Haha!

This place needs more people like you.

Quote:

It's confusing. Splash damage is pretty weird.

I agree, I cracked up through that whole post, very well said.

I HATE BALLISTAS!! for some reason they own my catapults!

Yeah, I love ballistas

I played a game vs. Isis once. As the game progressed into mythic (yeah, I survived that long AND won) I got a few ballistas behind my ranks... Now, I used them to fire on his army (I had my FB next to his main base) and then drew his troops into my hillfort fire to fight. He had no choice but to fight

He could move his troops farther back, but then I could destroy his towers, houses and TC. It also opens up his farmers to raiding

He could keep them from attacking, but then they would slowly get crippled and die

Personally, I think Norse are at their strongest in mythic

^^unless you had bragi fu ulfs the isis should have creamed with elle spamming .

hippocrack, you well described the purpose and uses of the ballista. However, in the long run it is not the only unit with the greatest range, because both petrobolos and catapults get the same range through the engineers improvement, while the ballista does not gain a higher range from that upgrade.

Correct is that you can lure his troops to you, however, he can counter by having his upgraded petrobolos or catapults advance and shoot at your fb from safe range. These two units do way more damage to buildings than your ballistae and will therefore tear down your structures much faster. If you want to prevent that from happening, you have to attack the petrobolos/catapults. As soon as your troops advance, he will have his troops advance also, so that they protect the catapults as you get there. That location is close to his buildings, so you end up fighting within his defensive building fire (but have some ballista support in return).

Ballista support is not always easy to manage, because by default ballistae will always target buildings, not matter how unimportant those may be (lumber camps...), and you manually have to order them to fire at the enemy mobile units. Once the targeted unit dies, the ballista will again turn to the lumber camp in mid-battle...

Against petrobolos ballistae will not be very effective, because petrobolos have both good pierce and crush armor. In the long run they would work, but not before the petrobolos have torn down your hill fort.

What I am saying is that ballistae are indeed good, but they are not the joker you make them appear to be.

Mr. DeathandPain - nice scary sounding name BTW, i've seen you happyily rip on other people's threads in this forum(and I've only been a here a few days), but we will have none of that here.

From your post it sounds like you are defending the siege everyone else uses and poopooing the ballista. Your forgetting a couple of big things here that I posted. The Ballista is the Norse's most very favortie toy and Relevance.

I'll just address some of the things you brought up like this. because I haven't figured out to quote properly, sorry folks

" while the ballista does not gain a higher range from that upgrade."

So your saying that that the balllista can't get a higher range because they already have it. Good point here. Really highlights your argument nicely.

Getting on with it, in summary you seem to be saying that the other siege is better. I don't think so. Ballista are cheaper, they train the quickest, and they beat the Petroblus and the Catapult fighting heads up(but they miss each each other alot and who would want to do this anyway?)

you say "you have to attack the petrobolos/catapults. As soon as your troops advance, he will have his troops advance also... blah blah"

Your missing the point entirely Mr. DeathandPain. The whole jist of the thread is using the Ballista as an army destroyer. The Ballista and Catapult aren't anywhere in that class. They don't wreak havoc on armies, Ballista's do. In otherwords if the Ballista train quicker, are cheaper and can beat them heads up - then why would you want a straight up fight between said siege Mr. DeathandPain? Thats what your reason is for having a Norse Army come to your base. I don't think so, IF your siege is out front, and your army doesn't want to come play then my siege beats your siege. And if your army is out front, then see [the point of the intial thread]

you said
"Against petrobolos ballistae will not be very effective, because petrobolos have both good pierce and crush armor. In the long run they would work, but not before the petrobolos have torn down your hill fort."

Thats a paradox man, you just argued against yourself, you started saying that the ballista is not very effective against the petrobolus, but the ballista wins, so... er, the petrobolus will kill your hillfort.
Thats like saying "my troll can beat up your troll"...[watches his troll get beat] "wait your troll is better, er, uh" stammers, "my troll wasn't trying to beat you up, I was going for that other building over there!"

Hey even with the flaming arrow upgrade (150 percent damage increase to buildings on top of ~50 pierce and 20 crush) I will concede that the catapult/petrobolos does more dmage to buildings. I think thats the point you were trying to make because thats the only possible point you could have made. But once again, it doesn't really have any relavance.

You also say "and you manually have to order them to fire at the enemy mobile units." Yeah, -- thats called micromanaging, if you can't handle microing a handful of ballista's doing 200-300 plus pierce splash damage(~50+ each) then maybe you should go home to your little troll waiting for you in bed because she won't miss you poking her with your little proud point, since you couldn't make it here. Now you can admit that the ballista is better Mr. DeathanPain?

stop trying to be cool in this thing up in here and stop fighting with eachother game freaks. your pissin me ooff

Then go away, GangStar.

makes sense

I thought fighting with eachother in threads wasn't allowed... So I think GangStar has a point. However this is constructive Fighting.

I'm not sure anyone is trying to be cool or fighting. I think it is a good debate. A debate like most where one side is not completely right or wrong. Communication is the message received, Gangstar, so if you mean by trying to be cool as saying something a little more witty then "game freaks. your pissin me ooff" then that is your opinion.

1) I made a guide to the Ballista and provided an arguemnt backed up with facts on why I think it is a) overlooked, underused and effective; and threw a couple lines of humor to lighten it up.

2) Mr. DeathandPain made his counter arguement to ---> 1)

3) I stuck to the topic and countered back by defending the Ballista, by providing more facts for my arguement, by discrediting some of his claims and also commented on how he flames other people's threads. I think other people can attest to his habit of doing this to other people's threads "just because he can" I guess you its hard to expect constructive criticism from a guy named DeathandPain :/
Overall, I thought he gave a fine(albeit limited) counter argument.

Anyways, I hope OTHER people find it useful or can comment on how effectively they have used the Ballista or how they might start to use the Ballista more to improve their odds when they are having to deal with Myrmidons and Fanatics with their weak infantry counter(throwing spongemen as some call them). Obviously I think it rocks In games that go mythic, I really like my main army to consist of FU Jarls and Ballista in the back, mixed in with a constant ulfsark bleed to fill up the intial losses. Good times man!

I play as Thor for the most part, and am thankful for the information on the ballista you gave. I think I'll stop passing it over and going right to the Portable Ram all the time. (I do realize it wasn't arguing against the Ram). My friend and I play with eachother alot against mostly just three (hard) computer opponents and so I like to liven things up a bit, and the ballista seems like just the gate crasher to do it. Good luck everyone and happy hunting. They are also fun to watch fire ballista shots without anyone actually reloading the thing What talent those lil' norsies have, it must be telekinesis. So why can't you use Ulfsark Mind Bullets? Maybe throwing oxen at the enemy without lifting a finger. Maybe moving the enemy villagers into the middle of your army?

I think the arguing here has been very civil. But then, I was recently at the battle.net Diablo 2 forums. Every disagreement there is "OMFG YOU SUX NOOB", hehe

out of the 200 games ive played online and the 100 recs ive watched, ive never seen a norse use a ballista :/

firstly great guide to the ballista

i agree wit u there hippocrak, the ballista is the best siege unit and anti seige unit in the game(ok granted the catapult and petrobals kik there ass in crush attack but still the ballista is great when massed) and one of my personal favourites. i have just started to use it in my playin strats and they are the ultimate matchwinner in my opinion. this guide will hopefully open the eyes of the other norse players, and help em realise how great a unit the ballista is.

Quote:

True but in a lot of ways AoM strats are about lemmingism. All the new innovations in strategy had to start with one person, who was then copied probably.

Good post, ballista probably do need to be used more. They have several problems though that makes them less reliable or just plain easy as other civs seige. One big problem is they auto attack buildings which is really annoying and takes your attention from other things just to keep them attacking units. Even odin ones have next to no heatlth so if the enemy reaches them you lose some resources. Also they aren't as effective building killers as other seige. That's a problem that can be countered by including rams in your army but that kinda lowers the value of ballista. I also don't really like it how ballista need to be trained from a hill fort that could be making jarls or huskarls instead. They also take alot of upgrades to become really useful. Flaming arrows effects only the ballista on land maps and it isn't the cheapest tech around. Engineers is nice to have also it is just another one of those huge investment problems. When you look at the fact that they also have a minimum range they aren't super effective either if your opponent can get around the meat shield. Also as an odin player they aren't all that effective with cavalry around, which seems like a sort of trend lol.

Enough of the negatives, i think ballista is a norse sort of multi purpose unit. Good unit and building killer.

Also hippocrack are you some kind of debater, with your well put together arguements and comments with ... thinking ... put into them. Also(kind of off topic) are cheirios with flaming arrows good seige, it wouldn't suprise me, the secret to solving attie seige problems lying hidden in a technology.(kinda the same with their eco)

Thx for the post.

ballistas are great. very fun to use behind walls, since anything on the screen would die. what i like about ballistas is that they can outreach tcs, hillys and towers. also, they wreak havoc on armies. about 30 ballistas behind a trojan wall can destroy 30 hops and 5 seie rams

Ballista and battle boar spamming is the only way to stop myrmidons and fanatics. I love this wooden things

Yes I am a bit of debater, growing up, I had used my habitual penchant for annoying people to help me(decide) as a struggling student in law school.
I don't really know on cheirios..., the upgrade is susposed to increase the damage to buildings 150 percent, however they dont' have crush built into their arrows like Ballista ones but still... I can understand wanting that option, considering you have to wait for so long for that expensive siphon. I have used them for that along with Destroyers and those two can be effective, however before heroic that might be a viable option. I think one of the problems on why you don't see it much is that they can't outrange towers and they don't have enough pierce shielding. Their bonus is all about infantry. I have done it for games that I kept in classical, where I have choked the opponent off with mass turmaing. But in reality I stopped doing the turma and that arrow thing a long time ago...

Also I use the boar exclusively, defintely top 5 myth unit, as thor I would like to have say one - mountain giant - and I might get a valk or two for raiding, but in battle there is not other myth I would rather have. Big tank that damges all including buildings, quick, and has a special that can break up really problematic ranged attack formations for me.

Yeah I think that people don't use them, because their stats appear so weak, so they never started, I've never seen a beginner's guide that tells the new player to use them. Then the player matures and develops habits and never uses them. Also I think with the Loki going so Loki, that they don't really use the hill fort units near as much as Odin and Thor, and Odin likes to use his bonus and produce mostly jarls and rams - becuase their are so many guides that tell you to do that.(okay it makes sense too) I think Loki could really benefit the most from the Ballista since they only seem to go calvary when forced to as a counter. Also I think theirs an underlying 'notion' that Loki rules classical, Odin rules Heroic, and people just round up or down and say Thor is all-around. So players heavily concentrate those strats around those ages and they don't really talk about the Norses's mythic weakness - if you end up going to mythic, those strats are more like: "good luck!" and "use those things I talked about earlier some more!"

Ballistas is the way to go vs massed ranged units and shooting buildings. They have best range and kill both infantry, archers and buildings. Now u only need something to protect them with.
For me they have been groundbreaking many times.
They are also great vs titans due to crash damage.
The key here is that u dont lose resources due to ballistas are uber ranged, u do if you try rushing in rams that just get smashed to pieces. If a stalemate, ballistas will clear the ground + others ranged units. What could be better? (only a titan)

[This message has been edited by Ekanta (edited 09-05-2004 @ 10:29 PM).]

Ballista is a great units but has few weakness that be very annoy:
1) it will attack buildings first by default
2) it has 3 minimum range
3) FU ballista does 44 pierce + 20 crush damage per sec?
No, it takes few sec per fire
It is impossibe to hit 4 arrors on same target. Most likely half of arrows will miss target.

Enough of the Ballista promotion! All I want to know is how to use my Greeks to stop them!

get 'bout 50 petrobaly