Why is there no artillery in this game?

[SafeKeeper]

Don't get me wrong. I've got plenty weapons that perfectly well fit the definition of artillery in the game and I know it. I've got Jotun hurlers, rock-throwing mages, fire-breathing drakes, and spells that throw bolts of fire at distant commanders.

However, why isn't there any conventional artillery in the game, like ballistae, catapults, trebuchets, etc.?

Artillery could be implemented as regular units and moved around by siege crews. It wouldn't be hard to make graphics for it and it wouldn't be hard to implement the system itself.

I'm not complaining here, and I'm not necessarily asking for it (I've not even gotten the full game yet, so I'm not exactly out of features to explore), I'm just asking why artillery isn't in Dominions II. I did a search for "artillery" and found nothing.

Safe-Keeper

[Yvelina]

It is part of a few mods. Off the top of my head, the orcish Empire and the T'ien Ch'i mod with the repeating crossbow both have artillery. A catapult and a repeating balista, I think.

[Cainehill]

Something that might be really sweet would be if artillery was implemented as per the venerable Fantasy General (and Panzer General) system. There, having a piece of artillery in range of a hex (province) where you were attacking meant that the artillery would fire in support.


XX | xx | oo

If XX is the hex/province with the artillery, it would fire when the units in oo were attacked by friendly troops. Similarly it would fire in support of the troops in xx if they were attacked. (Not positive about that Last - it's been a while (years) since I used the mechanics.)

So, artillery might be treated as a size 6 unit (thus eating lots of food) which acted as outside archers in a battle. Maybe with an area effect 1 attack, and all the headache that involves when the artillery kills your own units.

Edit: Artillery like this (firing outside the province) might also go a long way towards balancing raiders and flyers, if it fired before movement, thus could inflict some damage on flyers and even stealth troops before the movement phase.

To balance that, maybe you could only build artillery units in provinces with fortifications. That _might_ encourage more castling, but with them having a range on them, you wouldn't need a castle in every hex. And, especially if they were AOE 1 weapons, only have them fire every couple (2-5) turns, possibly even only once a turn. So, you could fire at the provinces in range of you, and/or they'd fire as combat support in provinces in range.

[Arralen]

I vote "no!" for artillery. Why?

a) With the "tech level" the game portrais, arty will not be able to fire from neighbouring hexes, err, provinces.

b) With the "tech level" the game portrais, arty is only usable to fire at fixed installations. (Non-existant) accuracy, slow reload time and abysmal setup and "aim" time made is useless against troops 99,5% of the time.

c) It's already in there. It's called magic. Cures all problems with accuracy (except for Abysians ), reload and setup time.

[RedRover]

Given time, I think artillery will find its way into game through mods and new nations.

I have a rather dusty Version of the Roman two-man ballista that I modded privately back when I was fooling around with some ideas for Pythium. No graphics, though.

My take is that we haven't seen artillery because its battlefield influence is too slight to have been considered before now. Any such unit would have a strategic move of 1 and would be completely immobile on the battlefield.

The tactical limitation of artillery is a huge reloading time. In a game where light crossbows fire every second round, a heavy arbalest fires every third round, and the board is only about 56 squares deep (making average closing time to melee maybe 3-5 moves for infantry), there is not a lot of room to play with reloading times.

Even giving 1 shot per 4 turns for the Roman ballista is generous, and that allows only one shot before melee.

Larger siege weapons fire a few times per hour. Not only that, but the big ones would have a pretty good minimum range, further limiting any battlefield usefulness. At a reloading time of 1 per 10 turns (very generous), you are still talking about maybe 5 shots in the longest battles.
And precision would be dreadful.

The strategic effect of seige weapons would be a bonus to castle sieging. For example, maybe:

Light catapult +15 siege points
Heavy catapult +25 siege points
Trebuchet +40 siege points

Cainehill: I don't much care for the strategic bombardment idea. This is medieval tech, not WWI+. Neither Napoleon nor Robert E. Lee had access to this type of capability. Effective historical catapult ranges were maybe 800-1000 yards, well under a mile, and far too short for province-to-province attacks.

On the other hand, freezing a tactical battle for a move or two so artillery can shoot (representing the approach of the enemy through the fire zone) might be an idea.

The artillery that I would like to see is the crude 15th Century gunpowder bombard and its fantasy spinnoffs (I'm a fan of H. Beam Piper's Down Styphon! novel and setting.) Also Warhammer mods would use direct fire artillery.

The big issue with these is "direct fire." Unlike all the current weapons, which pretty much loft their shots over friendly troops, if bombards (and by extension arquebuses and similar) don't kill units in line of sight, then you haven't got a good combat model.

[Cohen]

Well, a pre-battle bombardment could be a good way to deal with war engines.
Historically before the campal battle the armies usually stay camped for some days, making probe attack and such.
This could be a chance for war engines to deal damage to enemy, and if we want to consider even the use of light infantry and cavalry to skirmish and to make hit and run attacks on the enemy, supply depots and such.

Otherwise war/siege engines could deal damage to besiegers, plus the bonus of sieging. I mean the catapults shooting inside the fortress and on the walls could cause losses to defenders, and vice-versa defending siege engines could deal damage to besiegers.

All stuff should be done off-combat.

If you lose the battle you're lose your siege weapons .

[Wauthan]

Not so much on topic but I found that it was fairly easy to create a catapult unit. I assigned the unit the "boulder" weapon and strength 80. High strength also gave it a "siege bonus" in a way. The current unit is somewhat balanced but tremendously dangerous to all units on the battlefield. "Friendly fire" has never been this unfriendly.

[Gandalf Parker]

If "artillery" means "pre-battle bombardment" then how is that different than softening up a province with spells? Call of the Wild, Fires from Afar, Arouse Hunger, and many other nastier ones. Is Ulm lacking one? Something earthy like a meteor shower that can target provinces you dont own?

If its for seiging then maybe we need some seiging spells. Ones designed to damage castle walls.

[Cohen]

The difference is that a spell cost gems, and requires a mage, and you can cast it anywhere (a spellcasting range could be nice ... like you can cast a fires from afar only to a 5 province range, or similar).
War Engines are in that province only but cost gold and resources and are for sure more easily destroyed.

For sieging spells, there's Crumble, that's very effective because kills people inside the castle.

Another thing I'm missing it's more espionage and secretive/saboge acts. Poison water sources (like wiping out the supplies), steal technology or items and such.

In sieges it could be nice to put the "honourable surrender" stuff (you surrender the fort the very first turn of siege as order and your army is moved away without fighting).

[Kristoffer O]

It has been asked before. Here are the main reasons there is no artillery in the game.

Assumptions (perhaps not entirely true
* Catapults and trebuchets are used against walls.
* Cat. and treb. are built at the siege site.
* Cat. and treb. are not used in regular field battles.

* Ballistae and scorpios are mainly used from walls.

* All civilized cultures have made walls and engineered means to tear them down.

Thus:
Siege equipment is made at the siege. There are no graphical representations of siege equipment, but it's there in the abstract form of the defense reduction of the besieged castle. Many strong troop work quicker when cutting woods, making rams, building catapults etc. The sappers and engineers of Ulm are remarkably good at doing stuff that is destructive to walls. Mines are placed better, stones hurled with more presicion.

There are also scorpios/ballistae in the game. Abysia, Ermor and Pythium have them in their towers instead of regular bows. Once more they are not graphically represented (apart from the slightly bigger bolt).


Still I find catapults fun, so if anyone makes a catapult mod I would probably both try and enjoy it.