Onager city assault

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Yeah I've been wondering about that too in RTW, in M2 I've set them on fire with archers though.

I wish M2TW would work on my 'pooter.

Ballistaes

Don't combine two plurals. It's either Ballistae or Ballistas.

take too lnog to load and fire too be effective in RTW it seems to me, I never use them or catapults. I'd rather have another unit of calv or infantry.

You should try out Scorpions: they have longer range, are more accurate, and do more damage, with the drawback of being ineffective against buildings. I tend to not use siege engines at all, simply because they slow my armies down, and the foundation of my offensives is the Blitz; once their standing army breaks, the AI has a very hard time forming a new defensive stratigem, much less new armies.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Nope, I've seen flaming arrows light catapults, rams, and siege towers on fire. It sometimes can take a while, but eventually all will light up.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Actually, destroying the cities buildings is a very sound strategy, if the enemy is defending in a narrow street, your arrows/stones won´t kill much because the major part will be absorbed by the buildings presence, if you burn them down, their square will still be unable to walk or pass through, but if you fire your archers now, you will see that almost every arrow will hit the enemy, turning one building down that is blocking your missiles is indeed effective.

As for flaming arrows, they should be used for elephants/chariots/siege engines or on finishing manouvers to riot enemy, but they are innacurate.

I´ve yet to like ballista/scorpion/repeating ballista, of all this the best by far is the scorpion (on the field at least), the only drawback is that it is innefective while firing against an enemy uphill, the advantage is its more accurate, still i believe a good old onager to be far more preciless....

 

[Backwards Logic]

Well, if the enemy is fighting on a narrow street, What I generally do is bring up infantry to keep them at bay while I'll put archers just behind. With the enemy clumped up defending and just in front of my infantry/archer combo, the hail of arrows can significantly cut down any defenders. Usually while this is going on, I'll have another force flank the street and try to come from behind. The more I split the defenders up, the more likely I can get a force of cavalry to get to the Town Center. Once that happens, usually the defenders in the street fall back Town Center and my other troops storm from behind. All this without leveling the interior buildings (I typically blast a few holes in the walls to attack from different angles).

 

[Maniacal]

I hate how the game doesn't let you target non-buildable buildings with onagers and tebuchets in RTW and M2.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Not quite related to the topic:

A great improvement in RTW would be to insert a tech tree like civilization, that alone would completly transform the campaign game experience....

 

[Traitorfish]

Not quite related to the topic:

A great improvement in RTW would be to insert a tech tree like civilization, that alone would completly transform the campaign game experience....

I think that they're planning something along those lines in Empire.

 

[stee]

Let me put in my opinion. Once I did all heavy onagers and 3 Macedon spear man and i took the city with ease. Case closed

 

[lutzj]

Do you make your onagers set their projectiles alight?

Only against infantry (e.g., in the field.) You lose accuracy when you do, so it's best to use vanilla projectiles against city walls. If you can, destroy exactly 2 sections of wall/gate and nothing else. 2 is plenty for flanking and there is no benefit to randomly destroying buildings in the battle or on the campaign map (unless you're suiciding your artillery to disable an enmeny barracks or something).