[GS] Ram or Tower?

[Victoria]

As things have changed recently are these 2 still equally useful to you? or is one preferable and why?

EDIT: wow 3 votes in a 3 different answers. Interesting.

 

[Sostratus]

On the one hand, I get rams immediately and rams help remove the actual wall, which I sometimes prefer if I want them to stop shooting at me (especially if I want to knock out an encampment etc before assaulting the city.) I only need to do 100hp of damage with my ram supported lads to take out a wall. Perhaps I'm waiting for reinforcements or have units tied up nearby so I just want to avoid losing anyone to ranged attacks.
On the other hand, siege towers clamp the total damage I need to deal to any walled town down to 200hp, so I can take the city itself faster. Other than getting rams sooner, that ancient wall busting ability is the edge case where I still like a good ram - at medieval walls, the wall and garrison have the same HP, so it's easier to just sack the whole town than deal with the walls (I know rams are obsolete here but imagine I have eg Akkad.)

 

[Victoria]

And also a very key point to consider is a wall shoots with the strength of the garrison and capturing a walled town is nicer than capturing a town with destroyed walls.

 

[Tech Osen]

If I do early warmongering it's usually before walls are even up. Surprising how long the AI sometimes waits to build them. Later on I use artillery, naval bombardment and bombers.

Edit: actually, the lack of walls is often a reason for me to declare war.

 

[Matthias Corvinus]

Ram? What is that, some kind of guinea pig? I can’t hear you over my massive 100+ pop terrace farm empire. PULL THE LEVER, CRONK! WE NEED MORE FARMS IN TIWANAKU!

 

[WillowBrook]

Usually ram, but not from deep strategy. It's cheaper.

 

[Bliss]

If supported by ranged fire and outdated melee units, ram. If at least 3-4 (up-to-date swordsmen or musketman), siege tower.
If vanilla, derpie tower for horses, always.

 

[Disgustipated]

I felt like siege tower wasn't working very well for me, but maybe just my imagination. But what I'm certain is not my imagination is anti cavs not seeming to work. Has anyone had this? I might have been using Akkad's bonus at the time, but it's still supposed to work with anti cav. Seems like my Anti cav do no damage to walls compared to melee. It got to the point I wouldn't even attack walls with anti cav, they would just take massive damage and not do much damage to the walls.

Which brings up another question, does the unit residing inside the city affect units that are attacking the city? Because it seems like my units do even worse when attacking a city with a unit in it that is good (meaning gets a combat bonus) against that class of units you are attacking with. I know I should check combat odd calculation, I so often forget to check.

 

[Bangau]

It depends, as is often does. What civ am I playing, any UU that I'm using at the time? What walls do the AI have? If more than ancient (it happens sometimes) rams do little anymore. If I have enough melee units and the walls are ancient, I'll get myself a nice ram or tower. Iirc you cannot build both of them anymore at the same time right? The ram gets obsolete when the tower is invented? If I'm more focused on cavalry I'll probably get some siege units in the mix if I have the right tech and resources. I rarely get to use aircraft, but when I do I love the bombers best.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Not sure how you all get the Ram to work.
If my neighbor is close enough I can usually take the whole empire with Archers.
By the time I get a Ram and Swords and Attack the Ram is ineffective.
Siege Tower works much better in the current state of the game for me personally.
If I don't jump on my neighbor asap they are usually the AI tech leader.
Funny how that works in many of my games.

 

[Sostratus]

Not sure how you all get the Ram to work.
If my neighbor is close enough I can usually take the whole empire with Archers.
By the time I get a Ram and Swords and Attack the Ram is ineffective.
Siege Tower works much better in the current state of the game for me personally.
If I don't jump on my neighbor asap they are usually the AI tech leader.
Funny how that works in many of my games.

Rams only obsolete as a combat support unit against medieval walls+.
You can’t build them anymore once you get towers, iirc, but timing wise it’s fine; one encampment city can push out a ram or two and swap to sword production once you get them, whereas towers can’t be produced ahead of time. (Assuming you need fast prep for war)

 

[Bliss]

Rams only obsolete as a combat support unit against medieval walls+.
You can’t build them anymore once you get towers, iirc, but timing wise it’s fine; one encampment city can push out a ram or two and swap to sword production once you get them, whereas towers can’t be produced ahead of time. (Assuming you need fast prep for war)

Why does it have to be an encampment city?

 

[Sostratus]

Why does it have to be an encampment city?

Oh, it doesn’t. I was just thinking of the “grab an early great general” play people make with sword rushes.
Although making encampments required to make them, like how military engineers are, would certainly increase the case for building encampments otherwise.

 

[Tabarnak]

Thank god we can upgrade rams when needed to towers.

Response: both

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Rams only obsolete as a combat support unit against medieval walls+.
You can’t build them anymore once you get towers, iirc, but timing wise it’s fine; one encampment city can push out a ram or two and swap to sword production once you get them, whereas towers can’t be produced ahead of time. (Assuming you need fast prep for war)

I think stronger players make better use of them.
They don't work so well in most of my games.
Either I don't need them because the AI didn't build walls or I am trying to use them too late.
Most likely I am doing it wrong but it seems the window is small to make them work and situational.

That is a pretty darn good city and or land to get up an encampment, iron and swords.
Many games I don't have such luxury so early.
This is why I find that different map settings make such a big difference in experiences.
Depends on the Civ you play as well... I tend to play very low tier Civs.

Do you ever get the game where some AI is earning Great Generals so fast you can't get one??
Of course that isn't every game but sometimes that is annoying.

Thank god we can upgrade rams when needed to towers.

Response: both

Good point... have to change my vote now.

 

[nauberry]

I ususally forget to build any rams and just overtake the cities with archers. When the enemy gets archers, that gets very dangerous though, so I really have to start utiizing both.

 

[kaspergm]

Not sure how you all get the Ram to work.
If my neighbor is close enough I can usually take the whole empire with Archers.
By the time I get a Ram and Swords and Attack the Ram is ineffective.
Siege Tower works much better in the current state of the game for me personally.
If I don't jump on my neighbor asap they are usually the AI tech leader.
Funny how that works in many of my games.

Not sure how people take out cities with walls + garrison with just archers, at least not unlike you have absolute open terrain surrounding it. I find the AI is pretty good at getting up ancient walls, and they also get chariots or whatever quite early, which means their garrison strength goes up to 30 or something like that. If they manage to place an archer or maybe even two in or next to the city, they will pretty much kill my archer in one turn, or at least take it so far down in health that I need to move it back to save it from dying after one shot. So unless I have something like 20 archers and perfectly navigatable terrain, there's no way I can bring down ancient walls just with archers.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Not sure how people take out cities with walls + garrison with just archers, at least not unlike you have absolute open terrain surrounding it. I find the AI is pretty good at getting up ancient walls, and they also get chariots or whatever quite early, which means their garrison strength goes up to 30 or something like that. If they manage to place an archer or maybe even two in or next to the city, they will pretty much kill my archer in one turn, or at least take it so far down in health that I need to move it back to save it from dying after one shot. So unless I have something like 20 archers and perfectly navigatable terrain, there's no way I can bring down ancient walls just with archers.

I admit it runs kinda goofy.
Some games, like you say, they have walls up in their whole empire.
I run into games where they are getting barbed or another AI is at war with them.
Sometimes they just don't build walls.
I certainly do not take an empire with archers when they have walls up.

So once again it all depends on what Civ you are playing and playing against.
Map and Settings make the game play different as well.

I just played a game two days ago where Russia was getting Barbed like no other.
I stole two settlers from them and took their empire with archers, warriors and chariots.
It didn't hurt that the Barbs were using catapults on Russian Walled cities.
Ended up with 5 of their cities and 2 of their settlers.

I just finished a game where Dido and Matthias were at total war for the first 100 turns.
I ended up taking both empires with muskets, cannons and a couple bombards.
Of course it helps when they are Dark and you are Golden.

Each game differs but I run into the some similar scenarios as already discussed in this thread.
My comments were not meant to be absolutes.

 

[konokono]

Rams for early war. I find that by the time medieval rolls around I'm either not warring or rushing to bombards in order to war

 

[acluewithout]

In principle, I'd rather use Towers. @Sostratus can probably check the maths (on the smart v motivated quadrant chart, sadly I'm in the stupid and lazy corner, while he's in the smart and building 8 city aqueduct canal Hanzas corner), but Towers let you keep Walls which is highly desirable.

But I've only used Towers if I make the effort to use them. The problem is speed. If I'm capturing Cities, the main thing is taking the City before the AI gets too many cross bows. Rams and Towers both need Swords, and those guys are toast v X-bows. As are Pikes, even though they are Medieval units.

So, it's a rush to take Cities. Usually before they get Walls, and if that doesn't work, a bit of Ram related fun backed up by Lt or Heavy Cav. After that, my next chance to take Cities is Muskets, and that becomes a whole different situation and Rams v Towers or whatever just isn't such a factor then.

If we get some DLC or an Expansion that fills in some unit gaps, or plays around with balance a bit, then all this stuff will go out of the winder. Medieval Siege, and Siege would be my go to. Medievel Melee, and I'd be onboard the good ship Siege Tower for sure (...oh God, please not Longswordsmen. Seriously. They never existed outside of Dungeons and Dragons...).

While I'm here. I really love that Rams can now be upgraded to Towers. I know that doesn't actually result in me using them more, but it's still a really good change. I do like that FXS eventually get around to a lot of these sorts of good changes. Yeah, I wish the got there faster. But I'd rather they get there than not.