Catapaults Effectiveness??

[Llathos]

I've read quite a few strategies on this board which call for catapaults in the early game to help 'soften' cities you are attacking.

I must say I'm quite fuzzy on how this works. I sent a group of no less than 25: warriors(10), archers(9), and knights(6) against the German capital of Berlin. They had a single elite spearman with city walls on rough terrain. I complimented my force with 6 catapaults which I parked outside the city. Every single round, for no less than 15 rounds, I pounded the city. I dropped the city from size 3 to size 1. The vast majority of the time, nothing happened. No citizen loss, no notification about the walls coming down, no damage to that elite spearman. Nothing. Mixed in with the zero-results was the occasional "Bombardment failed" message. Each round I was getting 6 catapault shots and it didn't injure that spearman but once in every 18 shots (3 rounds). I would reduce his hp by one block...and the next round he'd be full health again. I eventually got fed up and attacked with every unit I had brought up. They all died. All of them. To one spearman. Sigh.

So...exactly what are these things good for again?

 

[he510541]

Well, I think you are supposed to attack when the defending unit is at only one health. I know, from experience, that you cannot kill a unit with catapults. While I do not know where the other shots went, you had several good chances to kill the Spearman before it was healed.

 

[Llathos]

The elite spearman had 5 health blocks.....at the very best I injured him down by 1 with a stream of bombardment from cats.

The attack I spoke of where my knights, elite warriors, and archers threw themselves at the walls was when that spearman was in this"injured" state. Not once did any of my units even injure the spearman. He was unfazed by the 25 units I attacked with.

I don't know where these multiple opportunities were that you speak of.

This happened at Warlord difficulty, btw.

 

[Gnarlyhotep]

I just gotta say that catapults suck. More often than not, they do nothing at all. I attacked bejing with a force of 3 swordsmen, 2 horsemen and 3 catapults, and the catapults never did more than knock one of the regular spearmen down by 1 health bar.

Now cannon and atillery...that's a different story

 

[Magnus]

I build catapults, just so I can get cannons faster once metalurgy is developed - just pay the upgrade fee and voila! - effective bombardment.

 

[Not Todd]

I've gotten lucky and knocked down city walls or barracks. Doesn't happen too often though and I generally don't build catapults for just this reason.

 

[Endureth]

I use catapaults for defense. I try to make sure all my border sities have at least one. Every time an enemy attacks the city, my catapault gets a free shot. Usually taking them down one notch because they are in crappy terrain. When it's my turn, the catapault can fire at any attackers that survived taking them down even more. Really important cities get 2-3 catapaults and they can pummel any attackers during my turn.

It's hard for the computer to take out a city with a stack of units with one hp each.

Endureth

 

[RouTaran]

the Cats have a bombard rating of 4. City walls give 50% bombard defence or something, point is they increase bombard defence. Then you have an elite spearman (5hp)
you went in with 6 cats, if you were to bring him down to 1hp you would need 4 of the cats to score out of the 6. Given the walls thats gonna be hard with just 6 cats. Dont matter for how many turns to pound the city, what matters is how much you pound it in 1 turn and that you have units standing by to attack right after the cats are done throwing their rocks. You will need to bring more cats along if you hope to get thro that spearman.

Question, how did the spearman get all the way to elite status? was he fighting off a lot of barbie attacks? or did you try beating him without cat support earlier and failed and then decided to bring the ground pounders in?

 

[Hommer]

Has anyone notices that type of Government is affects the military effectivness???

I take Berlin (on Chief level) with 2 horsemans and 2 archers with artillery support of 2 catapults. Then I change Govt from Monarchy to Republic. Voila - I slain MANY, not - MANY units in battles for others German cities (without capital bonus, walls etc)...

Then I choose to finish that war. And select Monarchy again. Germans has died quickly...

 

[Albert Einstain]

Hey, what do you want? Defending unit had 3 defend point + wall modifier + terain modifyer it may go up to 7 defend points. If the town is on the river, add river modifier (100% to defence). So his defend number maybe was 10!!!. You attack with wariors (attack 1, probability to reduce 1 hit point is 1/10), archers (2 attack, 2/10 probabiliry) and horseman (2 attack, 2/10 probability). To to kill him you need something like 5*10 = 50 wariors or 5*5 = 25 archers or 5*5 = 25 horseman. All this in case you are lucky. Catapult has bomb number 6. So it is only 6/10 probability that catapult will reduce single hit point if it fires ONLY on the defender and don't fails. THAT" NOT TRUE!!! You have something like 1/2 probabilty of failing bomb, so probability downs to 3/10. You have walls and population to fire on them. It brings probability of hit down to 1/10 in this case. So you need something like 10 catapults to drop ONE hit point.You need something like 40 catapults to make him red. If you are lucky And, finally, in manual you can found that it is ineffective to use catapults against the walls (low hit probability). I use catapults for defence since AI doesn't attack may cities when attacking unit not in full health.

 

[Gray]

My thoughts are that catapults suck pretty much, but they are pretty cheap to build and good for defense. I tend to build them, early on, once I have all the base infrastructure in a city. Then like what was mentioned before, just upgrade them to cannon-artillery... and let the carnage begin...