Battering Ram Overpowered

[ocnuybear]

The battering ram came into my camp just taking out fully upgraded defense towers left and right in less then a minute and I had plenty of men attacking it, but is does not make sense that a wooden structure can take out a stone structure while being attack by 10 plus men so quickly?

Edited May 26, 2018 by ocnuybear

[Sundiata]

Swordsmen and elephants take out rams quite efficiently. In an emergency, even women can be used with some degree of success.

I agree that its a little ridiculous though, the speed at which unprotected rams take out structures even when a considerable army is attacking them. I understand that archers should have a hard time with them, but its currently not possible/realistic to take out rams with ranged units at all... At least make spearman more capable of dealing with them? Obviously spearmen should be a lot better at taking out a ram (by killing the operaters) than swordsmen, who wouldn't necessarily have the reach.. 

The current system isn't intuitive, especially not for new players...

[Imarok]

17 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Swordsmen and elephants take out rams quite efficiently. In an emergency, even women can be used with some degree of success.

I agree that its a little ridiculous though, the speed at which unprotected rams take out structures even when a considerable army is attacking them. I understand that archers should have a hard time with them, but its currently not possible/realistic to take out rams with ranged units at all... At least make spearman more capable of dealing with them? Obviously spearmen should be a lot better at taking out a ram (by killing the operaters) than swordsmen, who wouldn't necessarily have the reach.. 

The current system isn't intuitive, especially not for new players...

Ahm, slingers are also ok at taking down rams.

[coworotel]

I have seen guys invading just with an "army of rams", like 6 rams, and the opponent with something around 60 men cannot contain them... In age of empires it was quite easy to destroy a ram with cavalry or swordsmen.

Edited May 27, 2018 by coworotel

[coworotel]

On the other hand, one of these days a guy blocked my rams just crowding his archers in front of the fortress. In that case that trample damage feature would be nice.

[RolandSC2]

On 5/26/2018 at 12:50 PM, Sundiata said:

At least make spearman more capable of dealing with them? Obviously spearmen should be a lot better at taking out a ram (by killing the operaters) than swordsmen, who wouldn't necessarily have the reach.. 

This makes sense to me, without knowing the particular physics of hacking apart a ram with a sword versus stabbing underneath with a spear. What are the arguments for the spearman/pikeman matchup against siege rams in its current state? 

[av93]

1 hour ago, RolandSC2 said:

What are the arguments for the spearman/pikeman matchup against siege rams in its current state? 

I think that more than a conscious decision, it's the result of the attack and armour types design. Spearmen and swordsmen share the same stats except movement velocity and attack: swordsmen have 5.5 hack damage, but spearmen have 3.5 hack + 2.5 pierce damage.

The fact that, to protect from ranged units that make only pierce damage (except slingers, that have 1 crush damage), rams have a level 50 of pierce armour, that negates the 99% of pierce damage, evading the fire from missile infantry, but also the damage of spears. Pikemen have 1 of hack damage, and 3 of pierce.

That, coupled with the the ability to target units (because pathfinding, I can understand it), makes rams too much powerful for my taste. They are not invulnerable, btw.

I suggest:

- For rams: give spearman and pikemen a bonus against rams (no need of displaying this info in the description, because that could lead the players to think that this units have an anti-ram purpouse), slightly lower than the swords, so swordmen still being better than the other melee classes.

-For siege towers: as Sundiata said, siege towers shouldn't be able to be captured, of the stance of the units against them should be first destroy, not capture. Their role shouldn't be mobile tanks in the open fields, but a siege engine: would be cool that they would be able to target with the ranged attack of the missile infantry, only the garrisoned infantry in the walls.  

Edited May 29, 2018 by av93

[aeonios]

2 hours ago, av93 said:

-For siege towers: as Sundiata said, siege towers shouldn't be able to be captured, of the stance of the units against them should be first destroy, not capture. Their role shouldn't be mobile tanks in the open fields, but a siege engine: would be cool that they would be able to target with the ranged attack of the missile infantry, only the garrisoned infantry in the walls.  

IMO that should be true for all siege weapons. Capturing them takes twice as long or more than just killing them. For siege towers it's even worse since in order to be useful they have to be garrisoned, and if they're garrisoned then they're uncapturable.

I think a better idea for siege towers is to give them the ability to capture buildings. They should have a low base capture rate, but gain a large bonus per garrisoned unit, like 2 or 3 times the usual capture power of the average unit. That'd be cooler, a lot more historically accurate, and would make them actually useful as siege weapons, which they supposedly are but currently they're more or less useless against buildings since they barely do any crush damage.

[Stan`]

I propose they are only able to capture walls and/or fortresses.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I tried to make siege towers able to capture buildings, but it didn't work for some reason. Maybe it's time to revisit it.

[fatherbushido]

That was done then slightly broken.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22406-capture-buildings-using-siege-tower/&tab=comments#comment-331698

[Imarok]

On 5/30/2018 at 7:46 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I tried to make siege towers able to capture buildings, but it didn't work for some reason. Maybe it's time to revisit it.

You need to remove buildingAI for that.

[MERTZEN]

Concerning the siege rams,

> they should maybe be slowered, it make no sense that a siege ram is faster than a piekman

> towers and fortress should be able to drop rocks in order to crush them

> it make no sense neither that siege rams can beat units, as elephants for example:

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 6/5/2018 at 6:30 AM, Imarok said:

You need to remove buildingAI for that.

Bummer, then it won't shoot arrows at nearby enemies. :/ 

[Stan`]

7 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Bummer, then it won't shoot arrows at nearby enemies. :/ 

There is patch for it on Phab I think (Capturing)

[Lion.Kanzen]

9 minutes ago, Stan` said:

There is patch for it on Phab I think (Capturing)

All captures modes: Conversion? We need that.

[Stan`]

12 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

All captures modes: Conversion? We need that.

Unfortunately no. That's a patch by @Freagarach https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1819

[Lion.Kanzen]

7 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Unfortunately no. That's a patch by @Freagarach https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1819

The patch Is an early stage?.

[fatherbushido]

(Not about ram so a bit offtopic.

It "worked" between r16907 and r17784. It didn't "work" and it was removed from templates in r18766.

A proper solution needs to change/fix many things before.)

[Joseph87]

This is basically why I always play with the Iberian faction, because of their flaming horse javelinist. A team of 20 takes out fortresses (very costly to capture especially when fully garrisoned), battle rams and catapults like a charm. Basically everything else can be handled by garrisoning troops in strategically placed civic centres and fortresses.

Two teams of 20 horse javelinist (flaming tip enabled) taking turn one whittling down enemy units and structures while the other heals in a temple. The temple itself cross-fired by a civic centre and fortress allowing a full garrison of 40 other units providing cover fire. The flame javelinists can come out to take down battering rams and catapults should they threaten the buildings.

Those three fully garrisoned buildings are hard to siege and takes a long time to destroy without siege weaponery.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

We should have 2 kinds of ram.