Are ballistas useless?

[Erasmus]

I just unlocked ballistas, and I don't understand how to use them effectively. They just seem so weak. For ten troop capacity I could have:

• One ballista with 266 DPS and 280 health
• Ten landsknechts with 1780 DPS and 3510 health (I'm playing Germany)

Sure the ballista can fire over walls, doesn't have to walk as far before attacking, and isn't quite as vulnerable to catapult splash. But the infantry can basically one-shot any building in a decent sized group so they are always walking forwards. I'm comparing the ballista to infantry because I can't use it to replace crossbowmen (needed to handle defending troops) or knights (needed to tank damage).

So...am I missing something? Either I need to change my raiding style or maybe I just need to wait until I can upgrade the ballistas before they're any good.

 

[TmpUsr]

The thing you are missing is wall scaling.

In medieval, when you first get ballistas, it is possible to build walls with 11,100 HP each, and with each additional level walls gain HP faster than troops gain dps (and, at the same time, defensive structures gain dps). A lot of the time, due to the AI, you are not going to have more than 3 soldiers attacking the same wall at the same time, which means that they will just sit there for a few seconds while being attacked... This is partially what wall miners are for, but wall miners are vulnerable and harder to get to inner layers in order to breach those walls in a properly designed base.

So, instead of zerging to break through those increasingly tough walls, ballistas and their upgrades give you the option to simply destroy the defenses before you bother breaching.

 

[Erasmus]

Ah I see. Yeah at this point I usually skip over bases with decent walls. I guess eventually that will no longer be an option.

 

[Whatwhat]

Balisters are good. But if your good you can be more successful with other troop combinations. However bombards are amazing and cannon are the best unit in the game. So basically you should start practicing with balisters now so when you upgrade you know how to use them.

 

[smokepoke]

Thumbs up on this comment !!

 

[Erasmus]

I've been rocking ballistas since I wrote this and I've learned to love them. I'm playing Germany, midway through medieval, and I use:

34x landsknechts
20x crossbowmen
2x veteran wall miners
2x ballistas

I have almost no fear of ballista towers with this army, just have to be careful about catapults. One very nice thing about the ballistas is that they don't get distracted by enemy troops. So while the landsknechts and crossbowmen are occupied with the troops (or walls) the ballistas are taking down buildings, including defenses. It only takes them 2-4 shots to destroy most defenses. This makes the landsknechts last longer since they aren't taking as much fire. One good idea with that army: save back a few landsknechts and/or crossbowmen in case a defending cavalry unit starts going after the ballistas.

 

[resnullius]

interesting. are you farming with this lineup or just hitting once every few hours?

 

[Erasmus]

This is for farming. If I can destroy all the defenses and keep the ballistas (and ideally also the wall miners) from getting killed, rebuilding the landsknechts and crossbowmen is less than ten minutes. Sometimes only 2 or 3 minutes if only a few landsknechts die. Usually that means hitting a classical or weak medieval base, or a very weak gunpowder base.

When I run into a hard medieval or gunpowder base with lots of easy to get loot (caravans and farms, or exposed stores) I'll take it with landsknechts and crossbowmen and maybe a wall miner, so I don't need to rebuild the more expensive troops.

 

[OctoberNoir]

Thanks for the tip, Erasmus. I'll give your composition a go.

A question I have is: how do you deal with catapults? Do you send ballistas after them, or zerg infantry?

 

[Erasmus]

A combination of rally and luck, with some war tactics thrown in occasionally.

If the catapult exposed enough that a ballista can target it over a wall, I'll drop landsknechts for protection and then a ballista. Generally, dropping the ballistas where they can immediately target defenses is a great idea. If the catapult is a bit more buried (covered by outer buildings), I drop 6-10 landsknechts and a wall miner if necessary and rally on it, then immediately start dropping more landsknechts and crossbowmen behind them.

For catapults that are really centralized, if there's just one and the rest of the defenses aren't too powerful, I'll just zerg them with maybe a heal or sabotage, or rally. I'll skip bases that have more than one hard to reach catapult.