Siege - When to use Drill promotions?

[babar]

How important is it whether the top defender is wounded or not? From my experience, Drill becomes much more powerful against wounded units but I'm not sure whether this always applies or just when one actually gains first strikes instead of eliminating those of the wounded defender.

I would have thought it's fairly important. You will do your following siege a big favour if you can damage the strongest defender even a little bit. It doesn't really make drill more powerful (I think CR is still more likely to fluke a win in a lot of out-matched cases), just more likely to score one hit. The main reason it might be unimportant is that you should probably avoid the situation entirely, but I guess it does happen. As I see it, it doesn't matter whether drill is eliminating first strikes or gaining them, the effect should be the same.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

How important is it whether the top defender is wounded or not? From my experience, Drill becomes much more powerful against wounded units but I'm not sure whether this always applies or just when one actually gains first strikes instead of eliminating those of the wounded defender.

I don't know, but when has that ever stopped any of us....

If we are dealing with small amounts of damage, our previous assumptions might still hold. The 3.15 ratio is still going to be the important thing; but because the defender is weaker, it will require more defense bonus to achieve that ratio.

If I'm remembering the strength mechanic correctly, the correct number to use is the average of your current hp and your base hp. If that's right, then a 90hp longbow would need 175% defense bonus to match a 100hp longbow with 162%.

At some point, though, "maximize the chance to do some damage" is insufficiently ambitious, and you should start thinking about maximizing damage, or maximizing survival chances.

More of a sketch than an answer, but there you go.

 

[Dr.Null]

At some point, though, "maximize the chance to do some damage" is insufficiently ambitious, and you should start thinking about maximizing damage, or maximizing survival chances.

More of a sketch than an answer, but there you go.

Alright, thanks. Sounds like the Drill line (especially higher ones) is of use when I'm at a tech deficit, like cannons vs. machine guns, or catapults vs. longbows.

In contrast, if I understand the other thread correctly, the Drill line is usually useful for gunpowder attack units when I'm ahead in tech, since they tend to either die or win unharmed, either of which does not increase stack recuperation time -- and the ability to hit hard and fast is excellent, since it keeps wars brief.

Does that sound right? Thanks.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Alright, thanks. Sounds like the Drill line (especially higher ones) is of use when I'm at a tech deficit, like cannons vs. machine guns, or catapults vs. longbows.

So long as you keep in mind that the jump points are in different places, yes. And that your ambitions are the same (best chance of doing SOME damage to the machine gun).

 

[feelfreetodie]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, maybe thats why im stuck at monarch level.
My siege only get barrage promotions, I tend to think of siege as fodder units, they are really cheap to make and with barrage II or III they quickly decimate any stack they encounter.
Catapults with Barrage I give collateral damage of about 1.2 to 3 units( I dont remember the numbers) plus damage to the unit it attacked. Thats 3.6 damage plus the added damage to the unit it attacked which puts it well over the 5 attck damage a catapult starts off with, to me thats a win in my books every time. With barrage II the amount of collateral damage increases to around 1.8-2 damage per unit( again i dont recall the numbers).
Of course you get the odd time a catapult give no damage to the defending unit.

Attacking a stack behind walls with a variety of units behind the wall, say a stack of 10 units,after the first attack which reduces city defense to zero, the following turn attacking with siege I will lose 5-7 cats before the rest of the cats start to win. I usually never attack with other units so the cats that do win get the chance to promote again, which can go barrageIII for even more damage or city raider. Barrage III decimates large stacks quickly.

Siege are cheap units that do more damage than they are worth, once i get construction, an attacking stack of mine will usually be 2-3 horse archers or swordsmen plus a couple of spearmen and 10-15 cats. This will take down 2 cities fast for me, while only losing the cats, which are replaced quickly since they are so cheap.

 

[babar]

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, maybe thats why im stuck at monarch level.
My siege only get barrage promotions, I tend to think of siege as fodder units, they are really cheap to make and with barrage II or III they quickly decimate any stack they encounter.
Catapults with Barrage I give collateral damage of about 1.2 to 3 units( I dont remember the numbers) plus damage to the unit it attacked. Thats 3.6 damage plus the added damage to the unit it attacked which puts it well over the 5 attck damage a catapult starts off with, to me thats a win in my books every time. With barrage II the amount of collateral damage increases to around 1.8-2 damage per unit( again i dont recall the numbers).
Of course you get the odd time a catapult give no damage to the defending unit.

Attacking a stack behind walls with a variety of units behind the wall, say a stack of 10 units,after the first attack which reduces city defense to zero, the following turn attacking with siege I will lose 5-7 cats before the rest of the cats start to win. I usually never attack with other units so the cats that do win get the chance to promote again, which can go barrageIII for even more damage or city raider. Barrage III decimates large stacks quickly.

Siege are cheap units that do more damage than they are worth, once i get construction, an attacking stack of mine will usually be 2-3 horse archers or swordsmen plus a couple of spearmen and 10-15 cats. This will take down 2 cities fast for me, while only losing the cats, which are replaced quickly since they are so cheap.

Catapults are not cheap! At 50 hammers they cost the same as horse archers and 10 more than swordsmen.

That being the case, CR is generally the best promotion when attacking cities.

It seems drill is useful when attacking a super strong defender that you are unlikely damage at all.

Barrage is useful when attacking a city with a big garrison consisting of several strong defenders, especially if they have lots of drill promos. But I would swap back to CR after a couple of barrage suicides, because... catapults are not cheap!

 

[feelfreetodie]

Catapults are not cheap! At 50 hammers they cost the same as horse archers and 10 more than swordsmen.

That being the case, CR is generally the best promotion when attacking cities.

It seems drill is useful when attacking a super strong defender that you are unlikely damage at all.

Barrage is useful when attacking a city with a big garrison consisting of several strong defenders, especially if they have lots of drill promos. But I would swap back to CR after a couple of barrage suicides, because... catapults are not cheap!

Catapults are 40 hammers in vanilla, dont know if they increased their cost in BTS.
Early game with swordsmen and Horse archers, catapults do plenty of damage to the defending unit, together with collateral damage, you cant get a better return for your 40 hammers. Later on in the game with macemen(70 hammers) and even grenadiers(120 hammers) catapults are worth their weight in gold with barrage promotions.

City Raider I( 20% city attack) Catapult with 5 strength goes to 6 strength, cats will still die most of the time and do minimal collateral damage.
City Raider II(25% city attack) cats with 6.25 strenth, cats will still die most of the time.
when a cat is attacking a garrisoned unit, that unit is usually fortified for 25% strength plus additional promotions that unit may have, which can take an archer from 3 strength to 6-8 strength or a longbow from 6 strength to 10-12 strength making your cats with CR II still only 6.25 strength, that cat will die and only cause 2-4 damage??
Cat with barrage II might only give 1 damage to a longbow but 1.8 collateral damage to 3 other units equals 6.4 damage, even with no damage given to defending unit still causes 5.4 damage, thats worse case scenario, most times a cat can do 3-6 damage to defending unit coupled with colateral damage, thats 8.4-11.4 damage inflicted per cat. What can stand up to that much power? A city garrisoned with 10 grenadiers will be decimated against 0nly 10 cats, leaving your other units in the stack to clean up with no losses.

For me the catapult is still overpowered with barrage promotions.

early game not cheap but once you need to kill longbows and tougher later units the catapult becomes extremely cheap compared to macemen or knights you would normally attack with.
3 cats will do a lot more damage than 1 knight

 

[babar]

If you are playing vanilla combat promotions are available to siege units. Because collateral is calculated by the base strength of the siege unit, combat gives more collateral than barrage (or roughly the same, I can't remember). Combat was disabled for siege in bts for this reason.

I don't think you understand combat mechanics. For example CR reduces the defender's strength rather than increasing the attacker's.

Fair point about cats being cheaper in vanilla, but the idea is CR will reduce the chance of your cats dying, while a decent stack of them will reduce the defenders to rubble anyway. It's not as if CR cats don't deal collateral at all (which your calculations don't account for).

 

[snepp]

Throwing a couple of barrage cats before using your veteran CR cats isn't the worst idea though.