Suggestion: Improve Catapults

[kumquatelvis]

Perhaps I'm unusual, but I never build catapults or canons. Early in the game you can usually beat the AI to the stooges, or just build a few extra units and then ignore the low defense bonuses. Later on you can use mages, high withdrawal units, or highly promoted city attacking melee units (or a mix of all three). And I think that the reason for this is that the siege weapons are just so slow. They can't take mobility, they can't be hasted, and slowing down your entire army to a move rate of one makes wars take forever. To mkae it worse, when you finally do make it to the city you need to wait another turn while they rest (as opposed to mages that can blast right away, or even in advance if you have fireballs).

I've got a couple of suggestions, and would be glad to hear more. I think it would be fun to tow along a bunch of cannons if I could only justify the effort.

Ideas

• Engineering or Machinery grants catapults the raiders promotion (ideally for free). This would represent that wheeled vehicles are good on roads, but not so much out in the wilderness. Since they would still have a movement rate of one there would be no concerns about them replacing horsemen or recon units as true raiders.
• Let them bombard on the same turn that they moved. This would put them more on par with mages. Letting them bombard and attack might be too much, but even then it might be ok.
• Cannons could bombard from a space away (putting them further on par with mages, and encouraging sorties).
• Allow Air 1 to grant them the "light" promotion. It would make that spell sphere useful on inland maps, and work as a haste spell for the siege weapons (at a cost of attack strength). For fun Earth 1 could also grant "heavy," but that might be a bit much.
• Allow them to be disassembled and then reassembled on location (might be too difficult for the AI).

 

[Jabie]

I could be mistaken, but don't catapults do collateral damage though? Suicidal catapults could make a good alternative to Fireballs if you don't plan going down the magic line.

I guess you could give them the Barrage ability from Age of Ice, though IIRC the AI never made particular good use of that.

 

[the343danny]

IMO there should be ranged bombard to siege and navies. Like they did in RoM (or maybe its just the revolution mod in RoM), but not like the one in FF. In FF, there was an option for taking down defense bonuses and another one for damaging units. In RoM, there was only one option, and first, that option will take down defenses, then after the defenses are all gone, the same option will damage units.

Also, how about it has a chance to miss (not as much as RoM though.)

I do agree that they should get raider with a certain tech, or just from the start. That was one thing I loved about the orbis modmod.

 

[Darksaber1]

Catapult's arn't so suicidle. They get about 80% withdrawal change.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

nice suggestions. I also think siege engines should be captured instead of destroyed.

 

[Humakty]

Catapults are really efficient as they are :stick 2 + of them in a city were you expect to get attacked, and destroy the ennemy stack, with a good chance of keeping your catapults. They aren't bad on attack either, just a lil' slow.
I don't think catapults should have a ranged attack if archers don't, their range are quite comparable IRL.

 

[mimic]

I've got a couple of suggestions, and would be glad to hear more. I think it would be fun to tow along a bunch of cannons if I could only justify the effort.

Ideas

• Engineering or Machinery grants catapults the raiders promotion (ideally for free). This would represent that wheeled vehicles are good on roads, but not so much out in the wilderness. Since they would still have a movement rate of one there would be no concerns about them replacing horsemen or recon units as true raiders.
• Let them bombard on the same turn that they moved. This would put them more on par with mages. Letting them bombard and attack might be too much, but even then it might be ok.
• Cannons could bombard from a space away (putting them further on par with mages, and encouraging sorties).
• Allow Air 1 to grant them the "light" promotion. It would make that spell sphere useful on inland maps, and work as a haste spell for the siege weapons (at a cost of attack strength). For fun Earth 1 could also grant "heavy," but that might be a bit much.
• Allow them to be disassembled and then reassembled on location (might be too difficult for the AI).

Great suggestions, if these were implemented I'd definitely be more inclined to use catapults, which at the moment I only use if I have no other choice.

 

[Hanny]

Give them (catapaults) zero movement, and make them be transported as cargo, on wagons, use perhaps the reliquary, that have fairlly good movement, autounload at the end of movement and you get a better represented catapaults, rather than them moving over all of creation on there own.

 

[Grey Fox]

That's gonna be hell to teach the AI.

 

[Hanny]

That's gonna be hell to teach the AI.

Possibly so, not really thought about implemting it!!, i meerly threw it up as an idea, but it would make the human player behave in a more realistic manner.

The AI uses weights to decide what to build, so it already build catapaults, but now they dont move, so it gets a good defensive unit in citys, if its taught that they should be put onto wagons and moved to attack citys, they are unloaded at the end of each turn and nothing has changed. My guess is thatb the AI would build more ctapualts than transport capacity, so perhaps the cargo holds would be rather high in number.

Any thoughts on how the Ai would handle such a change?

 

[Grey Fox]

They wouldn't be able to attack with 0 move though...

 

[Schmoe]

I don't really have a problem with catapults. They are slow, but they are very, very powerful for how early they are available. I don't always use them, but I use them enough that I think they are just fine as is.

 

[Hanny]

They wouldn't be able to attack with 0 move though...

Quite right to.

Siege engines dont roll across the steppes like panzers,( excpt in FFH) they were assebled for use where required, principly to tear down fortifications. Bombardement requires a move point is your point tho?, could not that be covered with an auto attack via promotion that only siege engines have, which is to reduce city defense when adjacent to them.

 

[Kolath]

My number one gripe with catapults is the slow speed. It takes forever to get them to the front and if they get assassinated two squares from the city it is a huge pain because then you have to retreat or wait for more catapults to arrive.

I never use catapults except when forced to as Khazad. I'll take fireball, crush, crown of brilliance, high retreat chance, ring of fire, or pillar of fire any day over catapults.

Hanny, you raise a good realism point about how siege equipment is typically built at the siege site. Perhaps the siege workshop could grant a "seige builder" promotion to all melee(?) units built in that city. The promotion would then grant them the ability to buy 1 catapult per unit. Maybe have the a multi-turn summon like the khazad battering ram summon.

Or, if that is too complicated, I think kumquatelvis' original suggestions are excellent.

 

[MiKa523]

Ideas

• Engineering or Machinery grants catapults the raiders promotion (ideally for free). This would represent that wheeled vehicles are good on roads, but not so much out in the wilderness. Since they would still have a movement rate of one there would be no concerns about them replacing horsemen or recon units as true raiders.
• Let them bombard on the same turn that they moved. This would put them more on par with mages. Letting them bombard and attack might be too much, but even then it might be ok.

I like those two especially, because both ideas save you some time, when attacking cities like mages usually do.

I also agree though, that mages are more expensive techwise and usually need more time (when starting as adept) to be really useful for city assaults, thus it's not that easy to compare them to catapults.

Cannons on the other hand should be as useful and fast as mages regarding city assault imho, so maybe those ideas for siege weapons should only apply to cannons in order to improve them.

 

[Grey Fox]

Quite right to.

Siege engines dont roll across the steppes like panzers,( excpt in FFH) they were assebled for use where required, principly to tear down fortifications. Bombardement requires a move point is your point tho?, could not that be covered with an auto attack via promotion that only siege engines have, which is to reduce city defense when adjacent to them.

I meant they would be useless without their collateral damage attack. What should Khazad do? They have no spells. Be forced to go Veil or OO for ring of fire or Tsunami?

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I complained about Catapults in a different thread before (iirc it was "Units you don't use"), so this drew my attention immediately.

Catapults are really efficient as they are :stick 2 + of them in a city were you expect to get attacked, and destroy the ennemy stack, with a good chance of keeping your catapults. They aren't bad on attack either, just a lil' slow.

In the other thread someone else mentioned they are good as offensive-defensive units. I agree, but that means they're only doing one of their two purposes correctly. Their job is to siege cities and be good collateral units, and right now, they're pretty bad at sieging cities (barring very early on in the game). They take forever to get to their target and usually get picked off by Assassins before they arrive (in my expierence, if I bring 5 catapults, 3 will be dead before they reach the target city).

Ideas

• Engineering or Machinery grants catapults the raiders promotion (ideally for free). This would represent that wheeled vehicles are good on roads, but not so much out in the wilderness. Since they would still have a movement rate of one there would be no concerns about them replacing horsemen or recon units as true raiders.
• Let them bombard on the same turn that they moved. This would put them more on par with mages. Letting them bombard and attack might be too much, but even then it might be ok.
• Cannons could bombard from a space away (putting them further on par with mages, and encouraging sorties).
• Allow Air 1 to grant them the "light" promotion. It would make that spell sphere useful on inland maps, and work as a haste spell for the siege weapons (at a cost of attack strength). For fun Earth 1 could also grant "heavy," but that might be a bit much.

I like these four personally. The raiders promo would come later in the game, so no issue with it overpowering catapults early in the game, and they might actually be able to get to the target city before being murdered by Assassins.

I'd like to expand this first idea a little bit though. Engineering could give siege weapons +1 Movement and Machinery could be the one to grant Commando. My stance on the siege weapon "units" is that it represents the people who transport, assemble and disassemble the Catapult; so with these techs, it represents the efficiency improvements granted by the knowledge these Techs bring. My one worry is that a 2 movement bombarding/collateral unit with Commando would be overpowered, in which case I'd say simply say dropping Commando and maybe getting Barrage I for free.

As for Air I doing a makeshift Haste on them, I don't see why not. Air I is pretty situational as it is, this makes it a more desirable and worthwhile spell.

In my opinion, Catapults are just simply too inferior to Fireball mages. Fireballs can suicide collateral, can bombard and move along much faster than Catapults (and Cannons for that matter). These boosts would help even things out a bit.

 

[KingOfLands]

The built-on-site battering rams that the Khazad got a few versions ago are pretty handy, but they're still awfully slow; requiring something similar of regular catapults is not going to make them any more popular.

I'd really like to see something done to speed up siege weapons; the high withdrawal chance on catapults at present makes them quite good if you're willing to wait for them to arrive.

If one were going to tie this mobility increase to a spell, I'd probably avoid putting it in the Air sphere; the Tier 2 spell in the same far exceeds catapults in destructive power already.

 

[kumquatelvis]

I don't think catapults should have a ranged attack if archers don't, their range are quite comparable IRL.

Not ranged attack so much as ranged bombard (to lower city defenses). And I was thinking just for cannons, not basic catapults.

 

[Fafnir13]

I really like the idea of being able to bombard after moving. There are already many spells and abilities in game which you can cast with zero move.

And instead of raiders, why not mobility? An engineered catapult could be taken apart and put back together much more quickly. Extra move would help to represent this. Would also allow it to keep up with my armies which frequently consist of a large number of units with mobility (Stygian guards and cultists are my avorites with this)

What catapults could really use is a boost in their xp gain. I can usually only get one or two promotions on one before it's 20% chance of death triggers on an attack. Double the amount they earn now would not be uncalled for.

One last suggestion I might make is that a mid level upgrade would be nice. cannons work well, but they come rather far down the tree. A mid-level siege unit would help out the civs that tend to rely on catapults more than others.