Can somone explain why Onagers are useful?

[the cup]

On Black Forest games or whenever a Celt/Korean player is late Imperial, a common strategy mentioned is massing Onagers. I swear to god though these things are terrible.

First of all they are innacurate as hell, and aren't affected by ballistics so any moving target is invincible to them. They also suffer from a largish minimum range, and coupled with their slow speed one would expect that they should be able to kill thing before they reach them, like archers, though because of my 1st point this isnt a possibility.

They also are horribly expensive, with upgrading to SO costing a total of 1500 gold, before you've one, and each unit is a hefty 135 gold. Therefore if you are facing say a spearman, you'd think your overpriced Seige weapon would flatten it dead, but no, click forward and the Onager's balls will be to slow to catch it and eventually die after being poked to death. Of course, if you had good mico, then it would be a different story, you succeeded in killing a single trash unit.

Now lets say you are facing 200 Champs/Arbs/HCA's and you brought 150 Seige Onagers to the fight. Are you expected to micro every single one of them and kill at least 5 or so to make the cost of the unit worth it?

Another reason people say Seige Onagers are good is because they can destroy buildings and units, so if they aren't particiularly efficient at killing units as say a Paladin, then the dual role of flattening TC's would be a fair compromise. Well... I don't agree with this either. In the Castle Age a Mangonel or two is nice to finish off a good Knight Rush, and thats it. If they have a Castle then you need Rams, in the Imperial Age they are completely outclassed by Bombards and Trebs, and thanks to the Forgotten's "Buff" for the Koreans their Onagers can no longer out range Castles, meaning the only role I can safely see them in is destroying town centers.

So... can someone explain to me why Onagers are used and how I'm meant to use them? Cause I really don't see how they can be viably massed. Another question I have is are the Koreans even useful? They lack so many nice techs for Cavalry, haven't got the best infantry and lack bloodlines/parthinian for their UU. They also have redundant civ bonuses as I've never seen a pro use non bombard towers and I don't see the appeal of using Seige Onagers.

tl;dr Onagers are lame compared to other units and I want someone to explain why I'm wrong, also if they can explain why Koreans don't suck, since they have such a lame TT.

[Woodynator]

First of all: put a meatshield in front of them. Put 40 halberdeerds in front of your siege onagers, and its a whole different story. Halberdeers cover SO's weaknesses, which is paladins, while siege onagers slay everything from behind.

Especially vs archer civs, siege onagers simply destroy everything in their path. Theyre mainnly used in black forest, because of the choke pointy lay-out of the map. You will barely see them in open maps, because of their immobility.

However, Siege onagers are not noobfriendly. They require a fair bit of micro. I remember playing a 1v1 BF a while ago, and i destroyed my whole army with my own siege onagers, which cleared the path for enemy units to simply come in and destroy my siege onagers.

[the cup]

Originally posted by Woodynator:

First of all: put a meatshield in front of them. Put 40 halberdeerds in front of your siege onagers, and its a whole different story. Halberdeers cover SO's weaknesses, which is paladins, while siege onagers slay everything from behind.

Especially vs archer civs, siege onagers simply destroy everything in their path. Theyre mainnly used in black forest, because of the choke pointy lay-out of the map. You will barely see them in open maps, because of their immobility.

However, Siege onagers are not noobfriendly. They require a fair bit of micro. I remember playing a 1v1 BF a while ago, and i destroyed my whole army with my own siege onagers, which cleared the path for enemy units to simply come in and destroy my siege onagers.

Thanks, is it best to let the Halbs deal with the front line and the SO take out the stuff at the back to avoid friendly fire?

[Woodynator]

Originally posted by ToastTheMoast:

Originally posted by Woodynator:

First of all: put a meatshield in front of them. Put 40 halberdeerds in front of your siege onagers, and its a whole different story. Halberdeers cover SO's weaknesses, which is paladins, while siege onagers slay everything from behind.

Especially vs archer civs, siege onagers simply destroy everything in their path. Theyre mainnly used in black forest, because of the choke pointy lay-out of the map. You will barely see them in open maps, because of their immobility.

However, Siege onagers are not noobfriendly. They require a fair bit of micro. I remember playing a 1v1 BF a while ago, and i destroyed my whole army with my own siege onagers, which cleared the path for enemy units to simply come in and destroy my siege onagers.

Thanks, is it best to let the Halbs deal with the front line and the SO take out the stuff at the back to avoid friendly fire?

Just use your halberdeers as a meatshield to prevent enemy troops from charging on your SO's. Some friendly fire is inevitable im afraid. But you should be fine aslong as you dont kill your entire halb army in 1 hit like my dumbass did in my previous example. You should try to keep on top of microing your SO's as much as possible, but make sure you keep producing halberdeers. Siege onagers in itself are easily compromised. You NEED a meatshield.

[robo_boro]

Also the fact that siege onagers (normal onagers in forogtten) can cut paths through the forests, allowing you to hit the enemy in an unexpected place in blackforest and hopefully ruin their eco/destroy their trade lines with hussar type units.

[d0c]

I don't think that they are useful at all, they don't have the range when iit come to fighting against advanced archers e.g. Briton's Longbowmen. If you used them with a land army you have to make sure that they don't decimate your own troops when they are attacking. They best used for them, as mentioned above, is cutting through large dense forests. Personally the only seige equipment I used are trebuchets. Long distance, and easy to protect!

[The Last Centurion]

you can use the "t" key for moving armies and make it shot the point you want. they work pretty good with meat shield and better use more than one unit. you can even group them so you can choose first group and attack with "t" and second group and attack with "t" and so on.

[TerminallyGrill]

Koreans need a buff quite badly. They have one viable strategy and that's to tower rush in feudal age, if that fails then they're in a pretty bad position, and Towers become redundant at the Castle Age anyway. Their infantry are only mediocre, their cavalry sucks, they have an admittedly pretty good archer line but ironically, their siege is pretty damn bad for a supposed Siege civ, missing the H.Scorp and Siege Ram. They either need to get Forging to balance out their army, or get some other freebies (like free fortified wall, buff to their fortifcating speed, etc).

[Wafflesaurus Supreme]

Try playing vs computer on hardest. It wll mass onagers, monks, archers, everything at your walls and they will kill everything you throw at them for 30 minutes, until they start to run low on resources. The onagers are very deadly.

[TerminallyGrill]

Hardest mode just cheats though.

[FE_HockeySam18]

Koreans are pretty hard to beat come Imperial, but they're one of those civs that doesn't work when you use conventional strategies, so many people find a hard time getting there. They actually have a pretty strong economy, archers, and infantry. I never use them though as my playstyle means that I'd be crushed if I used them.

Obviously the best combo for them is War Wagons + Siege Onagers + Halbs or maybe Hussars since they need a meatshield and they have all that food left over.

[🤗]

Reading this made me cringe inside. Please play this game for a while until you post such things. Onagers are absolutely amazing. You need only a few of them to wipe out an entire army of archers. Your examples were just horrible, it is extremely stupid to send onagers alone and unguarded in groups of 150. Onagers combined with trash units can wipe out pretty much any unit. And no, they can't kill just 6 units with one lucky shot. My record for most kills is around 15 units with a SINGLE shot. Onagers are an amazing counter to other siege, archers, infantry and guarded with halbediers/pikemen and other units they are pretty much unstoppable. If you use them well enough not even paladins can stop them.

In black forest you could wall yourself in very easily and get a great economy. You will have the SO upgrade in no-time. In my opinion the Koreans are one of the best, if not THE best civilisations for black forest.

[🤗]

Oh the incredible advantages of the koreans
- The ridiculous 8+3 range for the onagers. This is only one less than the British elite longbowmen. It makes longbowmen and pretty much every other archer completely useless
-The 200 HP and 8 pierce armour tanks called war wagons. Despite their high wood cost and relatively low attack, they are very useful in late imperial to absorb arrows which is very useful against archers and cavarly archers. Also, they can deal with skirmishers much more easily than any other (cavarly) archer.
- Thery are one of the only two civilisations that can build bombard towers as well as siege onagers. However, their onagers are cleary superiour to the Teutonic ones.
- They can mine stone 20% faster AND they have a free bombard tower upgrade. This makes them able to build bombard towers much faster than other civilisations.

[🤗]

Originally posted by DarkKnight99:

I don't think that they are useful at all, they don't have the range when iit come to fighting against advanced archers e.g. Briton's Longbowmen. If you used them with a land army you have to make sure that they don't decimate your own troops when they are attacking. They best used for them, as mentioned above, is cutting through large dense forests. Personally the only seige equipment I used are trebuchets. Long distance, and easy to protect!

What do you mean 'e.g.'? British longbowmen are the only archer that can outrange them. Siege onagers still have a decent amount of HP and 8 pierce armour, and you'll need a lot of longbowmen to destroy every siege onager before the siege onager gets to attack. If you combine SO with a high-pierce armour unit (such as rams, knights, war wagons) you can easily kill lots of longbowmen. If you are the koreans, longbowmen pretty much don't stand a chance against your siege onagers. I really don't understand your logic: if there is one counter to a unit, the unit automatically becomes 'not that useful at all' according to you.

[TerminallyGrill]

I'm noticing that, like the Vikings (another civ regarded as weak), the Koreans depend heavily on the map type, more so than any other civilisation that can do pretty well on any map like the Huns or Byzantines.

[FE_HockeySam18]

Originally posted by Broccoli:

Oh the incredible advantages of the koreans
- The ridiculous 8+3 range for the onagers. This is only one less than the British elite longbowmen. It makes longbowmen and pretty much every other archer completely useless
-The 200 HP and 8 pierce armour tanks called war wagons. Despite their high wood cost and relatively low attack, they are very useful in late imperial to absorb arrows which is very useful against archers and cavarly archers. Also, they can deal with skirmishers much more easily than any other (cavarly) archer.
- Thery are one of the only two civilisations that can build bombard towers as well as siege onagers. However, their onagers are cleary superiour to the Teutonic ones.
- They can mine stone 20% faster AND they have a free bombard tower upgrade. This makes them able to build bombard towers much faster than other civilisations.

Indeed. It also means that their SOs outrange castles if the opponent doesn't have the Bracer tech.

I find the "high" wood cost of war wagons negligible come Imperial as you'll rarely, if ever, run out of wood in Imperial unless maybe if you're playing Arabia or Steppe (an AoF map).

Their BT pushes are dominant, if not nearly uncounterable provided their vills have the proper support.

Originally posted by Cuchulainn:

I'm noticing that, like the Vikings (another civ regarded as weak), the Koreans depend heavily on the map type, more so than any other civilisation that can do pretty well on any map like the Huns or Byzantines.

Lots of people like to trash the Vikings since they're not good *in Imperial* unless it's a water map. This is true, but given they have the best econ up through Castle, they have plenty of chances to win before strong Imperial civs like Turks or Mongols take over.

However, you're right about some civs being specialized. Koreans and Teutons are amazing on closed maps, Vikings and Spanish are near-automatic wins on water maps, and it's hard to beat Huns, Mongols, or Goths on open maps. Huns, Mongols, Goths, and Spanish of course can pretty much hold their own in most situations (Spanish UU is the best Castle Age unit, for example). There's some civs that are specialized and others that perform well in all situations (Byzantines for example). There was really so much thought put into the balance of AoK, AoC, and AoF that it's worth giving all civs the benefit of the doubt before some are dismissed as ineffective. The only civ I would say that definitely needs a buff atm is Italians.

Thing is, there's so many different types of players and strategies out there that it's good to have civs that are so different that there's something for everybody. For example, I'm a terrible rusher (although my Goth M@A flush and Mongol scout rushes aren't bad), but I often will go for a fast castle or boom to Imp so I can out-econ the opponents and hit hard. I wouldn't have a prayer of doing well as the Koreans or the Incans just because that's not my playstyle, but I'm better with civs like Mongols, Goths, Vikings, Franks, and Huns (well everyone's good with Huns :p ).