Siege Ram Defense

[RK0AD]

I've been playing this game for some time, but am becoming impatient with the near invincibility of seige rams. Basically, all an opponent needs to do is get several rams and all my defenses are toast because none of my units other than elephants seem to even phase them. 

Is there a strategy I am missing to defend against rams, and if so, what? Otherwise, I think maybe the game needs a tweak to offer some method of resistance to them? 

Russ

[sphyrth]

Sword units. Sword units are strong against Siege Weapons. You might be surprised but even Women can take them down.

[Servo]

It would be very interesting if siege weapons are manned by foot soldiers. 

Siege rams should be operated by a minimum number of units and allowed to be garrisoned. If units garrisoned are ranged units it should be able to fire in range automatically when there's enemy. It should be able to mechanically kill a unit/units  by rolling over them. AIs make a lot of them and it's sometimes annoying. 

Ranged siege units should be manned and dock units too. 

A warship without ranged unit/units garrisoned shouldn't be able to fire in range. It should be capturable too like towers. Speaking of towers, outposts and forts structures like these shouldn't attack in range if no range unit is manning them and any range attack should correspond as to what type of range unit is inside. Not even having its LOS activated if not garrisoned. Structures have no eyes so there's no sense to have LOS if they don't have the ability to see.

Maybe off Topic;

Any structure that operates should be manned like market, temple, smelter, Barracks, special buildings etc etc.

Stockpile and utility carts should be built to transport resources to the stockpile. How I wish there's weapon production... before units can be trained. darn a Stronghold like 0AD should be awesome. 

I know these can't be done but wishing to come across this mechanics.  

 

Edited April 11, 2017 by Servo

[DarcReaver]

A mechanic present is that siege can be captured. But the time to overtake them is simply too long. Fixing this should help.

[Lion.Kanzen]

35 minutes ago, DarcReaver said:

A mechanic present is that siege can be captured. But the time to overtake them is simply too long. Fixing this should help.

What alpha are you playing? We are talking about ram.

[sanderd17]

17 hours ago, Servo said:

Ranged siege units should be manned and dock units too. 

A warship without ranged unit/units garrisoned shouldn't be able to fire in range. It should be capturable too like towers. Speaking of towers, outposts and forts structures like these shouldn't attack in range if no range unit is manning them and any range attack should correspond as to what type of range unit is inside. Not even having its LOS activated if not garrisoned. Structures have no eyes so there's no sense to have LOS if they don't have the ability to see.

Maybe off Topic;

Any structure that operates should be manned like market, temple, smelter, Barracks, special buildings etc etc.

The idea here is is that you automatically get the needed manning units when buying such a structure or mechanical unit. F.e. when you buy a fishing boat, it automatically gets equipped with one fisher, as otherwise it isn't useful.

The same with a fortress, when you construct one, it gets equipped with something that represents the minimum amount of personnel to man it.

This is to avoid unneeded micro managing, as realistically, fortresses that aren't manned at all should be immediately capturable, ships that aren't manned can't move or do anything else. How would you even man a ship that gets spawned in front of a dock?

This is a clear case where gameplay aspects need to get preference over realism. And it's a consistent deviation from reality throughout the game. So I don't see a problem at all.

[Palaxin]

1 hour ago, sanderd17 said:

The same with a fortress, when you construct one, it gets equipped with something that represents the minimum amount of personnel to man it.

This is to avoid unneeded micro managing, as realistically, fortresses that aren't manned at all should be immediately capturable, ships that aren't manned can't move or do anything else. How would you even man a ship that gets spawned in front of a dock?

This is a clear case where gameplay aspects need to get preference over realism. And it's a consistent deviation from reality throughout the game. So I don't see a problem at all.

One could argue that structures must include food costs then. I agree that minimizing micro is a valid point here, but I think 0 A.D. is missing some details that may or may not affect gameplay but create a UNIQUE ATMOSPHERE, e.g. something like children (Stronghold) and structures with animated workers (Settlers).

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Palaxin problem is the different scale between buildings and units.

[Servo]

I think Micromanagement is the most important aspect of a competitive RTS games. Whether the difficulty level increases or not you have to continuously do it until finish. So easing it in a tight competition shouldn't be an option if you want to win the game or not to lose badly.  

Towers and forts are fixed structures that doesn't ease or affect micromanagement much. These are strategic buildings in the game that you have to place for garrisoning purposes mainly to augment your strategy. 

The mechanics that makes this structures usable when not manned contradicts with the Gaia system too as well as wall/turret building. Both of these mechanics are one of the best features of the game, this is really nice. The turrets won't fire unless garrisoned. A captured building outside of a CC turns into Gaia when not garrisoned. 

 

[Servo]

IMO manned moving sieges adds more depth to the game as well as encourage a disciplined sieging if the game is still undecided in the middle stages. 

[Servo]

If it's not hard to make a mechanics in which you assign a couple of units to build a warship then automatically garrison it with the same builders then it's ok. Then once it comes out of the dock you can ungarrison it by moving it to shoreline. Since you allocate I guess 2 units for the warship to be trained then it should take 2 foot units to operate the ship. These two units should automatically garrison the ship when its built. I think these are some small things that make a game deeper.