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[0.80] Siege weapons

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[0.80] Siege weapons

from Elemental Forums

Just a question, how/when can you usefully employ siege weapons? I got the technology (coming as it does rather late in the tech tree), and immediately started churning out siege weapons, thinking they would be great against massed enemies. However, instead, when I took them into battle against large enemy stacks, I found them to be too slow and do too little damage to actually justify using them over other units.

Then I thought, well maybe they're more effective in city sieges, as they're intended to be used. So I declared war on the AI and got them to attack a city, which I defended with a good number of siege weapons. However, again I found them to be inaccurate, slow, weak, and generally useless when compared to my fast, mounted archer or mage trained unit stacks. The AOE damage seems too weak and slow to justify their use.

Can anyone advise me as to how or when to use siege weapons to their best capacity? I can't figure out in what situation they beat trained unit stacks at the same tech level.

46,444 views 31 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Just give the catapult a specific trait, and then make that trait the prereq for the spell you have designed.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting halmal242, reply 26

Just give the catapult a specific trait, and then make that trait the prereq for the spell you have designed.

That's what I've done. The ability/trait is visible, but the spell itself does not appear until the catapult is made into a champion.

 

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Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Catapult would be fine as it is IF:

50% armor pen (makes no sense for a dude in plate armor to ignore a freaking huge rock thrown at him when it would squash him like a tin can in reality).

Do listed damage per unit in group. 

 

This will make catapults good vs groups of units (which is the main purpose of bringing such a siege weapon since there are no walls in cities etc, nor can you bombard a city from outside to reduce defenders or population or w/e, and wouldn't even be viable since they can send a single unit to kill the said catapult on same turn you deploy), but not ideal against single units (heroes, monsters, bosses etc).

 

So a catapult will deal 36 dmg per unit in stack, with a 50% armor pen. If the number is too high, lower it, is simple adjustment from there. Make it 18 or 20 or 15 or 24 w/e fits best. So it does more dmg to light armored units, but still decent dmg to full plate ones.

 

Vote up and make it happen nau :)

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Giving it 50% armor penetration would really make it useful. Even 25% would make it worth fielding. 

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting davrovana, reply 29
Giving it 50% armor penetration would really make it useful. Even 25% would make it worth fielding. 

Yes. As it stands, though, no armor pen and therefore no catapults.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

I actually used with success catapults in the end game of my last game. Their damage looked fine, however the bad accuracy hurts it a lot. There also should be an indicator that the aoe salvo hits friends & foe alike (my heavy cavalry doesn't shine at dodge) :)

The AI was also using them.

 

So maybe instead of armor pen, add a chance to knock down the stacks hit by it? So it has a flavor of some sorts :)