battering ram garrisoning

[andy5995]

What are the specific advantages of garrisoning units into battering rams? Which are the best units to garrison?

[Boudica]

Garrisoned rams can be good for a sneak attack. Two unprotected rams are quite easy to destroy, so it can make the enemy send just a few units against them, which can turn out not to be enough when you ungarrison. If you expect the enemy to defend with women or infantry spearmen, skirmishers might be the best units to put inside. If the enemy has lancers or sword horses near, I'd go with spearmen instead. The trick is to ungarrison the rams at the very last moment because your units can block the way to the rams and, if you are lucky, the enemy units will try to go around them while getting killed.

Slightly different use would be in bigger attacks where it can help you hide how big your attack is. Ranged units tend to be quite vulnerable to tower / fortress arrows, so it's perhaps favorable to keep them protected inside rams until you need them to fight. Just beware, from my experience, it's quite easy to forget about the units you put inside rams. Happy ramming. :-)

[elexis]

Not only to hide units from the enemy, but the main advantage is that the units aren't killed by the arrows of the defender while approaching the fortification. Garrisoned units also increase the capture regeneration rate of any capturable unit or structure (not relevant for rams as they arent capturable currently).

[andy5995]

Very thorough answers, thank you.

>Two unprotected rams are quite easy to destroy

And is there a way to visually see the amount of "armor" that's added when units are garrisoned inside rams or other structures?

[elexis]

Armor only relates to attack types. Garrisoning entities influences the capturing regeneration rate. That number is not displayed anywhere currently. The effective capture rate is also proportional to the building / unit health as well. Since rams can't be captured, it's irrelevant for rams. But for siege towers and buildings it's relevant. A CC or Fort can be captured with like 30 units faily quickly. You can see in the tooltip of the building whether it only shoots 3 arrows and thus is easy to capture. If the building has 100% health and is garrisoned, no chance without siege engines reducing the HP to < 25%. I guess there a capturing tutorial might be useful to teach these aspects.