Barrage promotion

Major Tom

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Do you ever choose this before CR? And how does that +20% collateral actually work? Is it number of enemy units or more damage on direct and next units or some combo?

Sorry, this may be a noob question but I never bothered to compare and wonder how often you guys use it?
 
Yeah, it's more of use against stacks not in cities, as CR increases damage to top defender (in city attack) and increases withdrawal chance due to strength.

However, I still rarely use barrage. With the same concept I often use Drill on cats if attacking stacks outside city as it is stronger against top defenders. Yet it depends on what units you are facing in the stack. IF the units are fairly weak to cats already barrage can be useful - like axe, spear, chariot, archer as top defender, as cats will have decent odds. Anything higher - like swords, HAs, Phants, etc - and I go Drill first.

Cats naturally gives some collateral damage without the promo, so usually I look to damage top defenders first as much as possible so I can mop up with more success. Barrage does increase collateral, but it only adds up to be slight. Still can help though in the right situation. I'd say it's probably more useful against stack with higher strength units as the overall effect is higher based on %.
 
I`d use Barrage regardless of who the top defender is, and regardless of whether I`m attacking a city (well, I`d probably send some CR promo`d ones first if they are fortified too heavily), if it was a sufficiently large stack the other guy is defending with, but that`s just my personal preference.

This is only because Collateral is inflicted regardless of whether your siege/cho-ku-no/capital ship/bombers survives the attack, and is independent of how much damage you do to top defender with the main/actual attack..... the loss of several catas is a small price to pay if I can get the entire enemy stack to the collateral damage limit on the same turn.
 
This is a questionable thread. Based on the players level it will boil down to optimal / suboptimal game play. Other players have already voiced an opinion, so I'll offer my own. Cats/trebs- when using trebs I use drill promo if attacking in the field. If using trebs against cities I will normally go with CR. Occasionally, I repeat "occasionally" I might go with bombard to attack a city with a treb. Now with cats I always use barrage to cause max collateral damage, whether city or field. Since cats are sacrificed in a city attack anyway and rarely survive , I want to get the most out of them
. But as said, its the old argument optimal / suboptimal. Each player has their own preference, I've shared mine.
 
I use it when facing large stacks of superior units. When my highest promoted CR unit has virtually no chance of surviving then I'll start with Barrage promoted siege or Flanking promoted mounted units. That may change it there is only one or two tough defenders, but when fighting from a tech disadvantage I like to use Barrage in the opening waves of the attack so that I can easily mop up with inferior units.
 
eeee..using trebs in the field is very bad
 
However, I still rarely use barrage. With the same concept I often use Drill on cats if attacking stacks outside city as it is stronger against top defenders. Yet it depends on what units you are facing in the stack. IF the units are fairly weak to cats already barrage can be useful - like axe, spear, chariot, archer as top defender, as cats will have decent odds. Anything higher - like swords, HAs, Phants, etc - and I go Drill first.
Drill loses much of its effectiveness if facing units that are immune to first strikes (e.g., HAs) or (to a lesser extent) have first strikes of their own (e.g., archers & longbows). So I'll send barrage-promoted cats/cannons against open-field stacks until the first-strike-immune/capable units first until the top defender isn't in that class, and follow up with drill (if it gets that far).
 
Flanking 2 units are also stupidly annoying if you have many units invested into the drill line....
 
Defensive war (enemy SoD pulls up to your city). Barrage promotion on a few siege will tear up a stack. When I'm going cultural vic, I usually exclusively build siege and mounted units (beyond a few city defenders) and give barrage to the siege units.
 
Personally, I make 3 or 4 can openers (Accuracy), and Barrage-only siege weapons afterwards. It's great for ensuring survivability of my other units.
 
If it's late game, you've got a tech lead, and you want your Tanks to power through enemy cities as quickly as possible, it can sometimes be useful.

So, uh, to answer your question as to how often it's used? Not very much.
 
If it's late game, you've got a tech lead, and you want your Tanks to power through enemy cities as quickly as possible, it can sometimes be useful.

So, uh, to answer your question as to how often it's used? Not very much.

I'm pretty sure one of the BTS patches removes the collateral damage from tanks. Pre-patch, it wasn't just a little useful, it was pretty OP! Basically allowed me to ignore flight.
 
I'm running bts v3.19 , tanks do not have barrage. Do kinda miss it even though it was overpowered.
 
Isn't there an option for that, tanks with collateral damage? I didn't play pre-BtS so I have never used it, but I thought I saw it being discussed somewhere.
 
You can always change the XML. In that case, you can give swordsmen collateral damage. :p But without changing code, fully patched BTS doesn't allow for tanks to have collateral damage. I think I delayed updating back when that change first came out because I had read in the release notes that they were removing collateral from tanks lol.
 
Whaat?? Tanks don't have collateral anymore? It's been way too long since I played into the modern era. :lol: Seems to render tanks pretty useless.

To the original question, very rarely use barrage promotion. Reasons have been explained already itt.
 
@elitetroops: Haha... yeah, man, I'm fairly certain they haven't have collateral damage for a loooooong time (patch 3.19 came out in 2009)
 
I'm pretty sure one of the BTS patches removes the collateral damage from tanks. Pre-patch, it wasn't just a little useful, it was pretty OP! Basically allowed me to ignore flight.

Huh. Must have misremembered. Makes sense, I suppose. Back when I was new to the game (in the pre-Warlords days, no less), I thought a great strategy was to beeline Tanks and then use them to crush everyone else. I probably used them more in a single game back then then I've used them collectively since.
 
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