How does siege artillery work?

[ThreeToe]

I bought some siege guns but can't figure out how to use them. Is there a button on the region? In battle the button is disabled.

[DropShot]

Make sure you move the physical unit into the battlefield where you intend to use it. After a battle starts that has siege artillery present you will be able to choose how many days to bombard enemy lines in the deployment phase, and use single directed barrages while in battle.

[Ian]

Usually during pre-battle you can see it as a arty icon among the others on the bottom left. Not to insult intelligence, but it also must be in the same hex as the army attacking. If it's in the same hex and the button is still disabled, I'm not sure what the issue is. Try screenshotting and reporting bug.

[puree]

The 4th button along in the preplanning is your siege planning. so you have buttons for :

infantry, trenches, emplacements and siege.

On the siege tab you use the 'plus' button to adds days of siege artillery, e.g. will cost a lot of supply and will have a chance (displayed) to destroy trenches etc. IT then happens as the battle starts, you will see some flashes on the enemy lines and messages for what has been destroyed.

during the battle itself, the siege tab gun tab is still there, you can a pile of supply for an in game strike, that also has a massive recycle delay.

You really need quite a few siege batteries for it to be really good, and the extra techs that follow it in the economy group. If you have those techs, a few siege batteries and a fair bit of supply then it is pretty good.

[ThreeToe]

Thanks for all the info. I'm a idiot. I moved them that turn so they couldn't attack.

[Ian]

Happens to the best of us.

[Darth Glorious]

Each siege arty gives you 2 extra days of bombardment. Each extra days gives 4% extra chance to destroy a trench (6% with updated tech)

[Dugo]

not sure if it's worth it.

Isnt easier to just enjoy the big trench network so you only have to fight in melee and never go out of trenchs once you get a foothold in the first line ?

[Seacobra]

Siege arty isn't worth it. The cost of the corp and the supply cost to use them with low chance to destroy trenches. You are better off with 4 batteries of light arty and you can roll just about any defense with enough stockpiled supply

[puree]

I personally think it is very good. But if you go that way then go for it and get the other 2 techs that make it cheaper and better, and buy several units. The amount of damage you do is quite significant when you are at 50%+ to take out trenches.

However, as per above, pretty much everything in the game is irrelevant to actually winning battles, standard infantry and 3 or so light batteries will beat anything on attack or defence (at soldier difficulty anyway). On defence you don't even need the artillery, though it helps if you take out the enemy artillery with it.

there are really only 3 or 4 useful techs - first level depot, and the infantry health and firepower, and maybe hospitals. After that nothing else is really needed IMO, it is just how many toys you want to play with.

Which is a shame, as you should want and need to use all the other bits.

I've now started playing on Veteran for a full campaign to see if it is better - it seems slightly harder, but at least so far (not very far in yet) it is still just infantry and artillery to win, and for defence I'm not even bothering with the artillery.

[LordAtrox]

Tanks are very usefull though expensive. With a heavy tank it is fairly easy to approach and destroy units within trenches. I haven't the pleasure to use them in the campaing, because I am always focusing on economy in the tech tree.

[Satori]

Siege artillery is trash, don't bother. Wish I knew that before I blew like 6000 gold on them and god knows how much supply.