I’ve yet to see a good use for scorpions. I’ve seen people TRY to use them, but to poor effect; almost every single place a scorpion could be used, a mangonel could be used better with proper unit control. Even Roman scorpions are fairly balanced, and that’s with all their crazy bonuses.
This got me to reading their history. They were not an AOE siege weapon at all; they were basically the sniper rifle of ancient times, killing enemies at great range. I think this would be a more viable use for them, for example by being a siege counter to monks in the castle age.
To achieve this, what if scorpions had their damage increased by 50%, but their pass-through damage was reduced to 33%? This means if they hit their target, they deal 18 damage in castle age, or 24 in imperial. All other units take the same damage they currently do. This means they can kill monks in 2 shots rather than three. It also makes them much more effective against individual high-armor units, like mangonels, making that matchup much more balanced by killing them in 5 shots, rather than 8.
A mangonel will still oneshot them though, so it’s not completely broken.
To account for this, some civs might need to have their bonuses tuned down a bit. Romans in particular.
I think this should create much more of a niche for scorpions and make them more fun to use.
I mean, AoE itself isn’t a history simulator. It’s anything but historically accurate that the Onager is the upgrade to the Mangonel whereas in real life, the Onager was first used by the Romans.
Imo while niche, the scorpion actually works quite well as an infantry counter for units in line formation.
Scorpion was useful against infantry formation in ancient history. So pass-thru dmg isn’t really inaccurate. Mass scorpions can be more terrifying than mass onagers. But scorpion can get flatten easily before you can mass them. I think it can be a new siege unit as a sniper to replace siege towers.
To be fair, SIEGE weapons were only used in SIEGES, hence the name. It’s not until cannons were invented that field artillery was used. This game’s siege units are not historically accurate at all lol
Using other games as reference, such as Chivalry 2, i would have thought that scorpions were placed strategically in defensive points in front of castles or on top of castle walls. Kind of like sentry guns in modern warfare.
I wonder how could scorpion work with these changes:
-Reduce pass-through damage (50% > 20%) (I’d remove it, but it is iconic, I get it)
-Range reduced (7 > 6)
-Is affected by BS archers attack upgrades (both, attack and range)
-Remove bonus vs buildings
-Add bonus damage vs cavalry (6 attack)
-Affected by Ballistics (give Romans something else, like free ballistics but remove crossbows).
-Maybe, a cost increased. 75W 75G > 100W 100G
I’d be curious to see what would happen. It might improve the game, if it’s bad to give scorps more single-target damage, the change could be reverted.
I would caution that the effect against high-PA targets is much greater than you seem to anticipate. For example the scorp-mangonel matchup would be less one-sided. Not necessarily a bad thing.
I thought so too, but in my testing, even if you just let mangonels fire blindly, you still almost always ended up with superior results by using mangonels.
If you lack enough range to take them down, they can be pretty overwhelming, yeah. Fortunately, this change wouldn’t really have any impact on mass scorpions, since they can already oneshot just about anything they’re targeting after you’ve got more than a handful on the field. Where this would really help is in smaller numbers.
During the Roman Republic and early empire, it was standard for one legion to have 60 scorpio or one for each century. Scorpions essentially had two functions: their precision was able to hit any enemy up to 100 meters away. During the siege of ######## ## the Gallic War, Julius Caesar describes the lethal effectiveness of these scorpio machines.
Nice thought, but a bit too much change too fast, I think. I just want to expand their utility without changing their current playability.
You might want to checkout what a sniper is in war.
The role of a sniper is to locate, observe and destroy key enemy personnel and equipment with indirect and direct precision fire '. A sniper’s strength is their concealment and accuracy, but the price of this precision is time
Having long range and accuracy is not what a sniper is.
I think you’re focusing a bit too much on the modern definition, lol. If you really wanna get technical, historically, the term ‘sniper’ originated from ‘snipe hunter’, which was to shoot with such precision, you could shoot a snipe, or a small bird, while in flight. IE, skill and precision. Anyway, kind of a sidetrack.
The point being, Scorpions would be more useful in your average game if they had a role as a high single-target damage siege weapon to better differentiate them from Mangonels.
a much simpler way to get scorp to mass up and be more useful is to just give it hp regeneration for self repair
that way u dont have to take off a vill for it and if archer groups dont kill it, it’ll just come back with full hp eventually and eventually mass up, while still being weak to cavalry
if thats not enough then give it 5 more hp should be good enough
I don’t like it. Sounds too random.
I would like to make emphasis in defensive aspect of scorpions. What if scorps can be garrisoned in towers and castles and this change arrows for bolts (with more attack and pass-through damage)
im not too fond of siege garrison into buildings other than only siege workshop otherwise seems off. like towers isnt really designed for antyhing other than people to be in it if u kno what i mean
but yes scorp hp regen does seem random, just in terms of balance it actually solves few issue which is nice and not overly op or broken
Why not give Scorpions more range (from 7 to 9 for scorpion, from 7 to 11 for heavy) and slightly increase their speed (from 0.65 to 0.7)? Of course, their attack rate can be decreased if the range increase is too much.
The biggest issue with Scorpions is that they get flattened by Mangonels. If a group of them can feasibly (slowly) hit and run Mangonels (with speed of 6), then Scorpions could be a good “first-strike” weapon. Notice also that Bombard Cannon does not have the same problem, since they significantly out-range Mangonels.
This way, Scorpions become the more reliable siege support, while Magonels become the high-risk high-reward siege support.
Giving them more attack would make them more fair vs mangonels. Right now it takes 8 hits for a scorpion to kill a mangonel, vs 1 for a mangonel to kill a scorpion. However, scorpions fire every 3.6 seconds vs every 6 seconds.
If they could kill a mangonel in 5 shots instead, then three scorpions in spread formation could fire once, then one dies, and the other two fire again before the mangonel can fire, and the mangonel dies before it can fire again. Getting three scorpions firing at once is much more realistic than getting 4-5. The mangonel could still win, but it would need to hit two scorpions at once, which makes it more challenging.
with the last +5 hp buff iirc it takes 2 shots from mangonel instead of 1
but after taking 1 shot leaves it very little hp and 2-3 shots from skirm can kill it very easily hence the hp regeneration slowly over time. and if it wasnt enough then just +5 more hp would be good
That’s Heavy Scorpion vs normal mangonel. Honestly, I’m not 100% sure what the point of the buff was, since most civs that get heavy scorpion will be going up against either bombard cannons or onagers.