Siege weapons useless?

[cuzurfatlikethat]

Everyone knows siege batles are pretty epic if you have massive battering rams, towers, ladders, etc. But like wtf is the point of using them??? If you have roman ballista (or any other faction artillery I assume) You can easily take out a wall and a couple towers too. So what is the point of upgrading my siege weapons and wasting research time when I can just freaking chuck rocks at the walls? And it will work? Not to mention if you want to build more siege weapons, you have to wait like a full turn just for 1, risking being attacked by another enemy army and losing men due to attrition. So basicalluy am I incorrect for saying that you can unlock ballista at an early point in the game and basically not have to use siege weapons at all

[cuzurfatlikethat]

Originally posted by cuzurfatlikethat:

Everyone knows siege batles are pretty epic if you have massive battering rams, towers, ladders, etc. But like wtf is the point of using them??? If you have roman ballista (or any other faction artillery I assume) You can easily take out a wall and a couple towers too. So what is the point of upgrading my siege weapons and wasting research time when I can just freaking chuck rocks at the walls? And it will work? Not to mention if you want to build more siege weapons, you have to wait like a full turn just for 1, risking being attacked by another enemy army and losing men due to attrition. So basically am I incorrect for saying that you can unlock ballista at an early point in the game and basically not have to use siege weapons at all

[Rogat]

I think what they should have done is like in Warhammer, trying to hurl the walls with rocks will let them hurl you with their rocks, only that they have defences and you don't.

In Rome II there really is no reason to siege engines once you get an onager.

[bbolto]

The main point of the research tree is to get better ballistae/onagers/scorpions and to upgrade your blacksmith settlements.

While the siege engines - by which I mean the ballistae/onagers - are arguably too good in vanilla campaign, the whole point of wasting a slot or two on them in your armies is so you don't have to spend multiple turns building siege towers when you want to take a city.

[Rogat]

Originally posted by bbolto:

The main point of the research tree is to get better ballistae/onagers/scorpions and to upgrade your blacksmith settlements.

While the siege engines - by which I mean the ballistae/onagers - are arguably too good in vanilla campaign, the whole point of wasting a slot or two on them in your armies is so you don't have to spend multiple turns building siege towers when you want to take a city.

And by all means they are also pretty destructive in land battles.

[bansheeonfife]

why bother with arty when a stack of 38 infantry will steam roll most garrisons + commanded army stacks? don't get me wrong, i loved arty (almost) as much as you seem too. but after 6 or 7 campaigns i wondered why even bother? you'd have to reseach it and build the right structure. the space you could use to build up your food supply/public "approval"/growth as well.

and as said, 2 (and even better 3) armies can beat just about anything the ai is likely to field (usually little more then 1 full, 1 half army and a garrison of around 12 units, if that much). especially if at least 1 army has several skills, like added melee damage, increased charge distance/speed, etc.

[SuperGorp]

I find the heavy onagers and Giant Ballistas pretty handy for the larger cities that have the interior towers. I like making it easier and safer for my "foot slogger" troops.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by cuzurfatlikethat:

Everyone knows siege batles are pretty epic if you have massive battering rams, towers, ladders, etc. But like wtf is the point of using them??? If you have roman ballista (or any other faction artillery I assume) You can easily take out a wall and a couple towers too. So what is the point of upgrading my siege weapons and wasting research time when I can just freaking chuck rocks at the walls? And it will work? Not to mention if you want to build more siege weapons, you have to wait like a full turn just for 1, risking being attacked by another enemy army and losing men due to attrition. So basicalluy am I incorrect for saying that you can unlock ballista at an early point in the game and basically not have to use siege weapons at all

Ballistas have a lower trajectory than onagers, which seems to make them more accurate than onagers. But onagers cause much more damage per hit on walls than ballistas and therefore more efficient in destroying walls if you put say three of them together for a siege. On higher tier walls, the ballista's low damage is telling and chances are you'll only manage to destroy one or two towers before running out of ammo unless you bring along a ton of ballistas, which would of course unbalance your army composition. The ballista's primary role is not sieging walls but anti-personnel/other artillery, so while its damage is lower on walls, that same damage is devastating to enemy units. Both have their uses.

[Mouse]

I do sometimes use the artillery to penetrate the walls, but that tends to be if i have inferior infantry. If i have lots of cavalry or pike units, etc it's not much good fighting up on the wall. If i have lots of melee infantry then i find its better to spread out along the wall and use the ladders/siege towers. I usually use the ballista to weaken the enemy skirmishers or take out reinforcing fleets. I sometimes breach the wall with artillery on the other side of the town i'm attacking so that i can do a cavalry back charge but it can be pretty costly.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by 𝓋𝑒𝓃𝒾 𝓋𝒾𝒹𝒾 𝓋𝒾𝒸𝒾:

I do sometimes use the artillery to penetrate the walls, but that tends to be if i have inferior infantry. If i have lots of cavalry or pike units, etc it's not much good fighting up on the wall. If i have lots of melee infantry then i find its better to spread out along the wall and use the ladders/siege towers. I usually use the ballista to weaken the enemy skirmishers or take out reinforcing fleets. I sometimes breach the wall with artillery on the other side of the town i'm attacking so that i can do a cavalry back charge but it can be pretty costly.

Ideally, you want your artillery to take out all guard towers in your path and have enough ammo left to create a wall breach or two. Creating wall breaches is very useful because it softens up the defenders. Although the AI is smart enough to run away from collapsing walls, there were many occasions when a substantial part of their garrison was taken out because they could not all get off the walls in time before it collapsed.

[DumbCatFace]

I don't usually have catapults. So I build stuff sometimes. The tortoise is a lot of fun lol.