[0.80] Siege weapons

I totally understand your point. But sadly I have no answer to when they would be useful. Maybe someone else could help us here?

If anything they are definately too weak for the stage at when they come into the game.

I'm hoping for a weaker type siege engine at a midway point in the tech tree.

Siege should be contiguous throughout the game.

Magic is a type of siege...and most certainly siege should not dwarf magic, but it should still exist imo.

I almost never use siege as by the time its available, regular trained units easily outperform it.  Especially now with cleave and impale and the swarm mechanic.  I guess a catapult (which does AoE damage) might be useful against massed archers/mages?

The siege weapons definitely need to be balanced with the new mechanics of the game.  One simple idea that comes to mind is giving the catapult a chance to knock down and/or stun units in the AoE of its shot.  That would make it very powerful, maybe too powerful, but at least it would be useful.

They are pretty crappy, I built them once and then never bothered with them again.

What about earlier access to the catapult and later access to catapults that do 'magic' damage? Fire, cold, disease (represented as poison). Utility/debuff catapults are within the realm of possibility too.

I don't see SD making these changes, but it's possible within the modding community.

Dang! I was really hoping that they had some kind of use. I really like the idea of weapons particularly designed for city siege or defense. Perhaps they could be buffed and their movement reduced to 1? That way you would more or less be forced to use them for city defense, which they should excel at, or city sieges, but it should take you a long time to wheel them to the front. Historically, siege weapons slow an army down to a crawl because transporting them is overly difficult. Maybe then you would have more motivation to split up your armies: one or two to go ahead and engage the enemy forces, and one to protect your supply line and siege units. Of course "supply line" isn't a thing, but you get my idea.

I like this idea! You could possibly also force them to be stationary on the battlefield: after all, once in place, siege weapons (even catapults) are notoriously difficult to re-position in battle, due to their size and general unwieldiness.

Yes, I think this is a must for siege weapons to gain some sort of presence in city sieges.

While we're at it, I would like some sort of Stone Age bow, too. If only their were some sort of "hunting" technology which gave you weapons cross-tree (it would be a civilization tech).

I would also like to catapults do damage per unit. It would be a great way, late game, to deal with stronger groups, squads, ect.

Agreed, catapults are currently useless. Giving them the "overpower" trait scales them into late game. 

I have no idea why they do not have overpower already as if anything should have them it would be catapults.

I agree, overpower would be a very sensible addition to the traits of a catapult as well as being able to build a smaller, less powerful version in midgame. Apart from that, I think catapults should become more important with the newest patch since melee (mounted) units will be nerfed movement- and attackwise.

Why can't catapults shoot burning coals ?? Or jars of greek fire? Or larger rocks? Imo, there should be a bit more variety into the different types of catapults that you have access to. The original made avaiable a little earlier in the tech tree (and perhaps nerfed a bit) and a few tech modifications that encourage players to explore the tactical option of siegeworks.

agreed on overpower and being made available earlier in the tech tree.  They definitely come so late in games that you may never even see a player or AI make one (let alone have the tech for it).

As per damage output, other than adding overpower, we should be able to customize siege units (unit design) to add various options to the siege's attack.  Increased attack (better rocks/more solid construction), greek fire (magic addition), something to cause various malus's (daze/slow/etc) to whatever is hit, and possibly even tile modifiers (create a muddy area - similar to the spell).

Basically, something that comes so late in the tech tree should be worth more than a level 1 fireball.

One way to avoid OPing the catapult, if it gets too useful with overpower added, is to reduce its movement to 1. 

That way, it'll be less useful for invasion, though still a huge advantage if you bring it to bear.

Having the catapult cost 100 gold seems like a nerf that didn't need to be done. If it's going to cost 100 gold and not benefit from squads and company techs, it needs to be beefed up.

If the 100 gold thing was removed, however, it would be much more useful as-is.  

It'd be cool if there was an alternative- ballista. It doesn't do splash damage, just high damage to one unit, ignoring armor, with low accuracy.

Dragon-killer.

They cost gildar to build, as well? Wow, they're even more useless than I thought. I didn't even realize at that point in the game where I got them that they cost money to queue.

I agree with the ideas posted in the thread

-two types of siege weapons, ballista with no area of effect and a high armor piercing and catapult with area of effect/splash damage

-siege weapons have overpower

-lower movement to 1

-remove gildar from build cost

-possible magic versions/magic upgrades that grant elemental damage

Catapults could also have some kind of "pillar of flame" effects, with a range of a few tiles : this could help you defend your cities (by weakening opponents closing up) and weakening opponents' cities defenders...

Giving catapults the ability to fire in strategic view would, alone  make them very, very useful. In fact, giving them this ability (like a 0 mana spell) but leaving them helpless in combat could be very interesting. 

But is it feasible?  I'm not sure it's possible to restrict a strategic spell to only enemy units in the neighboring tiles on the strategic map.

Wow this is actually a real neat idea. It would make them quite unique, too.

In FE, Kraxis' city purchase ability was limited by range, so it should theoretically be possible to make catapults have a strategic attack limited by range.  It would be amazing if this idea was to get implemented.

Imagine catapults pelting enemy towns over mountains...that'd be a hoot.

Imagine them pelting enemy towns from way across the map when the spell range bugs ^^

I'd love to see how a catapult would fare vs a pack of wolves (yes MadDjinn hinting at your LP 3 Bandit's Queen with.. insane wolves experience haha - speaking of which I find them fine, they have low hp and no defense, all their strength lies in Swarming a target with their high initiative, look at them like errr faster mites with fur :D).

I've been playing around with a strategic catapult 'spell'. Adding a <Range> value to strategic spells seems to work, so that's not the issue. The problem is making the catapult itself into a caster without making it a champion. Not sure if that's possible.