Fire Arrows vs Gates

[batonius]

Hi. First of all, thanks for the great job you're doing with DEI.

My question is about role of archers in sieges, specifically about their ability to destroy gates with fire arrows: in my Athens campaign I was able to take Rome at turn ~150 without investing in siege just by having my Greek Archers burned the gates down with fire arrows and then sending Sword Logades in. I haven't researched a single tech in Sieging tree, I didn't use ladders and a cheap Ballista I had with me. Granted, my Logades suffered considerably from missiles, but I was able to take the gates and then proceed to the center. Well, actually, I didn't take the city - I forgot to turn the time limit off and took my time resting and regrouping, but that's beside my point.

My point is, you shouldn't be able to burn down gates with arrows at all, or at least it should require much more ammo. I think DEI fixes this for Ballistas - 1 Balista unit is able to damage gates up to 20% before running out of ammo, so you have to have 5 ballistas with you if you want to break gates on turn 1. At the same time, 1 cheap archer unit has enough ammo to set gates on fire and totally destroy it, with 5 archer units I had plenty of ammo left for the battle. They didn't even suffer a causality because they outranged the towers. The gates I rushed had oil on it, but I haven't noticed it having any effect on my Logades, most causalities being from missiles.

So, am I missing something? Does it work as intended? Do you think you can do something about it?

[KAM 2150]

Sadly there is no good way to do it, because if we make things more difficult to ignite, it will affect both ships and gates and if we increase gate HP then we would have to increase siege weapon damage and if we do that we have to inreace..... and so on and so on.

[batonius]

Well, that's unfortunate.

[fernando77]

Well, that's unfortunate.

just don't use the cheap way to win.

[Augustusng]

Also, using ballistas to break down the gates is probably the worst thing to do with them. They're not accurate enough to reliably hit the gates, but you can use them to break down a wall section or two instead. And that way you don't have to worry about boiling oil.

[Draewn]

I really wish it was possible to use galleries to protect from the oil attacks. It seems like the main thing the engines as designed would be good for, but alas. Maybe they'll think of that in their next historical title... probably not.