Fun with Siege Towers

[Grugnas]

Summary:

In this game I wasn't a nice team mate because I focused into having a rock solid economy in order to rush for siege towers. Matter of fact, while one of my allies was suffering from a coordinated cavalry rush, the only type of help I could give was tributing the extra wood and food stockpiled because of slingers low wood cost and a reached full population (my ally was brave enough to hold on and continue to play). Till siege towers played a role in this.

Researching siege technologies in order to get discount on trained sieges slowed me down but Fight of Will greatly improve siege towers.

It is always interesting to watch siege towers randomly shooting at everything and see their potential. Actually they have crush damage which barely destroys defense towers and houses, although 10 Siege Towers can really be hard to destroy with no rams or perhaps skiritai.

Even more interesting is that many people just train 1 unit, the one the retain OP or at least the best that their civ could get, thus they lament to not being able to destroy Siege Towers with skirmisher or archer cavalry. Arrows's Pierce damage doesn't destroy wooden or stone buildings / sieges.

Despite Siege Towers are amazing, they aren't a valid "tool" to go for against cavalry rushers because they won't perform really good if not massed. 10 siege towers still require 100 units to work.

Enjoy the replay.

2017-09-10_0009.zip

Edited September 11, 2017 by Grugnas

[tuk0z]

Thx for sharing Grugnas. I like this replay [1] for

• how you build your nuke force (e.g. women/pikes to gather, slingers+Kleopatra+towerS along with your build/tech order
• Decger's powerful BO, flanking expansions + units & upgrades choice.
• As well as P_Ness fighting spirit & team play

Now I especially like

• the noobs (leoo, d_stan & rikabzh) resilience, that bought their allies (mostly you and CHAKIB) such a valuable time.
• rikabzh's wall (and CHAKIB's 1st fortress) placement vs operational process he he

EDIT: and that 40 skirmisher cavs while devastating, are _not_ enough to destroy a noob (aka a player who does not def) who receives no help until after 12' in the game.

[1] the Anavultus commented it on YT

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by tuk0z
+ what I learnt in this game about Cav OP ;)

[Grugnas]

the yellow made a nice resistance and didn't resign even in hard times, and that was great.

My army was composed mostly by slingers because they don't require metal, stone is easy to gather and because they are effective against building.

Another nice strategy with ptolemies would have been to expand with military colonies and train many rank 2 skrmish cavalry which perhaps would be effective even against camel archers.

Sieges Towers are fun but perhaps too powerful against buildings ( matter of fact a % of their attack is crush damage ) and really easy to destroy of the damage they do against units. On the other hand they require many soldiers to work ( on a 150 max pop game, you can garrison max 11 siege towers). If orange would have trained a couple of rams, he could destroy all my towers ( this is also the reason why i used slingers. they are quite effective against sieges too ).

One of the most common mistakes is to not retreat cavalry and heal them by garrisoning a temple or a civic center in order to get full health higher rank cavalry for future raids, and never get phase 3 because too busy raiding.