Siege Weapons seem incredibly lackluster.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I'm loving the 1.0 release so far, but siege and naval battles are starting to get frustrating in one aspect.

The damage that ballista ships and land ballista are putting out is completely underwhelming. I was in a combined naval/land siege against a Carthaginian walled city and had one land ballista and 5 ballista ships.

The land ballista fired at a gatehouse until running out of ammo, resulting in a grand total of 16% damage done to the gatehouse.

The five ballista ships (four, technically, since one screwed up and decided it wanted to land on the beach without orders) fired at another gate until they ran out of ammo, resulting in 64% damage to the gatehouse. Though they did take out a tower with the missed shots.

In bother cases, the towers on either side of the gate took 50-100% damage, so I'm not sure if this is just because so many shots go so wildly off course, or because the damage is too low on artillery or the health on gate houses is set too high.

I ended up taking the walls and getting into the city with the two free ladders provided instead.

But it got me asking, why do I even have a ballista, what are the point of these ships?


In another case, I lost a naval stack to several transport fleets because of the lack of ballista ship damage potential.
I know naval balance hasn't been touched yet, but it's also very frustrating to have a fleet of 9 ballista ships overwhelmed by slow moving transport stacks simply because it takes 10 confirmed hits on a transport ship to sink it/ light it on fire.
The low damage here is again making these artillery ships a near worthless investment.

Perhaps this case was an odd one to complain about however. Because even though I lost four velite quinquremes and 7 of the 9 ballista ships, I did sink 2800 worth of the 6000 infantry being transported.
Never the less, it was frustrating to watch a transport ship keep on trucking after being hit 8 or 9 times with a flaming rock.


Other than that, I really have nothing to complain about.

[FlashHeart07]

The naval combat havent really been looked at as I recall or at least not in the same way as land battles. Siege weapons have been tested alot and should be more than capable of taking down city walls though not being able to kill too many in a regular land battle.
So not being able to take down a city gate sounds odd and most frustrating Im sure. This will ofc be looked at. If not by me Im sure on of the others will. For naval battles I cannot say much mainly because I never play them due to the many flaws

[W4lt3r]

The naval combat havent really been looked at as I recall or at least not in the same way as land battles. Siege weapons have been tested alot and should be more than capable of taking down city walls though not being able to kill too many in a regular land battle.
So not being able to take down a city gate sounds odd and most frustrating Im sure. This will ofc be looked at. If not by me Im sure on of the others will. For naval battles I cannot say much mainly because I never play them due to the many flaws

Ballistas tend to miss almost half of their ammunition on a city gate / wall and even then a hit might do around .5% damage, if it's a stone wall / iron gate type city, i.g Hellenic, Roman and so on.
So the missile damage / accuracy could be looked at here. Missile damage on the part of sinking ships / damaging gates or walls and accuracy for obvious reasons.
Scorpios are in pretty good spot right now, probably the best land siege units you can bring, thanks to their good rate of fire, range, damage and overall acceptable accuracy.

Haven't done big tests with them yet, but two of these units can kill around 40% of men on a single unit if they walk the entire way to the scorpios / battle line in front of them. Extraordinarily effective if the enemy is bunched up in a bottleneck, let's say a village entrance as you attack it.
Polybus not used on my campaign so far.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

The naval combat havent really been looked at as I recall or at least not in the same way as land battles. Siege weapons have been tested alot and should be more than capable of taking down city walls though not being able to kill too many in a regular land battle.
So not being able to take down a city gate sounds odd and most frustrating Im sure. This will ofc be looked at. If not by me Im sure on of the others will. For naval battles I cannot say much mainly because I never play them due to the many flaws

Yes, I'm fairly sure the naval combat hasn't been looked at beyond just balancing the stats of the units on the boats themselves, I would think.
I can wait for naval combat to be fixed, because I mostly rely on naval artillery ships to serve as off shore support, as well as capable of taking out enemy fleets if I need to. Usually my fleets consist of about 9 ballista/onager ships, 2-3 scorpio ships, 4 velite quinquremes, and then a few firepot biremes.

Naval combat and boarding is far to bugged to play it the historically accurate way, what with the AI being capable of instantly locking and disabling any ship they touch in melee range, even if their ship is sunk or moves away, your ship is disabled for the rest of the battle.
So I 'cheese' it by simply blasting fleets apart using artillery ships in manual control mode.

The naval combat can be fun, when it works right. Sadly it ever works right. I'm not sure what all the DeI team can actually do about the poor implementation of navy mechanics, if anything.
Still, if you could look at the damage/accuracy of ballista ships and land ballista when it comes to them needing to take down walls, it'd be appreciated.

Ballistas tend to miss almost half of their ammunition on a city gate / wall and even then a hit might do around .5% damage, if it's a stone wall / iron gate type city, i.g Hellenic, Roman and so on.
So the missile damage / accuracy could be looked at here. Missile damage on the part of sinking ships / damaging gates or walls and accuracy for obvious reasons.
Scorpios are in pretty good spot right now, probably the best land siege units you can bring, thanks to their good rate of fire, range, damage and overall acceptable accuracy.

Haven't done big tests with them yet, but two of these units can kill around 40% of men on a single unit if they walk the entire way to the scorpios / battle line in front of them. Extraordinarily effective if the enemy is bunched up in a bottleneck, let's say a village entrance as you attack it.
Polybus not used on my campaign so far.

In previous version I'd never had a problem with scorpions and polybus, and I doubt I will once I get a few in this either.

My complaint is specifically with the seeming uselessness of siege artillery like the ballista and its ship mounted equivalent against city gates.

I may just swap out the ballista with a scorpion for the time being, and only rely on built siege equipment to attack walls and gates.

[FlashHeart07]

Ballistas tend to miss almost half of their ammunition on a city gate / wall and even then a hit might do around .5% damage, if it's a stone wall / iron gate type city, i.g Hellenic, Roman and so on.
So the missile damage / accuracy could be looked at here. Missile damage on the part of sinking ships / damaging gates or walls and accuracy for obvious reasons.
Scorpios are in pretty good spot right now, probably the best land siege units you can bring, thanks to their good rate of fire, range, damage and overall acceptable accuracy.

Haven't done big tests with them yet, but two of these units can kill around 40% of men on a single unit if they walk the entire way to the scorpios / battle line in front of them. Extraordinarily effective if the enemy is bunched up in a bottleneck, let's say a village entrance as you attack it.
Polybus not used on my campaign so far.

We have done testing of ballistas and KAM was able to knock down walls and Towers with them so it puzzles me how they have suddenly become useless after the release of the mod.

[Rafkos]

I ended up taking the walls and getting into the city with the two free ladders provided instead.

Attacking a city with two ladders? I agree, it's hard to capture a city now without waiting a few turns, but it should be like that. About the ballistas, hmm, sounds strange, 5 ballistas should be enough to break down the gate, the reason we made them like that is because they were used before in normal battles too and were really OP, so we decided to make them less accurate and good only for destroying walls, seems like you had a really bad luck or the ballistas are a bit now which is weird since they were tested before. If it's a problem then we'll try to fix it in new updates. Thanks for the feedback mate.

[KAM 2150]

NEVER EVER SHOT AT GATE! We made gate much tougher so it is not torched in one minute.

With single balista and onager squad I was able to destroy 1 tower, 3 wall sections and seriosuly damage 2 other wall sections. I guess that even single balista can take down 2 wall sections on it's own, which gives you much more space then trying to push through small gate.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

We have done testing of ballistas and KAM was able to knock down walls and Towers with them so it puzzles me how they have suddenly become useless after the release of the mod.

Oh they can still knock down towers easy enough, though I had not specifically attempted firing at wall sections.

Attacking a city with two ladders? I agree, it's hard to capture a city now without waiting a few turns, but it should be like that. About the ballistas, hmm, sounds strange, 5 ballistas should be enough to break down the gate, the reason we made them like that is because they were used before in normal battles too and were really OP, so we decided to make them less accurate and good only for destroying walls, seems like you had a really bad luck or the ballistas are a bit now which is weird since they were tested before. If it's a problem then we'll try to fix it in new updates. Thanks for the feedback mate.

Well I didn't bother with any other siege equipment because I thought, "Well I have five ballista ships and one on the ground, I should be able to plow right through the gate."
See, I didn't attack the wall sections, and based on what you guys are saying I should be attacking the walls, rather than the gate house.

NEVER EVER SHOT AT GATE! We made gate much tougher so it is not torched in one minute.

With single balista and onager squad I was able to destroy 1 tower, 3 wall sections and seriosuly damage 2 other wall sections. I guess that even single balista can take down 2 wall sections on it's own, which gives you much more space then trying to push through small gate.

Ah. There's the very likely answer to the issue I was having. I didn't realize when you made the gates so much harder to burn down, it was directly tied tot he HP of the gatehouse section of wall itself.

Well that settles it, from now on I'll simply attack gate sections with artillery pieces, and not the gatehouse itself.

Thanks everyone for your quick feedback on this.

[KAM 2150]

Yeah, we seriously need to make some combat/siege guide soon : P

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Yeah, we seriously need to make some combat/siege guide soon : P

Well at least in my defence, it was something that worked before, and I figured the game was designed in such a way that ignition threshold and building hp were separate.

[Kirsch27]

Just move them closer and protect them with infantry or use them in conjuction with a ram/tortoise and ladders/towers.

[Matmannen]

Siege weapons can be increadibly effective against unis if used right:

[FlashHeart07]

Siege weapons can be increadibly effective against unis if used right:

Did you manage them yourself? We have tried to nerf them against units but sometimes it can be hard to make them perfect. Though scorpions should be better against units. Hopefully

[Matmannen]

Did you manage them yourself? We have tried to nerf them against units but sometimes it can be hard to make them perfect. Though scorpions should be better against units. Hopefully

This was just a one time thing, usually I get 50 to 150 kills on a ballista. This was a village siege so I used my plebs to funnel the enemy into a chokepoint. I used lighttroops being exchanged for heavier troops as the battle progressed to hold while my two principies with highest kil lrate attacked the back. I placed the ballistae behind the holding force shootung straight into the 6000 packed into a narrow corridor... The often missed and gave almost 200 in friendly fire, but they got the job done...

As I wrote this was only a one time thing, I didn't get that high killrate by just randomly shooting into some loosly packed units but I created a situation where artillery could be used to it's highest potential. I think arty is good as it is when used against units, don't know about siege battles though as I haven't used them there yet...

[KAM 2150]

Sounds nice Yeah, I almost got grey hair from trying to get proper kills for ballistas without making them fire into the sky or deal super low damage. Actully is super cool that you wrote you get 50-150 kills becaue it is the same what I planned Although on my test, single squad of ballistas got 70-90 kills

[ablebodie]

Regarding city gates in sieges, what I've found to be most effective is actually building a ram in the campaign-level siege interface. It makes sense, the most gate-specialized siege engine is going to be most effective at gate destruction. What I'm eager to test out is the turtle siege engine that is intended to break walls down, and compare that against ballistae.

In the near future I will be orchestrating a significantly large siege against Sardes in an Arche Bosporus campaign, and am hoping to lay a multi-turn siege on Nicomedia or Ephesus where I can utilize all the siege engines to do a real test.

As an aside, the new defensive tower tweaks are great. The RoF is much more in line with what I would expect from a fortified position manned by multiple archers.

[Alu10]

There is a way to do alot of kills with ballistas. Using it yourself with masses of enemies blobbing in a downhill gradient so the ballista shot flies through a line of units without hitting the ground. I made like 1000 kills with that in a unwalled city defence with 0.96.

[ablebodie]

I've been reminded of something I believe I read here which I can no longer find - is it the case in 1.0 that the victory points within settlements have no bearing on the victory condition in a settlement assault/defense battle?

Basically what I'm asking is would it be viable for my to defend from the acropolis of a settlement, decline to defend at the 'victory point' as determined by the city center 'laurel wreath' icon, and still win a defensive battle against an attacker?

[Dresden]

We tried to remove victory points but the AI still thinks they are there.

[ablebodie]

I think I should clarify my question. What I'm trying to figure out is can I, as city defender, neglect the VP (allow the AI to capture it) and still win/retain my settlement by routing the enemy in combat at the highest/most defensible point in the city instead. Here is a screenshot elaborating on my question.