First of all, I think it’s worth mentioning that resources is not something that will run out in a while as this is a custom map that I have made with plenty of resources to go by. And I am playing as Byzantines. I have been trying all kinds of units, but they get crushed instantly even when outnumbering the enemies. Anything from Cataphracts, Halbs, Skirms, Camels, Onagers, Bombard Cannons and Monks doesn’t do much before they all just die. Anyone got any ideas for the next time I might be up against this annoying deathball?
Mass up 15 Siege Rams and garrison your Halberdiers to your Rams.
Elephant Archers and War Wagons do pierce damage, so they can’t deal with Siege Rams. You should ungarrison the Halbs when you reach the Elephants and the Wagons.
2 Likes
Bombard Towers may help stopping them and push with siege ram will do the job i agree
Mostly siege Onager + meatshield of hussar/camels/paladins and some rams.
Bombard cannons are too easily sniped by war wagons and scorpions deal too little damage against ww and wa high pierce armor,but scorpions might still work if massed up.
I wouldn’t bother with halbs as they just die too fast if the enemy has a big enough deathball.
also skirms aren’t that great too since ww and EA have high pierce armor. So skirms and halbs are good trash answers but not when gold cost is negletable.
I am ashamed I didn’t think about that myself. 
Yeah, I realized that too, but I just tried it for a bit. I guess onagers is one of the best answers in that situation. The indian player also used a lot of camels, which my camels could keep busy and take care of while I reduce their war wagon/elephant archer combo.
Yeah, true. I did place some bombard towers, but enemy bombard cannons, onagers and rams took them down as the enemy sent a few of those too. Might have worked if I just kept at it with them.
1 Like
How to defeat a tag-team army of Elephant Archers and War Wagons
I dont know. Maybe by having a resource equivalent of literally any unit except Arbalest?
And what unit would you say then?
A no-skill, brainless unit tube with whatever two units I want?
Because both of those units are Cavalry, so Genoese + War Elephants.
First of all, the brainless unit tube was something I tried.
Secondly, I said I was Byzantines, so neither Genoese Crossbows or War Elephants were available to me.
Whenever the question is elephants, the answer is always Onagers.
You’ll need a very large amount of them, but Massed Onager kills just about anything. Since both of those units are ranged, you should have no problem if you have enough. But there are a few caveats.
First, you’ve picked a very poor civ to deal with a deathball like that. Cataphracts have low pierce and as such both of those units readily handle the Cataphract. Paladin would fair better, but I wouldn’t really recommend either option as you lack Blast Furnace. Second, while I’d say Onager is still the best offensive option, Byzantines lack Siege engineers, which is a massive problem. It’s going to make the Onager perform much worse than it should in such a scenario. Ditto for the BBC. If you really want to win that fight with military, you have no choice but to utilize your Siege rams to soak arrow fire. With rams in front, Halbs or Onagers would survive long enough to do real damage to the mass.
As an alternative.
You can turtle up and defend your side. Byzantines have Bombard Towers, which are generally overkill but are extremely potent against units with high HP since they can generally kill anything that isn’t a ram in one or two hits. All you need to provide for their defense is Trebuchets to counter-treb any of your opponent’s Trebuchets and Hussars/Halbs/Onagers to kill any rams they make.
If your opponent needs to push through the choke, like in a case where the map is closed off, BBT’s are the go-to for securing the position and providing a safe location from where to push. Especially for the Byzantines, who lack what we call “an effective, reasonable lategame offensive force”
Lots of siege and pike
It was random civ, so fate was the one that messed that up for me. But yeah, I should have gone bombard towers more and tried building my way forward with bombard towers.