Although we see a decent amount of siege during the games there are some types we rarely see:
Mangonel line: No one uses their upgrades versions in imperial age. I think a civ having SO is meaningless unless you play Black forest. Although damage and range wise they are decent, the problem is their low speed and HP. You really need to use a lot of your focus to keep these alive, even if you are a pro player.
Scorpion line: Even worse than the former. Even worse HP/Speed issues and while it counters archers and CA, they die in just a few arrows.
Ram line: The only I see here is the castle age ram that is a bit underpowered. Could be slightly buffed so we can deal better against castle drops
Trebuchet/Bombard Cannon: I think these 2 are in a fine spot. I personally think that Bombard is a bit too squishy for their price though but I’m still fine with it personally.
onager is a very nice upgrade.
Siege onager is a bit expensive for many 1v1s considering how weak they still are when the opponent has castles.
And they see a lot of play, especially against archer civs.
Only at the highest level archer players can reliably outmanouver mangonels/onagers.
Think this is an issue for the balance cause it lets look archers way stronger on pro games than they are really on the ladder.
I personally think that mangos/onagers should have a bigger aoe so you can’t completely dodge the shots anymore reliably. To set this off they could deal less damage.
I think the biggest issue for scorpions is indeed how hard they are countered by the onagers. I’m not sure, but I think scorpions are even slower than onagers so they can’t even run away from them.
The new ele rams actually show what a small difference in the ########### against vills can make in the game. But for me still the main critique point of the current ram designs is the ranged counters in various unique unist but also the mangonels. Rams should tank all kind of projectiles, that’s what they are designed for. Forcing the opponent to bring out some melee units and not just try grief the game with ranged units behind walls forever.
In general it’s at lower level of play that a lot of players actually don’t make as much siege as they should. Not because Siege would be bad.
Personally I’d like to see a buff to Heavy Scorpion, maybe it could get +1 range like Onagers do. They’d still get countered by Onagers, but I don’t think that’d make them OP or anything.
I think Onagers and Rams are fine. Siege Ram is affordable and effective, whereas Siege Onager is not required in 1v1 play, but very powerful in teamgames. They don’t need really need buffs. Battering Rams are meant to be relatively weak, since otherwise they’d be too effective against Archer civs in Castle Age. Gurjara Armored Elephants already show how obnoxious a potent Siege unit in Castle Age can be.
Maybe also make Rams able to tank projectiles from infantry and cavalry, meaning they can also suffer Mamelukes, Throwing Axemen, Gbetos and Chakrams. Just maybe.
Scorpions might be able to cancel the minimum range, but their great power comes from numbers anyway, so they’re good.
Mangonels are good. Maybe give them the ability to destroy forests as soon as they hit the Imperial Age, without needing to upgrade, so that every civilization can get this ability. Just maybe.
Siege Towers can be a little cheaper. For some civs this can be a good strategy on maps like Arena.
I think the problem with the mangonel line is not the unit itself. Usually you need protect it with pikes but cavalry is too slippery. I really don’t know how collision boxes work, but I think a single knight shouldn’t move so freely between a group of pikes.
Maybe pikes should have bigger collision boxes?
What about gain the ability by researching Chemistry? Even have more sense than Onager upgrade which not all civs have it
Sieges main issue is the bad range. Range is same as archer line, but the units need an own castle age building, cost much more than archers are so slow and have such a bad defence. The only advantage is the damage and this is simply mitigated by some splits - beginning with elo 1100, barely one is unable to do this. In addition, the upgrades are so expensive, that they are rarely taken, especially considering the fact, that a single BBC or a tiny group of cheap hussars can shred an army of siege units. It has a reason, that siege is usually not used beyond the 1-2 mangels in CA.
What siege needs to be a constant part of the game:
Mangonel line: + 1 or even 2 range and reduction to upgrade cost.
Scorpion: same like mangonels and higher projectile speed.
Rams: more power for the basic battle ram, slight reduction of the gold cost and cheaper upgrades.
Siege tower: cost reduction and change in mechanic. It shoul ve possible to jump over doors and houses with the tower. Most “walls” in the game are housewalls and in arena, buildings are usuall, right behind the walls. Changing siegectowees as proposed, would give some interesting new tactics.
What is flawed isn’t the balance of onagers but the very assumption of this thread. You’re assuming that SO isn’t getting used because it’s too weak which is very untrue.
Onager and SO isn’t only seen in tg or bf. In fact it’s pretty common on any closed map in 1v1. It’s expensive yes but it’s one of the strongest unit for these maps.
Mobility is the reason for that but not the way you might think it is. If you have a bit of experience playing halb SO it’s actually not that difficult to protect your SO from cavalry or really whatever unit except for bbc.
The main reason you don’t see it on arabia is you’ll die to raiding. Halb SO is played as a push slowly grinding it’s way into your opponents base backed up by castles and trebs. But your eco will be vulnerable and you can’t pull your army back because it’s too slow.
It’s really powerful and it certainly doesn’t need a buff. Civs like chinese mayans huns and vikings are considered the worst closed maps civ just because they die to that unit super hard. So if you want to use that unit more often play less arabia. Certain units simply don’t work on certain map types.
I think siege lines are fine, if anything I would love to split siege engineer’s effects into 2 separated techs , one increases siege units’ range and the other increases damage vs building. Siege engineer at the moment is just too much in one package that sometimes I feel like civs without it are in huge disadvantage one way or the other.
one case I can think of is Byzantine, I feel like they should have had the +1 range so they can defend against other bombard cannon and treb, but they shouldn’t have the extra dmg vs building because they are defensive civ.
Imo just having higher speed so they can run away from mangos would already make them way more viable.
I don’t like ranged Siege countering Siege actually - in general.
We see with the discussion about the houfnice how this can ######## to “unfair” feeling matchups where simple unit comps can dominate whole complex unit rosters. Just cause of an actually quite small difference in stats of the siege both can field. If the houfnice wasn’t so good in countering their BBC or Treb counterparts of the opponents, there wouln’t be an issue with that unit at all.
Question should be raised if not Cavalry, especially heavy Cavalry should get a bonus damage against Siege, so it becomes more of an Option to dive and sacrifice the Cavalry in order to get rid of the Siege even if the Siege is “protected” by a lot of halbs.
I would prefer that over the current Siege vs Siege skirmishes we currently have in a lot of games. (Not that I completely reject Siege v Siege skirmishes. I think they are fun. But it looks currently to me the “diving” aspect with melee units is underrepresented.)
We see it quite nicely in the Magyar Huszar how this can work out.
If someone’s interested I made a topic for a Siege Rework a few years ago. I potentially would make stuff a bit different right now, but I think the general Ideas I proposed back then can still be applied to a Siege rework.
Especially the Mangonels bigger blast radius in exchange for damage output (possibly even bonus against archers) look to me more actual than ever with all this archer evading mangonel stuff we currently have.
Is it really true in recent closed map meta? Onager and SO still be too expensive for these map and destroyed easily by BBC and all strong civs in Arena have BBC (and mostly strong bonus on top of that) such as Bohemians, Turks, Burgundians or Poles.
It is not really surprising that Celts are out of meta in closed map except 4v4 Black Forest these days. I think slight buff like upgrade cost reduction or adding base melee armor for Onager/SO. Also some civs should lose BBC that I don’t get why every new civ having BBC like default. Especially Poles need to lose BBC. They are too much versatile in late game for their strong eco.
Good idea, but current heavy scorpion cost is unreasonably expensive. Need to cost reduction it first.
I also think about it. Maybe some civ can get weaker version of Mongols drill but BBC should not be affected by that.
Seige is too easily sniped by low damage melee unit (hussar or pike line) which is more of a problem that general HP. I would make Teutons’ Ironclad as generic tech (for some civ)
It only nerf these unit in dealing with ram. Maybe capped ram should be available in castle age for more civs. Base Ram is too weak to push in castle age.
Not really, Even Khmer heavy scorpion isn’t worth it. Especially heavy scorpion upgrade cost is forbiddingly expense and still be 7 range which is outranged by arbalest.
Even 3 buffs are give simultaneously (reduce upgrade cost, more range, more speed). I would say they shouldn’t be OP. Investing Expensive Gold unit which give up mobility and countered by ALL other siege doesn’t make much sense.
Then people will ignore onager upgrade even in closed map. Also it will buff Turks more in BF which is not needed. Slight reduction in Onager upgrade cost make more sense.
Yeah as these 4 civs plus probably portuguese are the current arena top 5 (and next in line probably malay britons against which you also don’t wanna play SO) halb onager is somewhat out of meta currently which is why in tourneys you don’t see them as often. However in ranked or even non standard tourneys like CL league you do them quite frequently because against a lot of civs SO are great (sometimes even if they have bbc).
People usually think of celts here but actually there are way better civs to play SO with like teutons slavs or even saracens azects. Mainly because these civs have monks to convert bbc. Celts have to play SO and siege ram vs a lot of civs which totally can work but takes even more time to get going.
The Tower is one of those units that shines from time to time while not stealing the show from what it is carrying. When it catches a player unprepared, it proves itself quite the monster. It is an extra tool in the box.
The Siege Tower is good for the wrong reason.
It’s good because it’s an “APC” (Armoured Personnel Carrier). The Mongole is the fastest unit in game when fully loaded. Even for normal civilisations it can outrun all Infantry (But Eagle Warriors) and Archers.
Perfect for moving around units with high damage but low pierce armour like Gbetos.
If the Siege Tower was good at what it’s intended to do it would be a viable alternative to a Ram in many situations.
Siege Tower and Ram should be available in Feudal Age, stats being rebalanced.
Siege Towers should not cost any Gold but only have half the speed bonus from garrisoned units.
Add an upgrade to the Siege Tower in Castle or Imperial.
Add a technology that let’s garrisoned archers and villagers shoot arrows from a Siege Tower with low range similar to a TC.
I also agree that the cost of Siege Towers should be lowered by a bit and its dropping mechanism should be improved.
In my opinion, the tower’s cost should be close to the rams.
For dropping units (not over a wall), I expect them to be dropped where I clicked the on the screen and not randomly around the tower.