What's your artillery piece of choice? (Non siege battles)

[BooBooLovesAll]

I keep going back and forth between the Scorpio and Ballista....

[♘Top Hat Zebra]

I feel like I must be using it wrong, because it always feels very ineffective to me.

I've had minor success using scorpios to clear defenders off of walls in sieges, and of course a ballista is rather obvious how you use it in a siege, but for field artillery I've never gotten any real amount of kills with it. I love it for role play purposes, but in terms of effectiveness, it seems like another cavalry or infantry or even regular missile unit will almost always outperform it.

[NorthernXY]

I feel like I must be using it wrong, because it always feels very ineffective to me.

I've had minor success using scorpios to clear defenders off of walls in sieges, and of course a ballista is rather obvious how you use it in a siege, but for field artillery I've never gotten any real amount of kills with it. I love it for role play purposes, but in terms of effectiveness, it seems like another cavalry or infantry or even regular missile unit will almost always outperform it.

Pretty much this. Plus they requires a building slot that I can build something that makes me money/food/+PO and then better afford more elite units.

[Sipo]

Usually I do one ballista in about half my armies. It forces the enemy to attack you, don’t need to discuss how good it is for sieges or fortifications. It usually gets a good amount of kills, usually more then one whole unit, and you can take out the enemy's best units. Only down parts I’d say is they are expensive and slows down your army. I usually get one building for them.

[Ptolemaios Soter]

I would love to see scorpions have their MP increased to match infantry. Doesn’t make sense that they should slow down your army. I find movement range to be the single most powerful buff in the game, so it’s rare that I’ll use any artillary. The exception is playing as Rome just for role playing. I can beat and AI army 1-1 no matter how elite their stack might be or even if mine is made exclusively of levies and mercenaries, and usually 2-1 if I have a half-decent stack of my own units. That means that for me, being able to fight the enemy in the right place at the right time is more important that what units or buffs I have. I’m also not a fan of ballista because of how slow they are on the battle map. I like to maneuver a good bit before the battle starts, but between the slow movement and the AI’s bum rush, all battles turn messy. So again, scorpions are better to my taste, even if they don’t rack up the kills.

[skillfultree]

Scorpions are op in certain situations. I racked up 500 - 700 kills.

[skillfultree]

Double post

[yaxl3y]

With rome I usually have a seperate army with ballistas or catapults that I use for sieges. Having them in your normal army reduces the campaign movement range too much for me.

[DominusEtDeus]

Historically the scorpions were used against soldiers, while ballistas in sieges, so when Im playing Rome as historically as possible I prefer scorpions on the battlefield.

[Dago Red]

Loved the earlier polybolos that fired salvos of missiles, but it went from favorite to pointless. Without the salvo, it has less range, barely fires any faster than an oxybeles, and can't use special ammunition(that last part feels accurate, just pointing it out in the context of usefulness).

Bring back the more unique versions, with rapid fire or salvo fire polybolos! And special ammo for others without getting cartoonish (heavy shot oxy? poison/plague ballista?) I think there's a submod....

[BooBooLovesAll]

Scorpions are op in certain situations. I racked up 500 - 700 kills.

How on earth do you get that?

[DominusEtDeus]

The major drawback why most of the ppl dont use any of them is slowing down armies on campaign map. If their speed was the same as infantry that would be much better, and would be used more often.

[antred]

Ooh, I LOVE​ ballistas. Given how much easier they make winning battles, I almost feel like having a bunch of them in an army is cheating, but I don't care ... the AI can go sod itself.