Ladders are a common early siege method. It may be a good way to compensate for erm... less complex civs in case siege tower has a prominant role for others.
Aside from the Helepolis at Rhodes i'm not sure armored siege towers were that common.
i think some factions could be able to uprade them to have artillery and to have rams (current model could be used for artillery siege tower since it has the firing port)
Helepolis could be unique to Macedonians, a heavily armored tower with artillery (very expensive and you can only build one).
As for their use, it does seem they were used more as archer platforms at first but starting in the Hellenistic period were ocasionally use to climb walls.
Ladders would be perhaps more common for climbing (although probably more difficult to animate).
post-Atlas V. 1.9.0 is now available (please refer to the top of this thread to download).
Fixed interlock between post-Atlas and the game when accessing the same archives
Analyze tab:
Player balancing information (staritng resources per player)
fixed map enlarged preview
Findings tab:
fixed more replacement rules now also including actors and props
double click to open "fix selected" window (thanks @Asher!)
a mod's templates can be replaced with the game's own. (thanks @Asher!
Please let me know if you find any bugs, or if you have more ideas and suggestions