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Thread: Artillery Towers?

  1. #1

    Default Artillery Towers?

    So from my understanding of the oxybeles in particular is that it was mainly a weapon used in sieges by defenders - the siege of Tyre by Alexander apparently featured the walls of the island-fortress having slits in them that were manned by various arrow-projecting artillery pieces like oxybeles and gastraphetes.

    But near as I can tell the various wall upgrades have towers that only ever fire regular arrows and there's no "ballista towers" building like in vanilla to upgrade the missile level. Is this an intentional decision by the team? It feels like something of an omission to me and I'm curious if this is something that was discussed and rejected.

  2. #2

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    The gastraphetes was a personal weapon, similar to a crossbow, rather than a piece of artillery.

    I'd have to check with people who've been around the team longer as to whether there was a discussion about tower-based artillery. We did discuss tower-archers, and removed them from some smaller settlements and drastically reduced the rate of fire.
    Last edited by QuintusSertorius; January 10, 2019 at 07:47 AM.

  3. #3

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    EB can have insanely long grinddowns on walls. Even current towers can do significant damage in those. Ballista towers would make these grinddowns virtually impossible to lose for defenders.

  4. #4

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius View Post
    The gastraphetes was a personal weapon, similar to a crossbow, rather than a piece of artillery.

    I'd have to check with people who've been around the team longer as to whether there was a discussion about tower-based artillery. We did discuss tower-archers, and removed them from some smaller settlements and drastically reduced the rate of fire.
    Remove tower fire alltogether. It's annoying as hell, and I believe it causes casualties to friendlies.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Hm, fair enough. I do half-fondly remember the machine gun towers of Rome 1. Those things were lethal.

  6. #6
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    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rad View Post
    Remove tower fire alltogether. It's annoying as hell, and I believe it causes casualties to friendlies.
    This! That's why you need slingers and archers

    Artillery towers would be cool, but I think it would only make people avoid assaulting the walls and wait for the citys to starve and sally out.
    Assaulting the walls are a grindfest, that's even worse due to the pathfinding problems

  7. #7

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Raiuga View Post
    This! That's why you need slingers and archers

    Artillery towers would be cool, but I think it would only make people avoid assaulting the walls and wait for the citys to starve and sally out.
    Assaulting the walls are a grindfest, that's even worse due to the pathfinding problems
    I disagree. Artillery towers in EBII are very good balanced. They aren't machine gunners like Rome 1, instead they slowly kill some of your troops, that's why you must be carefull on the assault. It's already good as it is.

  8. #8

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Those who want to remove or reduce tower fire are just pansies.

    Siege assaults should result in deaths from the battlements, this is completely rational, and in fact, tower arrow fire should be increased, and be more precise.

  9. #9

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Nope, we're not increasing the rate of fire from towers. Feel free to do what you like to your own descr_walls.txt, though.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    So just a quick update for those who might be interested - it saddened me somewhat to essentially never get the chance to deploy arrow-projectors in defense of fortifications (particularly since I was playing as the Ptolemies and Alexandria was apparently one of the major Hellenistic centres of artillery research and construction), so I did a little bit of experimental modification.

    In the descr_walls.txt I replaced the standard arrow projectile for large and huge stone walls with an oxybeles projectile lifted from the EDU, halved its range (so offensive siege artillery remains effective), changed the vfx to ballista tower shots, upped the reload speed to 32000ms (so just over 30 seconds, might up it further to 45000ms), and then doubled the health of siege towers and rams since they got chewed through like butter (I'm considering tripling it).

    For the most part this works well, although it does give the defender a greater advantage than before. If I want to storm large or huge fortifications I know to either bring dedicated siege artillery, or starve the city out, or storm it with regular siege engines and expect higher losses - note though that with this setup it is still possible to storm the walls, just costlier than before.

    I think I'll be keeping it as a sort of house-rule modification. Ofc I understand the team's reasoning behind toning down defensive firepower but I figured I'd leave my changes documented here for anyone else who might want to mod their own game.

  11. #11

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mamlaz View Post
    Those who want to remove or reduce tower fire are just pansies.

    Siege assaults should result in deaths from the battlements, this is completely rational, and in fact, tower arrow fire should be increased, and be more precise.
    You in trouble now, boy.

  12. #12

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Baharr View Post
    So just a quick update for those who might be interested - it saddened me somewhat to essentially never get the chance to deploy arrow-projectors in defense of fortifications (particularly since I was playing as the Ptolemies and Alexandria was apparently one of the major Hellenistic centres of artillery research and construction), so I did a little bit of experimental modification.

    In the descr_walls.txt I replaced the standard arrow projectile for large and huge stone walls with an oxybeles projectile lifted from the EDU, halved its range (so offensive siege artillery remains effective), changed the vfx to ballista tower shots, upped the reload speed to 32000ms (so just over 30 seconds, might up it further to 45000ms), and then doubled the health of siege towers and rams since they got chewed through like butter (I'm considering tripling it).

    For the most part this works well, although it does give the defender a greater advantage than before. If I want to storm large or huge fortifications I know to either bring dedicated siege artillery, or starve the city out, or storm it with regular siege engines and expect higher losses - note though that with this setup it is still possible to storm the walls, just costlier than before.

    I think I'll be keeping it as a sort of house-rule modification. Ofc I understand the team's reasoning behind toning down defensive firepower but I figured I'd leave my changes documented here for anyone else who might want to mod their own game.
    What size settlement did you add the heavier projectiles to? I would not be averse to making Large and Huge Cities harder to take by assault without bringing the right equipment.

    In any case, keep experimenting with it, and feel free to release as a submod.

  13. #13

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Baharr View Post
    So just a quick update for those who might be interested - it saddened me somewhat to essentially never get the chance to deploy arrow-projectors in defense of fortifications (particularly since I was playing as the Ptolemies and Alexandria was apparently one of the major Hellenistic centres of artillery research and construction), so I did a little bit of experimental modification.

    In the descr_walls.txt I replaced the standard arrow projectile for large and huge stone walls with an oxybeles projectile lifted from the EDU, halved its range (so offensive siege artillery remains effective), changed the vfx to ballista tower shots, upped the reload speed to 32000ms (so just over 30 seconds, might up it further to 45000ms), and then doubled the health of siege towers and rams since they got chewed through like butter (I'm considering tripling it).

    For the most part this works well, although it does give the defender a greater advantage than before. If I want to storm large or huge fortifications I know to either bring dedicated siege artillery, or starve the city out, or storm it with regular siege engines and expect higher losses - note though that with this setup it is still possible to storm the walls, just costlier than before.

    I think I'll be keeping it as a sort of house-rule modification. Ofc I understand the team's reasoning behind toning down defensive firepower but I figured I'd leave my changes documented here for anyone else who might want to mod their own game.
    While I don't want towers to become machine guns nests, I do feel that the towers could do some more damage, especially because a lot of times the AI send its armies to my walls and barely looses any troops on the way to the walls.

    Can you try with 45000ms and tripling the health of siege towers and rams and later tell how that works in a battle? Like how many casualties does the attacker suffer before taking the walls?

  14. #14

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Sure, I'll take a look at that this evening and release it as a submod when I've reached a balance I'm happy with.

    EDIT: This would only be for large and huge cities, wooden walls and the first level of stone walls would remain unchanged - I don't want to turn every settlement into a major fortress.

  15. #15

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Indeed, machine gun nests are ridiculous. But giving larger settlements heavier projectiles might have some mileage. I'm mostly concerned with encouraging the player to starve out the largest ones (during which time the AI might even put a response together), rather than just going for an assault as soon as they're able.

  16. #16

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Baharr View Post
    Sure, I'll take a look at that this evening and release it as a submod when I've reached a balance I'm happy with.

    EDIT: This would only be for large and huge cities, wooden walls and the first level of stone walls would remain unchanged - I don't want to turn every settlement into a major fortress.
    Thanks

  17. #17

    Default Re: Artillery Towers?

    Quote Originally Posted by Rad View Post
    You in trouble now, boy.
    Ballistas cocked and ready
    keep my whole crew steady

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