How about a Battering Ram promotion for Melee units?

[catquiet]

What if melee units could pick up a Battering Ram promotion in cities with siege workshops like ships get the Skeleton Crew promotion? It would give +5% bombard, -40% strength, and a Drop Ram spell that would get rid of the promotion. That way if you don't have time to build a catapult, you can just have some melee units grab Battering Ram promotions. On the downside, you would be severely weakening three units for every catapult you replace.

 

[Niveras]

Maybe they could change City Raider to ignore 30% / 60% / 90% of city defense and have them lower the defense with every attack. I'm just tired of being forced to make 1 move catapults or wait on leveling up fire mages.

I was thinking you should be able to attach workers or especially slaves to siege weapons to increase their movement rate. Perhaps 1 rate per worker, .5 if possible per slave, to a maximum of +2 (or even just +1) movement rate. Maybe also make haste work on them at that point, too. Or leave haste out of it and have a higher cap, to accentuate the difference between a high-minded civilization using magic, and an unsophisticated one using brute force power.

However, I suspect it would be too expensive unless you're OO, in which case it's too powerful.

 

[Arqane]

Umm... apparently alot of people aren't happy with the catapults. Y'know, there's a reason why they were made the way they were... and not 2 or 3 movement. Collateral damage is huge, as is reducing a city's defenses.

Not sure why it's such a problem, though. I've only built siege in 1 out of about 50 games in FfH, and I rarely use fire magic, either. Apart from warrior vs. warrior combats, I've never had a hard time taking cities.

 

[westamastaflash]

How about making it only have a chance to clear the forest? And/Or maybe make constructing/summonig siege units faster on forested tiles, or maybe maiking them stronger or cheaper on forested tiles.

I like this - so if you cast it on a forest you get cheaper siege weapons, and an ancient forest you get *better* weapons (but of course, a chance of pissing off a treant)

 

[eerr]

Umm... apparently alot of people aren't happy with the catapults. Y'know, there's a reason why they were made the way they were... and not 2 or 3 movement. Collateral damage is huge, as is reducing a city's defenses.

Not sure why it's such a problem, though. I've only built siege in 1 out of about 50 games in FfH, and I rarely use fire magic, either. Apart from warrior vs. warrior combats, I've never had a hard time taking cities.

seige takes more production to enter for a slower unit that must be replaced more often

the only advantage is that you can get it sooner as opposed to later, though they're only midly effective at rushing people...

 

[slithy]

Since the spell mechanic is well-developed, why not dump catapults altogether (like people say, it was a lot easier to build the catapult when you got to the place you wanted to siege, considering there were no trains or flatbed trucks to carry them on) and instead make promotions that make units into engineers with "spells" that do the same thing?

So you would have

Engineering I - allows you to cast "undermine", does 3-6 percent damage to the defences.

Engineering II - allows you to cast "scale" - add +15% city attack promotion to all units in your stack for 1 turn

Engineering III - allows you to cast "siege weapons", empowers entire stack with "undermine" ability for 1 turn

Any melee or archer unit should be able to take the promotions, meaning you could try to get a few elite engineers to put into your stacks, or just get plenty of units that can undermine and go crazy.