I was wondering how the rest of you feel about "Catapults and Trebs".

I use them with my stack of melee units. They're only usually good for one attack. I hardly ever get a chance to upgrade them or have them retreat.

Let me clarify how I use them: If I have a stack of 12 melee units and say 4 cats, I might use one cat to break down defending units. That cat usually dies, then I'll use another cat in the same manner. Same thing happens, dies.
The other two remaining cats I will separate from the stack and then only attack with my melee units. The reason I do that is because it takes soooo long for a cat to recover damage.

Hence: every cat and treb is expendable for one attack only.

OK guys, tell me how stupid I am. :lol:

I try to build some of my siege units in my main military city, which means they get some bonus experience. I then take care only to use those for attacks when the odds for a successful retreat are high. When I attack a city, and the defenders are badly wounded, I sneak in an attack with my catapults before I finish them off. It's basically free experience for the cats. This way, I usually get a couple of siege units to City Raider III, which means that they won't die so easily in attacks. I still have to use "expendable" siege units to soften the defenses though - just not as many as before.

Gotta love suicide cats. After bombardment, I will usually suicide almost all of my cats.

One way to boost your cats and trebs is to set up a training camp, in the form of a barbarian city. Just haul all the siege units you have to a barb city, and start bombarding! The first attacker will most likely die, but collateral damage takes care that the consecutive attackers will survive. Do the attacks in shifts so that you'll be attacking with the highest strength unit while the rest are medding up. After a few turns the defenders will be at 25% strength, and you'll be keeping them there :)

This way you'll have a bunch of 10xp siege in no time!

the problem to that is that the ai may walk in with a warrior and destroy the barbarian city haven

the problem to that is that the ai may walk in with a warrior and destroy the barbarian city haven

You'll have to have your drill officer (CR Axe) ready if that situation arises :)

I use my siege units to weaken city defenses, then throw about half of my total siege numbers into the fight to soften up the defending units. I just have to remember to keep a couple cities cranking out the cat/treb/cannon for as long as the war is going. Then I send my replacements/reinforcements out to join up the SoD and march on the next city.

I don't worry about promotions beyond what the barracks give to them.

In fact I almost stopped bothering with them. Cats are much too expensive, I'd rather throw away a few swordsmen or something which are quite a bit cheaper.

Trebs are another thing, they have a much better attack and therefore are often able to pull their weight. I usually use maybe 2 or 3 of them to soften up defenders before my better units mop them up.

Unfortunately I'm usually preparing my Rifle/Grenadier/Cuirassier rush at the time so I might not even try waging war during that time. Waiting for the gunpowder units has the advantage that you won't have any problems with walls and castles which can be a huge problem for the medieval units

I stopped building siege units since BTS came out. Spies are great for taking out city defenses and airships help to damage enemy stacks, the only problem is that they come too late.

I treat catapaults as fire-and-forget units. I don't expect them to come back from combat, so I just promote them with Barrage. Trebuchets and cannons I usually like to keep alive, partly since I have a tech lead over the enemy by that point (cannon vs. longbowman/musketman), so I usually promote them City Raider I and then either CR2 or Accuracy.

I take the attitude that I'm not building siege units, but rather that I'm building ammunition that needs to be expended to take that key enemy city.

I tend to specialise siege units, with the exception that trebs are only good in a siege, so nothing except a "raider" promo is used for them. I usually have some suicidal "barrage" ones used for that first attack, and then some "raider" and even plain "combat" ones (for battles in the field).

"Barrage" set has to be replenished after every battle, but "combat" and "raider" ones stick around about 50% of time (when fighting same level oponents, that is) - even more if they already gained extra experience. I once got a "raider III" and "drill III" cannon. After all the initial softening up I usually have about 50 - 60% chance of retreat even in cannon vs rifleman match. Needless to say I use a lot of those, as thanks to them my loses from fighting the actual battle are usually very low (more exp for real units).

Funny thing is my siege units actually GAINED a lot of survivability after BTS - before that the 25% retreat chance never seemed to kick in.

Ah, all this in Noble marathon games.

I LOVE CATS , nuff' said .

They are what make an invasion/attack successful . I make half of my stack(s) catapults and usually have them commit sucide . I have enough to keep around for breaking city defense and the other half is for softening up the defenders until my regular troops can waltz right in .
Definatly Barrage and more Barrage . Every time I get a chance to promote cats its usually for collateral . The AI has around 6 ( sometimes way more) defenders in the city and I find about 3 or 4 cats with collateral can soften all of them up to about half strength and then my regular units swoop in for the kill .

With human players , they usually have more defense and really good human players have a heafty amount of horse archers or siege destroying units around . In that case I endow my stacks with countermeasures ( spears for horses , etc) It takes more sucide cats to bring down most human players but who cares ? They are relatively cheap and well worth the investment .

I usually try to get construction as early as possible if I am set on warmongering in the beggining .

Cats are fine, Trebs are great! Yes, about half of them are throw-away, but the rest can easily acquire 10 EPs! Just take care that you attack with the LEAST experienced one first - after that the rest has a decent chance to survive and fight again.

And it is just totally awesome to click once and WHAM BANG the city has a defense bonus of 0%!

Don't throw them away unless you have to. Pretty obvious strategy I'd say. If a catapult has some upgrades, then use it as sparingly as you would any other experienced unit. If you have a stack with 4 cats and 3 are fresh units, then use the three fresh units first. But if your veteran can get an easy kill, the get the XP's and keep on promoting. A powerful siege unit can create some nice mismatches.

I find now that I sometimes have too many siege units. Once you've knocked down the defenders, any remaining siege units are waste. I sometimes have healthy siege units waiting for the rest of my force to heal and move to the next target. This never used to happen.

For early game , its good to have a hybrid of trebs and cats . Focus Treb promotions on accuracy and taking down city defenses . Focus cats on barrage attacks and note that they are expendable . The cats can help the trebs take down defenses anyway and then soften up the poor victim . This way you keep your powerful trebs in tact and still get the barrage advantage .

I understand why they changed the way siege units work, but the suiciding siege weapons always get on my nerve for some reason. It just doesn't sound right. Maybe they should be given a "bombard" feature like in civ3, but with a higher damage cap, let say 15% max damage. To render Cruise Missile effective, it must then be allowed to kill an unit.

I have never, not once, had a Catapult withdraw from an attack, so have never had the chance of giving one a promotion other than what may be possible fresh from training. And the extra collateral damage from barrage promos is very, very slight. So now I don't build the things, but wait for Trebs before bombarding a city.

I employ cats and trebs much like everybody else in this thread seems to.

I do have a tendency to suicide 'normal' combat units, but once defense forces begin to exceed 5 units and/or cultural defenses break into 60%+ territory, Catapults are a must.

I promote 'bombardiers' with CR1 -> Accuracy -> CR2 -> CR3. They are more-or-less non-combat units devoted to tearing down city defenses. I nurse their XP levels to ensure they don't die on me and are always my strongest-available siege type.

I promote 'sappers' with Barrage I -> Barrage II -> Barrage III. These are suicide units, and if I'm between Cats/Trebs, Trebs/Cannons, etc., I use the weaker (read: cheaper) of the two as sappers.

Every once-in-a-while, I create a 'gate crasher' by attaching a Warlord to a CR3 Treb/Cannon and give it Tactics and Barrage I/II/III.

During my assault, I try my best to lose as few siege weapons as possible. My attack order typically looks like this:


Use Bombardiers to eliminate city defenses.
Situational: End Turn.
Suicide a sapper.
Check the strongest Bombadier's odds. Check the strongest combat unit's odds. If either are 75% or better (65% for a Gate Crasher and 85% for a Warlord), then begin attacking with those units so long as combat odds remain that high.
Repeat steps 3 & 4 until the city is yours.

seige units are expendable - I build them all the time and I don't typically expect them to last very long.

Same here I build cats/treb to pound away City Defence, after that I usually wait a turn....I seem to never bring enough siege for warfare, and AI usually whips an additional defender grrrrr. So my strat is to barrage until my units have at least 80-85% combat odds by sacrificing cats with CR I/barrage after that its waiting for fresh siege recruits while unites heal and new city is in revolts stages...

Question, how long do you wait with your SoD before conquering an other city, do you wait until fully heal units/ fresh cats/treb and city revolts is over or just bring extra troups with medic and hope for the best with left over seiges units?

I've developed a tactic of pairing axmen/swordsmen with a cat, then sending them out into the black - meet a barb warrior, hit him with the cat first, then put him down with the axman/swordsman.

Do this a couple three times, both units Vet up pretty fast, if you have three four combinations, when you find an AI city you've got three/four Vet cats who do a LOT of damage and even maybe survive!!

Give it a whirl.