How would you feel about siege weapons that launch projectiles having some sort of AoE damage and/or minor scattering effect? Something like you can often see in other strategy games like the Total War series were catapult-like weapons can be devastating against units.
It always bothered me a bit with the catapults but now that we also have Quinametzin it just feels so wrong when these guys are throwing boulders at masses of units to practically no effect. This of course would mean some stats/cost readjustment, but purely vibe-based I’d love to have something like that! We already have the Japanese siege crossbow that damages multiple units, so it’d just be applying the same logic to other such units.
Its a gameplay choice- usually siege are bad vs general units so aoe will add nothing. The japanese siege is stated to be good vs units and less so against buildings compared to other siege and thats their unique point.
Can there be more anti units siege? Absolutely! But not every siege for every civ- It’s a civ design choice.
I don’t really see why projectile siege should not be good against normal units. Siege would still not be cost-effective vs them as it’s slow and vulnerable, but if a catapult or a giant lands a boulder in a unit cluster, I’d love there to be actual damage done and the formation being disrupted.
The only reason the Japanese crossbow is good against units is really its “transfixion” ability and gameplay mechanics like no minimal range not its stats. Stats-wise it’s very comparable to the Greek catapult for example. So I’d just love to see similar treatment with other projectile siege weapons.
AoE scales very well, so it makes units good vs human units. Take japanese priest for example. Also not all siege units deal the same damage profile, some would become really good vs human units.
Theres also the dynamic of them becoming able to snipe villagers. Thou to be fair this is something that already happens with china axecart.
Any change its doable, i would Personally not change the siege dynamic, mostly because i care more about gameplay than realism. But its prob very doable if they tinker for each specific one.
The giants specially seem would be troublesome if they had that troll like effect you describe.
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aom dropped the siege obliterate units of aoe2 in favor of myth units. that’s why many of the myth units have devastating aoe specials/attacks so they can disintegrate blobs of humans. Why waste favor on a myth unit if siege deletes a blob of archers?
Siege here like Greek or Egyptian catapults etc are more of a trebuchet- extremely long range anti buildings that don’t do well vs units at all. the Japanese one have only 24 base max range for a reason, same with the Norse low crush damage on ballista- useful vs units = worse vs buildings.
not saying we shouldn’t get more different siege, but just like aoe2- some can be a scorpion, some onager, and some trebuchet (and in between)
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I don’t find this line of reasoning compelling at all. Concretely, it only concerns 3 units: petrobolos, catapult and the Quinametzin, which is a myth unit by the way. Again, siege is slow and vulnerable, a myth unit will serve you much better at killing human units. If they got something akin to the troll special scattering effect the downsides wouldn’t suddenly disappear. Would you honestly take a catapult over an avenger if your goal was to decimate as many archers as possible? Even the siege which is more anti-unit already like the ballista and Japanese crossbow, isn’t meta even though in some scenarios they can be potent. I don’t see why it should be any different for the 3 aforementioned ones.
The trebuchet example is far off, we have nothing resembling it in the game. Trebuchet is far bigger, far slower and far stronger than any traditional catapult, which, on the other hand, were absolutely used against enemy troops on the battlefield.
I guess I’m thinking of siege unit types. Like boulder throwing gives you the scattering effect, straight shooting bolts give you the piercing effect, etc. I know it will not happen, but I think it would be a cool flavour thing, would open up some strategic possibilities, and I don’t think it would fundamentally change how the game is played.