The Catapult, the Elemental, and the Worm

[LPhillips]

I've definitely failed to make use of the 3-wound units on the frontline. Placing Catapult in the front is such an obvious tactic, especially when you don't need it beyond that tough battle, but for some reason that didn't occur to me.
Bleh. I feel kinda stupid. That old thing where the bonuses disappear from the stack after the unit is killed is still programmed into me.

[KGB]

Bleh. I feel kinda stupid. That old thing where the bonuses disappear from the stack after the unit is killed is still programmed into me.

You think you feel stupid. Until this post I didn't even know the Catapult HAD a 3rd hit. Another case of having no idea when this change got introduced.

With a 3rd hit and +10 when attacking (that I knew at least) the Catapult becomes a decent attacking unit for any situation, without even using it's siege component.

Catapults are awesome. Thus my thread pointing out how good they are, and how underutilized.
That point of view was lambasted pretty heavily by KGB and others, heh.

I merely suggested that they are perfectly used now by players because they are pretty much pillaged/ignored

Coming back to that again, lets look at another combat example.

Defender: 8 Hv Inf in city with +5 defense (all 25 strength)
Attacker1: 7 Elves + Catapult (7 12's + 1 30)
Attacker2: 7 Elves + Gryffon (7 12's + 1 45)

In Attacker1's case, the Hv Inf fight at 20. In Attacker2's case they obviously fight at 25. Now what kind of outcome do you think this results in? Well would you believe that it's about the same. Attacker1 wins 17% and Attacker2 wins 15%. Now obviously you aren't attacking in this situation (unless you are desperate) but the point is, the Gryffons 45 strength is about the same as the Catapult taking 5 off all the defenders.

Now if you go back to the 10 Commandments post in the Strategy Section one of those commandments is to understand the stage of the game and act accordingly. That means building units in addition to moving, defending, attacking etc. I classify a game as being in 3 stages: Early, Middle, Late (which I describe in detail there).

So if we classify unit value (low, medium, high) by game stage we'd get something like:

Red Dragon: Early - High, Middle - High, Late - High. Obviously a Red Dragon has value all game from it's movement, flight, big bonus and strong combat skills.
Pegasi: Early - High, Middle - High, Late - Low. The Pegasi has little end game value because there will be many negates/better bonus's or better straight up combat units to use.
Gryffon: Early - High, Middle - Medium, Late - Medium/Low. The Gryffon has it's best value early as a neutral taker/hero mover. Still has some value in mid game but it goes down in proportion to the number of Elves/Wizards your opponent has and in late game there are much stronger combat units like Demons and a lot of archery.
Catapult: Early - Low, Middle - Low, Late - High. As I said in the other post, you don't need Siege to take neutrals or middle game defended cities (the battle I show above is a typical middle game battle between non-hero stacks before players can field a lot of quality units in stacks other than their hero stacks) but to crack open a heavily defended (Devils/Unicorns/Dragons, strong walls) late game city they are a must.

So when you realize Siege is a late game item, there is no reason to keep/use it in the early/mid game other than a Hero stack. Other units are much better investments of your money because they increase the chances you can END the game before it ever gets anywhere near the Late game stage. Also many maps will never require siege even if they do reach Late game stage. Maps such as Bullrun, 8 Kingdoms, Midguard, The Waste, Westeros, High Seas Combat etc that are based on maneuverability and flanking. You just go around strong cities and find one that's not as heavily defended since you can't put 20+ men in every city. On the other hand trench warfare style maps with lots of choke points like Crescendo will require siege because you often must go through 1 heavily defended point to reach the next heavily defended point, rinse and repeat.

KGB

P.S. I think Strach's answer was the best one and the one I tend to use/favor the most. Elementals best use right now is over Lava to attack someone where they least expect it. Since they alone can hide there they never get attacked so they always are attacking.

[LPhillips]

Lol. I only noticed the third hit a couple of days ago when a catapult should have died, didn't, and I said "what was that!?"
"Perfectly used." Touche.
KGB has basically brought the discussion back to this: the situation is all-important in examining any unit! Nothing exists in a vacuum. Proximity, terrain, wealth, timing (early/mid/late), individual tactics (lava+elemental), and opportunity cost are all important components to examining any unit's viability.

That said, I think Catapult is still generally the strongest of the three in general terms. It's 30 on attack with a +10 siege bonus; the Worm is 30 (basically the same individually when attacking fortifications, but not conferring any bonus to its allies) and cannot benefit from defending walls; and the Elemental is 40 with no bonus to others, higher initial cost, and moving just as slowly as the others.

[strach]

as for the catapult - the +10 while attacking is illogical. the role of catapult is to destroy city walls and enable armies to get inside a city. so negating walls should be its only quality. we can assume that the catapult is manned by some light infantry squad, but still the whole unit should be rather clumsy and give advantage only when you are storming a city. we can assume that destroying such a big siege and killing its crew takes some time and effort, so the 3 hit is reasonable, but that +10 should be changed.

[magian]

Well, I like the catapult's +10 attack bonus. But, it does take some of the shine off of both the worm and the elemental. When attacking a city, the catapult is as effective as a worm right now (unless the walls are 15 strength). I'm not sure if this is a huge deal though, since the worm has an extra couple points of speed and is far more valuable in desert terrain.

[KGB]

I believe the +10 attack is intended to represent the Catapult hurling rocks among the enemy. This has value even when not being used to break down walls since the Catapult would instead throw 'grapeshot' :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapeshot

Grapeshot was devastatingly effective against massed infantry at short range. It was used to savage massed infantry charges quickly. Cannons would fire solid shot to attack enemy artillery and troops at longer range and switch to grape when they or nearby troops were charged.

Now a catapult isn't exactly a cannon but they did throw masses of smaller rocks called scattershot or even burning pitch.

This is why the Battering Ram doesn't have any +X bonus because it can only be used to assault gates/walls.

KGB

[strach]

KGB
I'm not an expert when it comes to military (in fact all my knowledge about catapults comes from LOTR movie ) but your story doesnt sound convincing. A device created to destroy or at least weaken signicifantly walls of a relatively large city wouldnt be very useful fighting a squad of light infantry. not to mention that it still has its bonus in forest, swamp etc. this quality of a catapult is highly illogical. in fact - I think that catapult should has +5 while defending a city (once again LOTR movie) because it might be used to counter the massed infantry.

the other thing is that catapult is too quick. in logical terms it should have around 8 movement or even less.

now going back to that Elemental. I had been thinking lately about a "antiswarm" quality. I would give it to elephants, mammoths and elementals. those three creatures should be able to charge on swarm units and split them. Let all 3 of them has the ability to halve the swarm bonus of opposing units. this leads me to another idea - because I always thought that elephants and mammoths are "cool" units but no one uses it, they could have some "trample" feature - but I havent yet come up with anyidea how it could work.

[KGB]

Strach,

The purpose of throwing all those smaller stones is to damage at long range. Like shooting artillery in modern armies. Those tend not to shoot one large bomb but rather one bomb designed to explode into lots of pieces to damage many men. So the Catapults were used in the same way as their range is much greater than a hail of arrows.

I think the defensive nature in cities is covered by the city wall bonus. 0 defense bonus to me means basic walls and nothing else. 5 bonus means the defenders have boiling oil and 10 bonus means boiling oil and defensive catapults/ballistae. I would suggest a +X bonus when defending for the Catapult but Magican's head might explode if we had another unit with defending bonus

As for movement, if it moved 8 it would never ever get made. In reality siege machinery was never brought to battle (imagine trying to bring it on boats or over mountain ranges or through swamps). It was constructed on site as needed. Now they did bring parts they required (for example they didn't smelt ore for metal on the spot) so for example if you wanted to bring Grond (the battering ram in LOTR) you'd just bring the Metal head and cut a tree on the spot and fit the head to it. Same idea with catapults, you'd bring the metal chains and other specific parts then cut the wood and other easy to get stuff locally. So technically what Warbarons does makes no sense but in another regard it signifies that the army is bringing 'parts' to construct the Ram/Catapult. If the game could break bonus's down into even more detail (like +X when attacking cities) then it would make the most sense.

Anti-Swarm: You have to be REALLY careful about making this kind of power. For example looking at Demons, 4 Demons gives +40. So cutting that in half is giving a -20 to those demons. No other unit anywhere has the ability to deliver a -20 bonus. Or scorpions, you can put 5 together to get +20 bonus. Cutting that in half is -10 (only heroes have that kind of power) and to be honest, 5 scorpions only having 25 strength would mean I'd never ever make them because 2 turns, 25 strength only when I have 5 of that unit is a very pointless investment. At best, a 'Scatter' power should just have the ability to reduce swarm unit count by 1 (so 4 demons would act as 3, 5 scorpions as 4 etc). Of course then it might not be very valuable.

Trample: DLR had trample. It's power did extra damage. So 1 hit would remove 2 hp or 3hp depending on if a unit had Trample +1 or Trample +2 (Elephants were +1, Stone Golems +2, Iron Golems were +3). Needless to say this was exceptionally powerful but it only affected ground units (flying units were immune because how can they get trampled in the air). This power along with Anti-Air and Flight formed what is known as the 'holy trinity' of rock-paper-scissors (or what I prefer to call Iron Golem-Rust Monster-Mind Flayer) in DLR for unit power. It's definitely a power that Warbarons will eventually adopt now that units are getting more than 2 hits.

KGB

[strach]

ok, i get the idea, but if you suggest that catapults were made on the spot, before storming city then how do you explain that the squad carrying all that important pieces of device can use them in the field.
either catapults are made just before besieging of the city or they are made in the citey and transported very slowly to the target. in the first case the unit can be quite swift (but nevertheless slower than regular armies), but you cannot argue that it can be used in the field. in other case the catapult is also dangerous in the field, but should be a lot slower. and we still have the problem of catapult on swamps or in a forrest. and what about pikemen? why they're so slow? do men with pikes move slower that men carrying pieces of a huge siege?

of course I dont argue that everything should be as plausible as possible (especially in a game with dragons, unicrons and sandworms renting a boat ) the mechanics of the game is very nice, and the game is playable, and that's the most important thing. so maybe it is better not to go on this path of logical soundness.

[magian]

Oh trample, how I miss you