catapults unrealistic

[Anibal at portas]

i am playing one multiplayer with the great campaign,my faction is carthage and other human player is rome.
then,we have a battle in the open field I have about five thousand warriors and another human player takes about eight thousand warriors with two units catapults.
the player with rome begins to bombard me with the catapults,all my troops protected in a forest,however catapults sweep my troops like the case of modern heavy artillery and no simple catapults throwing stones.
this situation not real and exaggerated with the catapults breaks all the immersion,realism and the tactics of the battle.
the catapults destroy half my army and do for a total of more than 1300 warriors losses in my army,a current heavy artillery is not capable of such casualties.
if I include my next army catapults,win who has more catapults,this mod should not base their battles in catapults that breaks with all the realism, immersion and tactics in battles.
seems excessive the power of destruction from the catapults that two units are capable of killing more than 1,300 warriors and win a battle on their own.
this must be changed in the next version of the mod and put a realist level the catapults and does not seem heavy artillery.
i would like an answer from someone of the mod team about this issue,thanks.

[Jaketh]

Ballistas are terribly inaccurate in this mod as they should be. You're lucky if 2 of 4 shots hit the side of a massive city wall.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

Your entire post seems like it's filled with over exaggeration.

In current 1.05, ballistae and onager are incredibly inaccurate.

We've buffed the accuracy somewhat for 1.1, but they typically won't get more than 250 kills. 400 is possible in small town sieges or fort battles where the ai groups up a bunch of units in one spot however.


AI behavior also has been changed several CA patches ago that makes any unit under artillery fire move to either attack the artillery, or get into a spot where the artillery can't hit it (usually the former).

[Linke]

Nevermind

[KAM 2150]

Sounds like you use another mod.

[Don_Diego]

ermm, did you leave your army just standing there for the time limit??

[KAM 2150]

I don't think that even without time limit, army standing in place clustered, they still do not have that much power

[Anibal at portas]

Your entire post seems like it's filled with over exaggeration.

In current 1.05, ballistae and onager are incredibly inaccurate.

We've buffed the accuracy somewhat for 1.1, but they typically won't get more than 250 kills. 400 is possible in small town sieges or fort battles where the ai groups up a bunch of units in one spot however.


AI behavior also has been changed several CA patches ago that makes any unit under artillery fire move to either attack the artillery, or get into a spot where the artillery can't hit it (usually the former).

this battle was in a multiplayer campaign with other human player,if the catapults are destructive with the AI,imagine how many people can kill a unit if the player is human.
the figures are more than 600 fighters per unit dead and had two units of catapults, with a total of more than 1300 dead warriors,half smashed army and put to flight many units on the battlefield and human contender lost few troops in battle.
i think that these numbers are unrealistic,the two units catapults won the battle for themselves.
i challenge you to a multiplayer battle with this mod, I with two units catapults and destroy you half of your army with them.
the two units of catapults will make me win the battle easily and without casualties just part of my army,while you'll have seventy percent more casualties and a great defeat.
sure after playing the multiplayer battle you not think that the catapults are exactly right in their destructive power.
in my opinion the letabilidad of the catapults should be reviewed and give realistic margins in the next version of the mod,so as to give immersion,tactic and realism to the battles.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

The ballistae and onager simply don't have the accuracy or rate of fire to do that. Even less so against a player who is intelligent enough to prioritize and take out artillery before it manages to start racking up kills.

Your experience is simply so far removed from what others experience and report that it stretches your credibility here to the limit.

Are you using any sub mods or other mods in conjunction with DeI?

[Matmannen]

As we can see Annibal at Portas said he put all his troops in the woods for protection. It way be the case that he bunched them all up thus helping the Catapults do their job. Another factor in raising catapult effectivness is the spread. The shots tend to spread more horizontaly then vertically. When you miss, the shots suaully fall short or to far, never really to much on the side. So imagine that he bunched them all up in a forest, horizontaly (not really upwards, but I hope you know what I mean) in refrence to the catapults aim. Basically he helped the catapults, basically served his army on a silver platter. And in that case he only has himself to blame...

[Ivan_Moscavich]

600 per siege unit is still stretching it very, very much. I can manually aim every round of a ballistae at a packed group of ai during a small town battle and get possibly 450 kills. And the other ballistae firing on their own would be liable to get between 250-300 in that circumstance.

The only possible way I could see this happening is if he somehow had all of his troops in a massive compact square, and his opponent manually aimed every single ballistae shot while he just sat there under fire and didn't do a thing to counter attack.

And even then, 600 kills per ballistae or onager (he's not being helpful calling them catapults, but that seems to imply onagers because of how they look compared to middle ages catapults) is stretching believeabillity with the 1.05 accuracy and spread levels.

It's far more likely they're using a sub mod that modifies artillery stats somehow.

[Butan]

Spread, accuracy, rate of fire, total ammunition and damage was greatly modified long ago, to realistic values. Your post describe what happened back then so this is why we do not understand what you speak of.

Even under special circumstances that Matmannen described, siege artillery is hardly viable in land battles anymore. Something must be wrong with your files, or you had terrible luck.

[KAM 2150]

Ok, tested on pack that I frogot had less unit hp and less spread for atrillery. I got to 1400 kills with catapuls.....5 catapuls shooting unrestriced for 10 minutes at infantry with 0 armour on perfectly flat terrain, that was my arty vs enemy infantry. On second test I gave AI 5 catapuls (onagers), then I moved 6000 of my infantry in clustered pack on close range so almost all hits from catapults gave kills. After 10 minutes of me standing in front of catapuls I lost 1211 men without bothering AI arty at all.

Like I wrote, that was on pack in which those casualties would be greater then in regular DeI and even that I had to use much more arty and in much better conditions (allowing arty to fire at point blank range until all ammo was used) to get similar result.

[Anibal at portas]

The ballistae and onager simply don't have the accuracy or rate of fire to do that. Even less so against a player who is intelligent enough to prioritize and take out artillery before it manages to start racking up kills.

Your experience is simply so far removed from what others experience and report that it stretches your credibility here to the limit.

Are you using any sub mods or other mods in conjunction with DeI?

i not use any submod,the catapults also have much ammunition.
you should play a battle with one side with catapults and the other side without catapults and in multiplayer,It is not the same play with the AI that with another human player.
you should look at this.

[KAM 2150]

And how it would be different? I simply left army standing in large square without moving until 5 catapults used all ammo. Even in those conditions they lacked to get more then 300 kills per single squad, not to mention 650 per squad like you wrote. Can you give us any screenthots? Did they use any special ammo? Also which arty was it, onagers, ballistae?

[KAM 2150]

Just tested it once more, this time with ballistae which have more range and ammo. 5 units of ballistate were able to kill 1600 which is perfectly ok for using 40 ammo on 6000 guys bunched in large square and not moving for 10 minutes! So in other words it is impossible to get that results with only 2 arty units like you reported and against human player who is doing anything. In the same scenario where I charged at artillery, it was able to kill only 144 guys. So either provide a screenshot/video of said situation or I call mod conflict.

[Mark of Calth]

In a similar theme, are artillery ships getting a buff in 1.1? I used 4 Ballista Quinqueremes against a barbarian wall, and they managed to run out of ammunition before destroying the wall. I was shooting at an angle to the walls, if that makes a difference, but the shots just don't seem to do enough damage when they hit the walls.

[KAM 2150]

I think the walls and stuff should simply get some HP lowered.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I think the walls and stuff should simply get some HP lowered.

That point was raised in testing, but I think we forgot about it with everything else going on.

[Ygraine]

That point was raised in testing, but I think we forgot about it with everything else going on.

I have already experimented with this with my friend. We lowered wall/siege engine hp, while retaining the inaccuracy of the siege catapults. That way the catapults are fairly effective against walls/siege engines, and not too strong against troops due to lacking accuracy. It also solves issues like wooden fort-towers being able to take tons and tons of torches/fire arrows before igniting.