Total War: Rome 2 Problem with Siege defences

[BTimelesS]

Hi everyone, I seem to be having a problem when I 'm defending against a siege. I place my balistas or other artillery where the triangle of their range clearly can target the opponent, but they never fire. They just stand there useless which takes a lot away from my defenses. Am I doing something wrong or has anyone found a solution for a problem like that? Thank you in advance.

[Migz - DH]

If you post screenshots of how you have the artillery placed, we might be able to help you.

[Horatio Gnarr]

I just came here to say exactly the same thing.

No matter what I do, my defences won't fire.

They will do the readying animation sometimes. But never fire.

Even as enemy troops walk in front of them, calmly place ladders, climb up and kill the crew. It's amusing, but frustrating.

I'm playing as Suebi. New to the game. No mods.

[Big Boy Beni]

Do you have fire at will enabled? Have you tried giving them a fire order? What about manually firing? If none of these work or dont apply, then perhaps it is a bug, and I recommend you post it here so somebody from CA can see it https://forums.totalwar.com/categories/rome-ii-support-area

[Horatio Gnarr]

Yeah I've repeatedly tried all that.

I'll post it in the support area. Thanks.

[BTimelesS]

there is a post in the support forum that says they have the same problem, no resolution though. It is kind of funny when they just casually get past your balistas without batting an eye :P

[Icecream1973]

@OP this got to do with angle(s) & objects (walls, houses etc) "blocking" the line of fire of (especially) artillery (or sometimes for a ranged unit like: slingers).

if you change the location of your artillery (IF you actually have the time to do that) it will fire again, untill something else stumbles in its line of fire :-(

Highly likely not "fixable" with mods, just accept it & move on ;-)

[Hasefrexx]

As a rule of thumb try to not get things too close to obstacles, like slingers right behind a building or wall. I recon that it's not always easy to figure out where to place them, but if there are no obstacles it should shoot for sure, so like having melee blocking a street with shooters behind works fine if anything.

Balista, unlike catapults won't throw their projectile very high so shooting above wall shouldn't happen unless it's on high ground or something. If you have superior army it can be worth going out of city to get the best out of cavalry and siege weapons, or consider moving out, launching a quick attack and moving back inside the walls (not very practical with slow wiege weapons though).

[BTimelesS]

Guys thank you for the responses but some of you are off topic. I' m not talking about siege units, and their being blocked, I' m talking about seige defences (that are incorporated in the city). They have special places where you can place them so obstacles are not an issue!

[Horatio Gnarr]

Yep, siege defences. Like he said. Exact same issue.

Nothing is blocking them. They just don't fire.

[Beefnut]

Hey guys I finally got to use this in a MP campaign as the Germans. I think they get them as upgraded defense towers to match the usual ballista stone towers most Mediterranean cities have. Was hella confused and found this thread to help.

As far as i could tell just by using the "lets press random keys till it works" method, if you hold Alt it allows you to fire where ever your courser clicks on the ground. kinda like ground fire mode in other rts games for artillary. This being said it is a pain because you can only select one unit from the seige tab at a time (I think) and if your enimy is constanly moving you have to constantly adjust the fire spot.

I sincerely hope this is a spot they forgot about and noone has used so it hasent been an issue for them to fix till now. Or adversly they did this because lets face it, Balistas are crazy strong for balance. I mean i typically like to even have a unit of them in a defending army to fire over the walls especially early game when attaking armies only have ladders.

Also it looks like they cannot rotate due to lack of wheels on the spots but they can
And remember the further the distance the worse the range. A red circle will indicate this.

Alternatively you can take direct control as well but you look the battle image which i think we can all agree is bad.


So TLDR;
Select balista/scorpian from seige tab
Hold Alt
Click to set firing vector.

[Moose]

Yes thanks so much! This works well. I had the glitch but this fixed it

[Belad]

Just found out about this problem, still there, a right click attack order should suffice to have them start firing, although automatic firing should be on as well.. a bit sad they didn't fix it.

At least we can still use them with the Alt technique, thanks for that

[Abbittibbi]

Why let the barbarian near your settlement, just attack and kill them all. As Patton said: no one ever defended anything with success...

[Cornholio]

Here we are 6 years later and still no fix to this issue. The Roman siege defence weapons appear to function correctly, however, the Celtic and other barbarian tribe's defence weapons just sit there like stunned mullets.