Battering Rams suck

[Babri]

You're right, I was getting it the wrong way round - 10 ranged, 7 melee rather than vice versa. Which just makes them more vulnerable to spears, of course, albeit likely to deal more damage to them before the attack.

Not really. Spears would die before they can do much due to high HA

The point isn't comparing swords or spears and HAs vs. cities, it's spears vs. HAs when you have one and your attacker has the other. HAs are very vulnerable to both, because they can't move after firing and get no defensive bonuses.

My point was that HAs can not only kill units but can be effective against cities, infact much more effective than horsemen.

Yes, they're cheap, but Spearmen are also cheap - the same cost, in fact

However HAs can kill units more effectively & they are better even against cities compared to spears.

The AI programming is the same, but on higher levels it gets more units, and that makes all the difference.

While in multiplayer you're pretty much stuck since the player won't be fooled where an AI will.

I only play singleplayer so can't comment about multi. I can imagine that u will need to think more when fighting against humans but u will still have a huge advantage early on.

Yes, I know it was. But it's not very relevant if they get a 50% bonus or not when they're so much stronger to begin with. A Horseman has strength 10 - a spearman is a third again as strong with its 50% bonus. The strength 11 spearman is also a third again as strong as a strength 7 Horse Archer without any bonuses. In other words, it doesn't need a bonus to be as good against an HA as it is against a horseman.

I'll run a test in spear Vs HA & then I'll post screenshots to prove my point.

 

[Babri]

HAs win against spears 1 on 1. No moving HAs, they stand & fight spears & still win by a significant margin.

Spoiler :

 

[softcactus]

Nevermind

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I just played as the huns for the first time. I knew going in that to get any use of the ram I had to early rush ASAP, which is something i've never done. With 2 rams and 3 HA's I took out rome's 3 cities and a CS to take control of my island continent.

While I appreciated the units for their own qualities, I really lijed how they forced me to change my playinh style. I don't think rams suck at all

I want to add something to this that I forgot before. The final Roman city was situated at the end of a 2 hex wide peninsula. This presents a novel challenge to the Hunnic rush as the ram can't attack units and the HA can't melee, so it's very hard to attack and move into a tile before another unit gets sent in to block you.

That's what Rome did, they just sat a couple spearmen there and blocked my advance. To get around this, I had to employ a novel (for me at least) tactic: the strategic trireme suicide. (STS)

I built 3 triremes before I attacked so that I could send them against the city. Ordinarly, triremes do so little damage that I would never use them to actually attack a city unsupported. But in this instance, sending a trireme to attack caused the trireme to suffer enough damage that the AI's city and catapult targeted them instead of my vulnerable land units (it tends to prioritize damaged units over all others).

I lost a trireme every turn until they were gone, but this distraction bought me enough time to push through the enemy units and take the city.