Roman Artillery = Gamechanger. Your thoughts?

[MrMerisi]

After getting a feel for DeI and the Supply system, I restarted a campaign as Rome/Equites and immediately built a workshop in Rome and equipped my legions with Ballistas.

Jupiter gives us strength!

It completely (duh) changes the way you play.

I thoroughly enjoyed the battle for Apulia as Pyrrhus advanced and his elephants were smashed into Ragu alla Pachyderma.

The AI actually does a reasonable job of rushing you compared to past TW titles (ETW was practically unplayable when they would just sit and take a pounding. Side question: is that worth revisiting?)

Once my Ballistas hit rank 6 they were like AT guns.

The downside is I now park them on a hill, surround them with defensive troops, and they rack up 300-600 kills per unit per battle, depending on who I am fighting.

I wonder what the Onagers will do!

Who else is using artillery and does it make the rest of the campaign too easy if I continue unopposed? I would have expected Syracuse to have Ballista towers to counter the threat, but they didn't and I was able to smash it to pieces. I lost 60 troops largely to arrow towers.

@Dresden is there a way to buff fortress cities like Syracuse early game just for the AI to at least give them historically plausible fixed defenses?

EDIT: IIRC Syracuse has a Workshop in it but the AI doesn't build/deploy artillery in defense.

[thesmoosh]

I tend to avoid using artillery because it makes things a bit too easy. I wasn't getting anywhere near 3-600 kills per unit though, unless it was a siege battle at a minor settlment where the AI blobs everything together. Most battles my ballistas would get between 150-300 kills depending on the enemy army.

I also found that having artillery made me play a more static style because it took away my willingness to retreat from a line and kite because I didn't want to abandon my artillery. That's partly due to the way I play (I have losing units) but mostly I just didn't want to deal with the hassle of dropping/moving equipment. Without artillery I find that I find that my battles end up more dynamic with different things happening on different fronts.

The only reason I might include 1 token artillery piece is that it makes the AI attack you, which is what I prefer because I get to react to the enemy formation.

[Ritterlichvon86]

The BAI is always susceptible to be abused in one way or another. It cannot do wonders, and cannot adapt in the same range a human opponent could.

If you go up against the AI with Artillery, make sure to have a maximum of two pieces in your army, and deploy in front of the deployment zone.


Just like camping hills or camping map corners, or building square boxes with Phalangites, putting the artillery and your forces far away from the BAI is a recipe for an uninteresting, cheesy gameplay on the map. If up against the BAI, always stick to a few houserules. It is hardcoded and cannot be changed - the influences formations and spacing have cannot circumvent all these issues with the BAI.

[Dardo21]

Sigh, if people whine enough about artillery it gets nerfed to shreds, if they are nerfed to shreds, people point out that it's useless, can't please anyone these days.

[MrMerisi]

Sigh, if people whine enough about artillery it gets nerfed to shreds, if they are nerfed to shreds, people point out that it's useless, can't please anyone these days.

Please point out the whine.
---

More technologically advanced cultures should take advantage of their edge and to employ things like artillery, and in a tactical battle it shouldn't make a huge difference unless the defenders want to camp out on a hilltop. The recent archaeological dig in Scotland unearthed hundreds of ballista shot and thousands of lead slinger bullets and the evidence suggests a Scottish tribe was smashed to pieces by Roman missiles.

I would imagine that the counter is that Hellenic factions should be able to also deploy artillery and Barbarian/other factions should have cheaper troops and be able to swarm their adversaries as IRL?

So the point of the thread was to ask how DeI players use artillery and if it's going to make for a lesser challenge (i.e. does the AI ever build it or counter it?)

100% agreed that corner camping and phalanx boxes are gamey and my "house rules" are not to deploy or move within 2 full units' width of the map edge.

[Ritterlichvon86]

It's because there are some people, not necessarily these who posted in this thread, who exploit game mechanics, and demand it to be fixed. This is not for Total War though. You can exploit any unit in certain situations, or also the meta of a given army composition. Artillery is not the only class that can be exploited heavily in TW/R2/DeI/Attila/etc., e.g. HA armies, full Phalangites walking across the map, 19 elite inf army, etc.

Point is: Just play historical, and don't exploit the BAI. It's like clubbing a retarded child with a lolipop, after stealing it of him before.

[waidizss]

Please point out the whine.
---

More technologically advanced cultures should take advantage of their edge and to employ things like artillery, and in a tactical battle it shouldn't make a huge difference unless the defenders want to camp out on a hilltop. The recent archaeological dig in Scotland unearthed hundreds of ballista shot and thousands of lead slinger bullets and the evidence suggests a Scottish tribe was smashed to pieces by Roman missiles.

I would imagine that the counter is that Hellenic factions should be able to also deploy artillery and Barbarian/other factions should have cheaper troops and be able to swarm their adversaries as IRL?

So the point of the thread was to ask how DeI players use artillery and if it's going to make for a lesser challenge (i.e. does the AI ever build it or counter it?)

100% agreed that corner camping and phalanx boxes are gamey and my "house rules" are not to deploy or move within 2 full units' width of the map edge.

Do not feed the troll Merisi, the comment made by Dardo was not to be taken seriously.

[Dardo21]

Ah, the residential "I'll tell you what other people's intentions are"-guy, I'll decide for myself what I mean serious or not, i don't need you to do that.

[MrMerisi]

It's because there are some people, not necessarily these who posted in this thread, who exploit game mechanics, and demand it to be fixed. This is not for Total War though. You can exploit any unit in certain situations, or also the meta of a given army composition. Artillery is not the only class that can be exploited heavily in TW/R2/DeI/Attila/etc., e.g. HA armies, full Phalangites walking across the map, 19 elite inf army, etc.

Point is: Just play historical, and don't exploit the BAI. It's like clubbing a retarded child with a lolipop, after stealing it of him before.

Jeez that paints a pretty grim picture - what an analogy!

For sure this isn't about exploiting game mechanics - there are hundreds of ways to do that and people come up with new ones all the time and that's just sad, in my opinion. Everyone who pays to play the game should be entitled to play it however they like. If trouncing IFTT "AI" is what turns people on, at least we're not fighting real wars very often any more. I am looking for a balanced challenge versus money buffs to the AI.

I just started testing out the artillery and was asking others for their thoughts - i.e. is this considered abuse of the AI or do you meet your match at some point (i.e. ballista towers vs your ballistas, etc). I'm not suggesting that a barbarian settlement be bristling with artillery - however AI Syracuse should be, and AI Roma besieging human-player Syracuse should bring artillery.

150 kills versus a Barbarian army is about the same as a good heavy infantry unit will inflict. The main caveat to that is that you can target elite enemy units and reduce their numbers and morale in a way that would take a long time in melee and with light missiles.

However, it wouldn't feel like ancient Rome (or like a Ridley Scott opening scene) or at least what I think the Romans would have done if it didn't have flaming projectiles hurtling into forests. I think the Romans consistently proved that they exploited their technological and doctrinal advantages wherever they could, and hurling burning stones hundreds of yards is certainly an advantage!

[Alannon]

With my arty I tend to get 150-200 kills per battle, sometimes around 100. It's awfully innacurate. But it's still better against troops than walls.

[Satansblofish]

Artillery is a good time. I mostly used them to pick up the pace when besieging. However, I had stopped using any because it has some unintended consequences that take away from the BAI too much for my taste.

In my experience, it has some major pitfalls when it comes to the BAI improvements from KAM. For example, when the AI is faced with 2+ artillery pieces or overwhelming ranged amount of units in general, the AI skirmish phase and attempted flanking no longer happen. The BAI tend to just charge face first into your lines. For me, after several battles, that is not a challenge and lacks any sort of interesting component. It feels way too much like vanilla combat which I think most of us were happy to move away from. If you want to use artillery and still have a challenge on the battlefield then you need to compensate the difficulty elsewhere. Basically, if you're going to use them and desire any sort of meaningful challenge in your campaign, then you need to adjust your campaign to the point of where they become necessary.

Recently, I began using them again because I feel like my current campaign has some mods/adjustments that I think are difficult enough to warrant them and do so without compromising the BAI too much. Between playing on hard difficulty and with mods like hardcore(with no CAI) and 41 units, it makes replenishment very tough and settlement even harder, so every lost soldier counts, especially expensive ones, and in order for my armies on campaign to continue campaigning, I have had to bring artillery.

[MrMerisi]

Artillery is a good time. I mostly used them to pick up the pace when besieging. However, I had stopped using any because it has some unintended consequences that take away from the BAI too much for my taste.

In my experience, it has some major pitfalls when it comes to the BAI improvements from KAM. For example, when the AI is faced with 2+ artillery pieces or overwhelming ranged amount of units in general, the AI skirmish phase and attempted flanking no longer happen. The BAI tend to just charge face first into your lines. For me, after several battles, that is not a challenge and lacks any sort of interesting component. It feels way too much like vanilla combat which I think most of us were happy to move away from. If you want to use artillery and still have a challenge on the battlefield then you need to compensate the difficulty elsewhere. Basically, if you're going to use them and desire any sort of meaningful challenge in your campaign, then you need to adjust your campaign to the point of where they become necessary.

Recently, I began using them again because I feel like my current campaign has some mods/adjustments that I think are difficult enough to warrant them and do so without compromising the BAI too much. Between playing on hard difficulty and with mods like hardcore(with no CAI) and 41 units, it makes replenishment very tough and settlement even harder, so every lost soldier counts, especially expensive ones, and in order for my armies on campaign to continue campaigning, I have had to bring artillery.

Hey @Satansblofish thanks for the input! Can you list out the mods you play with and the settings? I just added Hardcore and I'm looking for other mods to up the difficulty. In my previous (pre-artillery) campaign on Normal/Normal (my first DeI campaign) I took all of Italy, Norica, Illyria, Pannonia and Makedonia by 255BC without much of a problem, even though every Greek faction allied against me and I was fighting the Boi and the Bas. Dryson. I switched to Hard/Normal then discovered Hardcore and it's already feeling like a different kind of game.

Thanks!

[CadetNewb]

Typically, I only have one or two armies at most that have artillery, and use them to take on particularly tough cases. Nutcrackers. However, I haven't given the scorpio a try - how do they compare to the ballista and onager?

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Hey @Satansblofish thanks for the input! Can you list out the mods you play with and the settings? I just added Hardcore and I'm looking for other mods to up the difficulty. In my previous (pre-artillery) campaign on Normal/Normal (my first DeI campaign) I took all of Italy, Norica, Illyria, Pannonia and Makedonia by 255BC without much of a problem, even though every Greek faction allied against me and I was fighting the Boi and the Bas. Dryson. I switched to Hard/Normal then discovered Hardcore and it's already feeling like a different kind of game.

Thanks!

If you want a really challenging game I could suggest you Cultural Tensio bundled with De AI Arbitriis and our official hardcore submod of course.

[Satansblofish]

Hey @Satansblofish thanks for the input! Can you list out the mods you play with and the settings? I just added Hardcore and I'm looking for other mods to up the difficulty. In my previous (pre-artillery) campaign on Normal/Normal (my first DeI campaign) I took all of Italy, Norica, Illyria, Pannonia and Makedonia by 255BC without much of a problem, even though every Greek faction allied against me and I was fighting the Boi and the Bas. Dryson. I switched to Hard/Normal then discovered Hardcore and it's already feeling like a different kind of game.

Thanks!

Coincidentally, I just made a thread pertaining to this exact question. I would encourage you to check it out. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...culty-settings - It's close to what Greek Stategos suggested.

My current settings/difficulty:

41 unit armies. This, to me, is probably the biggest game changer in increasing DeI battle difficulty.
1) you have to fill twice the size of the army with the same budget -- much more difficult to fill stacks with only the best units.
2) It's neat how on campaign you struggle to replenish so you are forced to refill your ranks with local units.
3) You will notice how much more micro is required and how your force moves with much less precision vs 20 units.
4) I use a house rule where I pause very little and don't allow myself to issue commands (similar to hard mode in battles but I found it too annoying for right now, maybe if I get good enough again Ill turn it back on).

Hard/Hard. I have been playing with battles on both normal and hard. I prefer hard but some higher end units are incredibly difficult to break and require several rear charges. With quality 41 units+ on the battle field its simply too much microing.

Hardcore no CAI changes. I don't add the CAI changes because in my experience, when combined with hard difficulty, war declarations snowball and then you have a myriad of factions at war with you and many are clear across the map. It's a little too silly for my taste when it creates weird effects where they will send units on a long journey after you and not defend against their neighbors.

DE AI Arbitis(hardcore no CAI changes version). I like this one a lot. It adds some spice to the game and gives the various types of factions some extra flavor. I think this is why the eastern European barbarian factions have grouped up in my current campaign against me as Roma.

50% increase in supplies(to prevent 41 unit AI armies from starving).

Bonus: Actually complete your entire list of objectives under these settings. At times, this has been damn near impossible or I realize will take so many turns to accomplish, I am forced to abandon my efforts.

I plan to add cultural tensio, but I have some questions about impact that I want to run by the lead modder for it .


As Roma, near ~100 turns and I have Latium, Italy, Cisalpina, and Illyria. Taking the first three is usually pretty straight forward. My hold on Illyria is tenous, at best. I have been stuck there for dozens of turns and well over ten thousand Romans have perished in my drawn out campaign there. I just finished taking Illyria so it has not been "tamed" but I don't know that I will be able to hold it and I have already been expelled once at a similar juncture.

Using these settings, I would be seriously impressed if you accomplished anything similar to that of your first DeI go through with 6 provinces.

Typically, I only have one or two armies at most that have artillery, and use them to take on particularly tough cases. Nutcrackers. However, I haven't given the scorpio a try - how do they compare to the ballista and onager?

They're not necessarily as fun to watch. I don't totally agree with that but it seems a general consensus from players I have spoken with. Scorpio's are pretty devastating in a field battle or settlement attack/defense. With a couple of them you can shred individual units pretty good and with their accuracy they're ideal for taking out high impact units you don't feel like dealing with. They're basically useless when besieging since they struggle to take men off the walls. If you're the kinda person who likes to go right through the front gates, they can be useful since the enemy will cluster up at the gates and you can shoot right through the opening - very limited though as it only works until your units push through at all. For siege defenses, they're generally pretty great. My fun little trick for that is to set them up with some defensive units around a pair of towers.

[Paladin247]

I've been using artillery in field battles for the whole time playing Rome II, DEI and Roma Surrectum II before that. I generally use three batteries of ballista with each legion. I've found the number of casualties they inflict depends most on the formations the enemy selects. For a lot of barbarians in long line abreast formations, very wide but not deep, I see 150-200 per battery. Hellenic dense phalanx formations just get torn to pieces by ballista firing incindiaries and now you're talking double those numbers or better. The most artillery casualties I've seen in a single battle in my current Roman campaign is about 1,200.

I've found a fair number of references to Roman use of artillery in field battles, second battle of Cremona being one. Two in Caesar's Commentaries, II, 8 and VIII, 14. Both refer to deployment of arty for potential use versus enemy troops, but in both cases the battle doesn't happen. Enemy retreats.

Another is in Osphrey's Roman Battle Tactics 109BC-AD 313, pg 22, plate B, Arrian's battle vs. the Alani, AD 132. There is a crescent of ten artillery batteries behind the infantry lines. However, in the accompanying write up no mention of the arty is made. I'm not prepared to say that's why we don't hear much about artillery; but maybe it was so commonplace that the assumption was made that artillery was mostly present and involved. How often was it mentioned that javelins were thrown even tho they undoubtedly were in every battle? In any case I found these in a casual index search of just the books in my personal library. From what I can deduce, most contemporary accounts of artillery (Biton, Philon, Heron, Ammainus, etc.) are largely theses on how to build same and their ballistic characteristics in range and throw weight.

Multiple sources say that every cohort had an onager from ~100BC-AD200 and that the nine legionaries detailed as artillery men could assemble same in twenty minutes or less. That for me solves the accessability issue. Anywhere the baggage train could get close to, the legion could have artillery support. You just combat-load the baggage train with the stuff you need first at the front.

Multiple sources also state that there's very little written on onagers at all, other than the theses as cited. So there's probably no real way to resolve this issue historically and I don't care. If the enemy has arty, they use it on me, so I'm going to do likewise.

Plus, listen, I spent thirty-one years on active duty in the real military, the US Navy. It just makes no sense to me that any leader would dismiss the use of a formidable weapon that could save his men's lives when he could do otherwise. I could care less whether it's "gamey" or not.

Real battle tactics are designed to place the enemy in as unfavorable a position as possible so you can stomp the daylights out of him while:
1. Achieving the mission
2. Maximizing enemy casualties
3. Minimizing own casualties.

Let's look at what a no artillery pre-battle speech might sound like.

"Men, you know me. I am a true Roman of the old school. I believe in virtue, valor and that Rome is destined to rule the world. I also believe in fair play on the battlefield; no gaming.

So today we are going to abandon our supremely effective three batteries of artillery support and allow our enemy to form up and engage not under fire so we may battle on a fairer level.

I think this will provide us with more of a challenge and thus be more fun."

Sure; I can see that.

Battles are not basketball games; no element of mutual fairness presides.

[thesmoosh]

@paladin I thoroughly enjoyed your post, thank you. In a real battle I would %100 use every dirty little advantage I can muster because that's just good strategy. There is no honor in war.

That being said, to me video games are more like sports where you need rules or the whole thing stops being fun (if you could just shoot the goalie in soccer people would stop playing real quick).

Plus after the 600th time where I sit there and wait for the AI to walk straight at me though artillery fire only to get decimated by my javelins and archers before the battle even starts, it started to get boring, for be at least.

None of this is to say how anyone else should play. Fighting without artillery just happens to be what I personally find enjoyable at the moment.

[Paladin247]

thesmoosh,

I agree that folks should play the game that they paid their money for in whatsoever way they like. Back when I was playing RSII, there was a guy on their forums whose name I can't recall, and I'd probably not cite him if I could, who specialized in dishing out ridicule for any mode of play with which he disagreed. It was total arrogance.

[Alannon]

If you nerd arti accuracy they will start missing the walls even more. Right now it's awfully annoying to watch arti continuously miss the wall that's right in front of them. So right now they're perfect (in a sense that they are not scoring too many casualties against infantry, only 150-300). Also, rome tends to often have an onager with its armies almost every time, inflicting quite painful losses to me, especially if I have to defend. And if he brings in two armies - well, that's tough. I'd like to keep it that way. If you think artillery is too OP for you, then don't use it. Otherwise it will be made useless when in the hands of AI or when sieging.

[Satansblofish]

I've been using artillery in field battles for the whole time playing Rome II, DEI and Roma Surrectum II before that. I generally use three batteries of ballista with each legion. I've found the number of casualties they inflict depends most on the formations the enemy selects. For a lot of barbarians in long line abreast formations, very wide but not deep, I see 150-200 per battery. Hellenic dense phalanx formations just get torn to pieces by ballista firing incindiaries and now you're talking double those numbers or better. The most artillery casualties I've seen in a single battle in my current Roman campaign is about 1,200.

I've found a fair number of references to Roman use of artillery in field battles, second battle of Cremona being one. Two in Caesar's Commentaries, II, 8 and VIII, 14. Both refer to deployment of arty for potential use versus enemy troops, but in both cases the battle doesn't happen. Enemy retreats.

Another is in Osphrey's Roman Battle Tactics 109BC-AD 313, pg 22, plate B, Arrian's battle vs. the Alani, AD 132. There is a crescent of ten artillery batteries behind the infantry lines. However, in the accompanying write up no mention of the arty is made. I'm not prepared to say that's why we don't hear much about artillery; but maybe it was so commonplace that the assumption was made that artillery was mostly present and involved. How often was it mentioned that javelins were thrown even tho they undoubtedly were in every battle? In any case I found these in a casual index search of just the books in my personal library. From what I can deduce, most contemporary accounts of artillery (Biton, Philon, Heron, Ammainus, etc.) are largely theses on how to build same and their ballistic characteristics in range and throw weight.

Multiple sources say that every cohort had an onager from ~100BC-AD200 and that the nine legionaries detailed as artillery men could assemble same in twenty minutes or less. That for me solves the accessability issue. Anywhere the baggage train could get close to, the legion could have artillery support. You just combat-load the baggage train with the stuff you need first at the front.

Multiple sources also state that there's very little written on onagers at all, other than the theses as cited. So there's probably no real way to resolve this issue historically and I don't care. If the enemy has arty, they use it on me, so I'm going to do likewise.

Plus, listen, I spent thirty-one years on active duty in the real military, the US Navy. It just makes no sense to me that any leader would dismiss the use of a formidable weapon that could save his men's lives when he could do otherwise. I could care less whether it's "gamey" or not.

Real battle tactics are designed to place the enemy in as unfavorable a position as possible so you can stomp the daylights out of him while:
1. Achieving the mission
2. Maximizing enemy casualties
3. Minimizing own casualties.

Let's look at what a no artillery pre-battle speech might sound like.

"Men, you know me. I am a true Roman of the old school. I believe in virtue, valor and that Rome is destined to rule the world. I also believe in fair play on the battlefield; no gaming.

So today we are going to abandon our supremely effective three batteries of artillery support and allow our enemy to form up and engage not under fire so we may battle on a fairer level.

I think this will provide us with more of a challenge and thus be more fun."

Sure; I can see that.

Battles are not basketball games; no element of mutual fairness presides.

If someone enjoys the improvements made to the Battle AI by KAM, then using too many artillery units will completely negate all of it. You fail to discuss this at all; it is the entire premise of abusing the AI vs maintaining a 'historical' experience. Simply put, KAM's improvements are fantastic and a major function of what makes DeI so ing great. It is not some sort of trivial difference - you know what is incredibly stale and boring: full on blob charge the direct center of your line on repeat for every battle. Players absolutely will experience this if they try to overwhelm the AI with artillery. I don't question the historicity of overwhelming artillery being a capability for certain factions or it's potential impact on the battlefield -- but does history tell us that blobbing the center of your line is the appropriate and/or most widely demonstrated response though? Maybe it does and I don't think it matters a bit. For me, it's very simple: KAM's BAI vs Vanilla AI. I hope my point of view sticks out to players that want to continue to use artillery but not waste their time facing something, that is frankly, silly. They ought to know they have choices regarding keeping KAM's improvements and maintaining varying levels of difficulty.

Of course, in reality a good commander would use any and every advantage at his disposal. But, in my experience with the overall R2 AI, this is more akin to adding house rules for myself against my young nephew in a game of chess. Without some sort of rule/handicap, I will destroy them, on repeat. No question of the result, ever. That's not fun for long and I still want to have fun playing chess but my nephew is the only other player. What do?