Siege vs Infantry discussion...

[Ambrosius]

what is the best siege unit for bombarding enemy infantry? what is the best siege mode? please post your opinions/experiences.

some thoughts to consider:
which is better: the grand bombard, or cannon, for bombarding mass enemy infantry formations?
the cannon is, presumably, more accurate. but the grand bombard's area of effect is 5x the size.

with a trebuchet, is it worthwhile to use flaming projectiles, to maximize the area of effect on enemy infantry and incinerate them? or is it better to just use the regular stone projectiles, which do less damage but are more accurate?

if you were faced with a horde of enemy infantry, what would you use to bombard them? try to keep it roughly balanced/realistic, ie: dont say '10 grand bombards' please.
ie: would you use 2 trebuchets? one grand bombard? one serpentine? 4 ballistas? overall, which is the most effective from a pure anti-infantry perspective?

[Ambrosius]

just did a test of one fully upgraded cannon vs one fully upgraded basilisk.
i assumed that the basilisk would easily win, since it is touted as the 'most feared and accurate cannon'.
it actually lost, but it seems that it was just a matter of luck as to where the shots landed. they both seemed equally inaccurate. the best way to do this i suppose would be to run the test 20 times in a row, but i dont have the patience for it.

by the time my cannons ran out of ammo both the enemy basilisks were destroyed and the enemy was down to 14 men out of 30. i had lost 4 men and both cannons were unscathed.

so let this be some consolation to nations that dont get the more 'accurate' artillery, seems that all the late game ones stand a reasonable chance of taking the other ones out.

[chemfy]

grand bombars those really big ones cause alot of fear and make the enemy rout easily.

[Ambrosius]

grand bombards seem to have by far the biggest area of effect... but is it worth the significant loss of accuracy? thats kindof what id like to discuss in this thread... which is the most effective on the battlefield.

i just did a test of a grand bombard vs a basilisk, and the closest hit from the bombard was about half a football field away... with most of the shots ending up more than an entire football field away. i tried both normal ammo and flaming ammo, they both seemed equally as crappy. i did four tests, and in all four the basilisk clearly won, without losing a single man - none of the grand bombard hits were even close.
i assume if you have a HUGE blobl of enemy infantry you may get lucky with one grand bombard hit, but with the shots going a football field away even that isnt a guarantee.

how do you people use artillery/siege in your games?


-------------------------------------------------------------------
just running some tests now:

serpentine > cannon, basilisk. by quite a significant margin
ballista > any other artillery. 90% of the time without losing a single man.

so there you have your anti-siege units. it seems that ballistas have their uses even late game. they can be produced just about anywhere by a level 1 building, hhave low upkeep, and are the most accurate of all siege weapons (historically as well.. there are accounts of them being used to snipe single men from hundreds of yards away).

[Ambrosius]

for the record: mass ribaults beats mass noble pikemen

they cannot come close enough to melee, they keep breaking when they get too close. so the ribaults are free to unload on them until they run out of ammo. then i just dropped them all and swarmed the demoralized pikemen with my ribault crews and they ran like rabbits.

in the end, 1400 noble pikemen dead, and only 13 ribault crewmen.

[Wurfspiess]

For me its the Mortar
its the most flexible
Can shoot over walls (but can destroy them also)
You can place it in a field battle behind your lines and so on

[lawngnome]

Trebuchet is quite versatile until gunpowder comes along. Depending on which faction, of course, I like mortars or ribaults, but a good ol' cannon seems quite effective in terms of accuracy and damage....

[jimbob]

Unit scale plays a large part on the effectivness of siege vs infantry, as well the general make-up of the army you're attackign.

I played my first long campaign with normal scale on as the english, and found siege equipment very inaccurate, and pretty useless against the tight infantry formations commonly found in europe.

For my second long campaign I'm playing as the turks, with unit scale set to the largest option. Fighting against the mongols and timurids, siege equipment is invaluable. With their large horse-archer formations often covering huge areas of the map, siege equipment is extremely effective against them. Aiming right into the centre of their horse archers often yeilds huge amounts of kills.

You need to defend them with a few spears and archers, but you can usually protect them well enough for them to do a lot of damage. I prefer to use catapults and trebuchets as opposed to gunpowder units, as they're a lot cheaper, so it doesn't matter too much if the mongolians destroy a few of them. I'm not sure the gunpowder based units are better at all........ they're certainly not worth the price difference.

[Mooncabbage]

I'm not surprised the cannons beat the basalisks, if you read the description of the cannons I think you will find they are described as anti infantry, rather than anti building weapons. The real test: Go your custom scenario, spend half your dosh on cannons, half on basalisks (can you have both? not really got that far yet...) and give them each a wall to shoot at. See which ones knock down the walls the fastest, and how many walls they knock down. Compare against stats vs. infantry to find the truely versatile infantry support weapon!

[Theoden]

ribault seems the most effective to me, cannons are hit or miss to me...sometimes they do quite abit of damage sometimes they dont but they're best used for seiging. The trebuchet is good with the cow option but not recommended to use in seige.

[Mooncabbage]

Trebuchet is the premier siege weapon, atleast until gunpowder. Those things will have your walls down quick as blinking. Absolutely useless against troops though. Ballistas are quite effective in the early period against troops. I would suggest that cannons are certainly less effective against infantry than ribaults, but then the ribault is far less effective against buildings... I guess the cannon is a multi-purpose tool, useful for invading armies where versatility is essential. I mean you're in a bad way if a home defence army has to lay siege to something, so you can probably get away with ribaults there, but otherwise cannons are pretty much useful no matter what the situation, of less than ideal.