Why build trabelet when you have cats?

[Tecibbar]

I can't seem to find a situation when I would use trebu. Any one like them?

 

[J-man]

IIRC they recieve a 100% bonus when attacking cities. I love them for that.

 

[Kesshi]

Tecibbar,

They are superior in all ways, except defense and attacking a non-city square. And if they are defending alone, or attacking a non-city stack, you're probably doing something wrong.

Remember, Trebs get +100% city attack to start with. Add in 3 levels of City Raider, and you have a huge bonus on attacking cities! Trebs also take down more cultural defenses each, if that's what you're using them for (usually I just suicide them into enemy city stacks and hope they survive.)

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

They both have their uses. I prefer trebs because of the reasons Kesshi mentions. Better at attacking cities and better at knocking down defenses. But catapults are good for when you need to take down a massive SoD in the field. Send in the cats, then your own troops to wipe them out.

That's why i'll promote cats to do more collateral damage, i know they won't survive. But I promote trebs with CR.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

They own hard. Trebs with equal CR promos will beat longbows with the same level of CG more often than not. They bombard better too. They're more expensive but you'll lose far less of them.

I wouldn't scrap the cats you've made already though. Very often I have a sizable force of catapults when i'm making trebs, and the catapults usually do the bombarding actually, while the trebs do the actual attacking. Other than maces trebs are unparalleled city attackers (and don't share the maces weaknesses to xbows and parity with other maces when attacking cities). Basically this unit is the key to easy medieval warfare.

 

[kazapp]

I can't seem to find a situation when I would use trebu. Any one like them?

Once you gain the knowledge to build the Trebuchet, you should find that it is superior to the Catapult in the city-attacking role.

If you war against an inferior opponent, you will seldom face any battles that aren't you attacking their cities. In this case, you can build Trebs only.

If you're mounting an amphibious assault, space aboard naval transport is often an issue. In this case you'll definitely want quality over quantity, so here the Treb's attractiveness over the Cat is even stronger.

However, if you war against a superior opponent (perhaps you're even forced into a defensive war) you will mostly face battles out in the open (unless you're as stupid as the AI, huddling behind city walls that won't help).

In this case, the higher attack strength of the Catapult (5 vs 4), combined with its lower price, makes it the better build. You'll suicide it against enemy SoDs where the Treb's main special ability (+100% city attacks) is useless.

Hope that helps,
Zapp

PS. The beginner's mistake visavi siege units is not building enough of them (instead building too many other units, or not enough units at all). If you have plenty cats/trebs, you should find your other units cease to die off (as they only ever attack units in the red). This makes your wars significantly cheaper, not to mention you'll bring down city defenses faster and retain your promoted units longer. I try to always have so many siege units I can be generous with their use. If I find myself being stingy with throwing them at the enemy gates, saving them for later, etc; that almost always means the war isn't going as well as it could be. Solution: build more siege units.

 

[Calder]

One of the bigger advantages Trebs have over catapults, as well as the 100% city attack bonus, is the 16%/turn city bombard (as opposed to only 8%/turn for Cats). And I usually like to have 5 or 6 Trebs promoted with Accuracy, which are kept exclusively for city bombard, and not upgraded until Artillary! Cannons only get 12%/turn city bombard.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Cannons may have a lower base bombard, but they still break down defenses faster than trebuchets because they ignore walls and castles, which the AI loves to build.

 

[Tecibbar]

So Trebs will actually survive when attacking a city? I usually just sacrifice a few cats for the collatal damage. I thought the main damage siege do is through collatory, which cats will do twice amount with same price. I guess I will try using trebs. I may be amazed at them

In the past I only build them for reserve purpose only. They cost less to upgrade to cannon.

 

[UncleJJ]

A treb can beat the top longbow defender quite often. It depends on the situation of course, a CG3 longbow in a hill city is always going to be tough. But a normal CG longbow on the flat is easy meat for a treb with CR promotions. If you promote them carefully and look after them trebs can survive 4 or 5 attacks and get to 10 exp, although they do take casualties when attacking at say 70%.

The other advantage a treb has over a catapult is that it bombards for 16% while the catapult is only 8%. Walls reduce that bombardment to 50% and castles to only 25% effectiveness but trebs are still basically twice as good.

Once you can build trebs the simple rule is use trebs against stacks in cities and catapults against stacks outside cities. You need both in most situations. Catapults can be used defensively or offensively while trebs are useless defenders and good attackers.

 

[vicawoo]

Makes you realize how good quechas are.

 

[siggboy]

One of the bigger advantages Trebs have over catapults, as well as the 100% city attack bonus, is the 16%/turn city bombard (as opposed to only 8%/turn for Cats). And I usually like to have 5 or 6 Trebs promoted with Accuracy, which are kept exclusively for city bombard, and not upgraded until Artillary! Cannons only get 12%/turn city bombard.

Balbanes has said it already, just adding to that: Walls and Castles reduce bombardment effectiveness by 50%/75% (total), so your 16% bombardment from a Trebuchet becomes 8%/4% vs. a walled/castled city.

Cannons are Gunpowder units so they are not affected by that modifier and work at the full 12% bombardment against any city, which is 50%/200% better than a Trebuchet for that purpose.

As far as their survival chances go: Trebs have 4 str boosted to an effective 8 against cities, whereas Cannons have 12 base strength, so they win by a margin in that arena as well.

There's no reason to keep Trebuchets around unless you lack the gold to upgrade them to Cannons.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Balbanes has said it already, just adding to that: Walls and Castles reduce bombardment effectiveness by 50%/75% (total), so your 16% bombardment from a Trebuchet becomes 8%/4% vs. a walled/castled city.

Cannons are Gunpowder units so they are not affected by that modifier and work at the full 12% bombardment against any city, which is 50%/200% better than a Trebuchet for that purpose.

As far as their survival chances go: Trebs have 4 str boosted to an effective 8 against cities, whereas Cannons have 12 base strength, so they win by a margin in that arena as well.

There's no reason to keep Trebuchets around unless you lack the gold to upgrade them to Cannons.

AI's do not always have walls in every city, making the odd accuracy treb here and there indeed the most effective bombarding device available for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, these cities are usually lower culture defense and more weakly garrisoned cities, the more valuable cities always seem to have castles . Nevertheless, it's gold that can be spent elsewhere so it's worth noting the enemy's cities with or without walls/castles when spending it.

If engineering is prioritized early enough that you can field trebs before the AI has guilds for knights, trebs + xbows + whatever (usually CR swords/maces or just pikes for when the knights do show up) can walk ALL OVER the AI until it does get knights. Horseless and/or iron-less AI's are sitting ducks in this scenario, take advantage! Such is a situation where you don't have to (and maybe shouldn't!) wait for rifles, grenadiers, or cannons. AI's without horses have comically no counter to xbows/trebs in the field (other than its own xbows, which the AI doesn't seem to make a lot of) or in cities until it picks up gunpowder. I'd say that window is often just as big as the window opened up when you get to rifling first...take advantage of it, especially if you're protective! 6 str drill III xbows with CR II trebs can flatten a civ with surprisingly few casualties...

 

[siggboy]

AI's do not always have walls in every city, making the odd accuracy treb here and there indeed the most effective bombarding device available for a long, long time.

I'm sorry to be nitpicking but an Accuracy Treb has 24% bombardment while an Accuracy Cannon has 20%. A city without walls has maybe 60% defense if it has high culture (I don't know the formulae for that at all). So you need either 3 trebs or 3 cannons (with Accuracy) to reduce it to 0% in one turn. No savings in terms of units needed there.
If you pass on Accuracy you need 5 cannons or 4 trebs, saving one unit.

I'm not sure if saving one unit in the worst case is worth taking care of that detail. It's very cheap to upgrade trebs to cannons anyway.

If engineering is prioritized early enough that you can field trebs before the AI has guilds for knights, trebs + xbows + whatever (usually CR swords/maces or just pikes for when the knights do show up) can walk ALL OVER the AI until it does get knights.

Totally agree. You had mentioned that before in another thread so I've tried it out and it works really well. Metal Casting from Oracle then straight for Machinery, Mathematics, Construction, Engineering (not necessarily in that order) and you can take your pick of which neighbour to crush ;-).

Only problem is that you can't lightbulb Liberalism anymore because you need to postpone Machinery for that to work.

 

[madscientist]

Trebs are much more efficient at attacking cities than catapults which is the chief reason you build seige.

Examples: CR II cat or Treb versus a CG II longbow. The promotion cancel. THe 100% versus cities applies to defender, so it's 4 treb against 3 longbow; compare with cat 5 versus longbow 6.

Get's better against rifles: cat 5 verusu rifle 14 compared with treb 4 versus 7.5 rifle.

Trebs are one major reason ourdated units can be so dangerous, trebs really knock down defender's strength fast enough where ourdated units can capture a city while you garrison the new city with fresh updated military.

Another point not mentioned, it's cheaper to upgrade experienced trebs to cannons than cats to cannons.