compared to vanilla M2TW they have greater number of equipments and higher accurancy, so I won't call them useless in general

when they are useful: bridge/ford battles (they can save the day when you are largely outnumbered and have none to few archers, catapults in particular are useful here); sieges (to bring down doors and when fighting against wooden walls, they can also be deployed to hit enemies directly into the settlement's road or square); in any battlemap in which you have a choke point (i.e. Rammas Echor, Moria pass etc)

when they are a must: against trolls (Ologs in particular) they can save the day; they become a must agains the Mumakils, the Balrog and Sauron

so basically I wouldn't put two ballistas in all my armies, but having a couple on that in few specific armies (for defense against Harad/Mordor or the most classic "siege army") is surely useful and a must if you want to be ready to everything; furthermore, AI will use ballistas and catapults, so having something to actually counteract them (ballistas are good at taking down other siege equipments too!) won't be bad, especially when your troops are already engaged in melee and you need to find a quick way to avoid their sieges to exterminate theirs and yours troops

Finally, they can be used to force the enemy out of a good defensive position on the battle map, and they also have a good ability to reduce enemy morale (due to the fire ammos and the high number of casualties they can cause with a volley).

Hope this enough to convince you to use them

EDIT:

Perhaps I'm using them wrong? Does it make a big difference if they have a direct line of sight as opposed to firing over my line?

that can be a issue of course, to be really effective they need to have free space in front of them when firing, some extra tips:

- you don't need to fire many shots to kill the trolls or mumak, you only need one or two well placed, so before starting to shot be sure that you have free space and that the ballistas are shooting in a straight line directly towards the enemy
- ballistas can be used to attract enemy charges, as the enemy will priorize the unit as a target if they come close at you and this can be used with big results when defending: is you have units with stakes, deploy them at the beginning of the battle, then move ballistas behind them and forget about chavalry charges

So the point is, they are not always necessary and you can win troll or mumaks with other means too, but they are surely useful in some situations / against some specific enemies and they offer interesting alternatives to the classic anvil/hammer strategy.

[Veteraan]

Flinn described the effective use of ballistas pretty well (nice work, son).
I have only two things to add.

Shooting trolls that are on the move usually will get you only the odd lucky kill. If they are stationary in an army that is waiting for you to attack, one well placed ballista unit can take out an entire Olog Hai unit.

And elaborating a bit on forcing the enemy out of a good defensive position as mentioned by Flinn:
If you are in a siege battle and the defenders are positioned right behind the gate with troops you would rather not meet at that location, ballistas can be a great help. Place one of them of as far left of the enemy as possible while still keeping the enemy troops in range and let the big arrows hit these units from the side. Place another ballista on the right side doing the same. They will do some serious damage that way and because of their great accuracy you can actually target that one enemy unit you most want to destroy.
This tactic will also work with catapults, but there targeting is poor (as we all probably know too well) and causes a lot of (unwanted) damage to walls and buildings.

[DrDragun]

Don't forget that ballistas shoot other siege equipment with high accuracy. If you are annoyed with enemy catapults killing your troops, target the ballistas on the catapults and they will destroy the equipment on the first shot usually.

1 ballista shot kills a Mumakil. 1 flaming ballista shot kills a Mumakil and makes the rest attack his own men.

[LuckyPistol]

All of what these guys have said is great advice, but don't go out of your way to build ballista barracks before other necessary buildings like farms, roads, and infantry barracks

[Jmonstra]

They can one hit Sauron !

[Bladvak]

ballistas (and, to a lesser degree, catapults) are great early and mid game for certain factions. they can take out either any unit with more than 1 hp or the enemy siege engines. the accuracy of ballistas is very high, I sometimes use ballistas with Gondor just for the Troll Catapults, either targeting the trolls or the catapults. early on, a unit of militia+ballista are troll killers.
however, I do not leave them with the army, I just add them to the stack just for the battle, then leave them to their own movement points.
in late game, they are useless, as you will have access to a lot of elite units that can perform very well against beats and siege units but have other uses as well, plus they will share the same amount of mp with the rest of the armies.

I want to play a game with Gondor using only the siege engines (they have Gondor Infantry stats afaik), but I'm waiting for the new MOS version. I promise I will at least post some savegames at round numbers, if not making a playthrough altogether.

[Veteraan]

(...)
I want to play a game with Gondor using only the siege engines (they have Gondor Infantry stats afaik), but I'm waiting for the new MOS version. I promise I will at least post some savegames at round numbers, if not making a playthrough altogether.

Signs are that it will be a very long wait until the next MOS version as things are now. This is a statement I would love to be wrong about though.
For now, we will have to do with the (impressive) latest dIRECTOR's cut. But that you already know of course.

[LuckyPistol]

Actually, this thread got me rethinking on a question I've always asked myself:

Are troll catapults really worth their cost? Or rather, are they sort of in the game just so you don't get bored playing as Mordor?

I've only played Mordor once or twice, but I've never bothered to go out of my way to recruit them

[DrDragun]

Hmm worth their cost is a tricky question with catapults. I often let half the unit die and don't retrain with non-troll catapults, because upkeep cost is halved but they still output full rate of fire.

Troll catapults have 28 attack and 26 def, compared to 30 and 29 for mountain trolls, so they can resist a cavalry attack or be used as melee reserve force. They also move around faster than normal cats. I guess it would require some creative use of these features to make them worth it.

[the lightning legion]

from what I gather troll ballistas would be a dream team since they can chill in front of the line

[athanaric]

I've used Ballistas to great effect when playing Dwarves and Elves, particularly against orcish factions. Especially for Dwarves, they are important because of their range, but also because their recruitment doesn't curb your city population as much as with regular infantry. Flaming bolts are quite decent at killing tightly grouped enemies (particularly if the enemy army is not yet in battle formation), while the regular bolts are IIRC better for sniping. Ballistas are probably the best tool for removing trolls or Balrogs from walls in a siege (doesn't work quite as well with Mûmakil, for obvious reasons). They're also a great tool for laying waste to lightly fortified enemy towns. There's nothing like having your Elven archers mow down anything that moves too close, while your ballistae incinerate the enemy camp along with some of its unlucky denizens.

[Gurak]

Ok, done a bit more testing with Ballistas, and other siege weapons.
As far as Trolls go, its very much hit and miss. You will need at least 4 Ballista to have a good chance of stopping a unit of Olog Hai, and even then at least half of them will be stomped. I think you are better off with a unit of decent spears, and some lancers.

For Mumakil, on the other hand, I have to agree that Ballista are essential. Almost overpowered, perhaps, as get a single hit with a flaming bolt and one of the big beasts goes down and the rest run amok. One unit of Ballistas shouldn't be able to so effectively neutralize what is really the single most credible threat the dark forces have, I think.
(though I must admit in my most recent game I was damn glad I had an effective weapon against the damn pachyderms!)

They also give you a weapon to knock down gates and palisades, if you don't want to wait and build rams.
Not very effective against anything else, though.

So overall, they definitely have their uses, but I think they are a bit imbalanced.
They just don't seem to have a realist effect in their current form
I would like to see them slightly more accurate, but less damaging. I could imagine a troll taking a bolt to the shoulder and not going down.
Similarly, I reckon a Mumak should require at least 2 to 4 to put down, and I think it should require at least half of the unit to be burned, before there is a chance of the rest going Amok.

With a bit of tweaking I think they could be a truly awesome, though not overpowered weapon.
And I think they deserve a bit of loving attention, as whoever modeled and animated them did a very sweet job. It's actually very cool to zoom right down and take a position just behind one Ballista as a group of Olog Hai charge towards you.
Really nice animation, and a great (read terrifying) sense of perspective!

[LuckyPistol]

I think one bolt from a ballista that size should be enough to take down a troll.....unless you hit his arm or something Even then he's not going to be able to use it. Ballistae are devastating, my problem is they're all EQUALLY devastating among factions. Sure, some of the infantry manning them have more defense than others, but I think Elvish and Dwarvish siege craft should pack more punch than human and orcish ones.