🚀 go-pugleaf

Stephen Lai (sl...@lrc.med.uwo.ca) wrote:
> I find them quite useless, because as they fire, the enemy units are moving 
> away from where the fireballs land; as matter of fact, a bunch of archers are 
> much better than the catapults. However, as many of my units are stationary 
> in a defensive position, enemy catapults end up doing a lot of damages to my 
> units. How can my catapults be better utilized?

It depends, are you playing against the computer or a human?  

(Assuming against human)

A wall can be useful here.  If you erect a wall between you and your
opponent, and if he just tells his troops to attack something behind the
wall, his troops will get confused and stay put.  Easy targets for the
catapult.  (There can be no way around the wall though...)

If he is just sending in his troops all in a line, your catapult can hit
the ones behind them.  Setting up a formation of footsoldiers or grunts
and a catapult can be nice.  The grunts will stop the knights or ogres
giving enough time for the catapults to shoot at them and damage them
greatly.  

An under used feature (and with fairly good reason) is the attack ground
option.  You can aim the catapult's shot in front of the advancing unit and
hope that you have really good timing :)  Or just leave it as attack
ground at that point and hope by sheer luck that it will hit something
(though it may be good if you have 4 or more catapults going at the same
time).

Comments encouraged.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shawn Rycroft
Carleton University
Email address: sryc...@chat.carleton.ca
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Station some of the foot soldiers (forgot exactly what they are
called) or some knights in a line in front of your archers. When an
enemy rolls in, the knights will delay the enemy long enough to let
the archers finish them off. If you put a catapault in behind the
archers the catapault will take them out even faster. The catapault
has a longer 'vision range' so if you put it far enough back that it
only sees the enemy when they roll up against your line of knights it
will fire then and take out the enemy quick.

the catapault is also handy against the enemy catapaults that roll in.
If you can get the shot off first, you have a good chance of taking
the enemy catapault out before it does any damage to you. If you like
archers you probably bunch them up where the enemies come through and
a fireball from a catapault does you a lot of damage. Make sure you
can see far enough to know someone is coming.


sl...@lrc.med.uwo.ca (Stephen Lai) wrote:

>I find them quite useless, because as they fire, the enemy units are moving 
>away from where the fireballs land; as matter of fact, a bunch of archers are 
>much better than the catapults. However, as many of my units are stationary 
>in a defensive position, enemy catapults end up doing a lot of damages to my 
>units. How can my catapults be better utilized?

>
>the catapault is also handy against the enemy catapaults that roll in.
>If you can get the shot off first, you have a good chance of taking
>the enemy catapault out before it does any damage to you.

A clarification is in order.  Unless the defense has many ( >= 3) catapults, 
the attacking (moving) catapult actually has the advantage that the shots
fired at it will miss, at least partially.  So if you ever want to take out
an enemy catapult with one of yours, be sure to KEEP YOUR CATAPULT MOVING
(preferably along a diagonal--makes it faster) until the other guy's catault
has fired and its fireball has landed.  Then fire.  Most likely, his 
stationary catapult will be toasted, while yours will live.

BTW, my favorite way to eliminate an attacking catapult is to send a single 
knight against it.  In fact, even an archer will do if you tell him to walk
right up to the catapult, as opposed to attacking from a distance.

>
>>I find them quite useless, because as they fire, the enemy units are moving 
>>away from where the fireballs land; as matter of fact, a bunch of archers

Here's a trick I saw on this newsgroup a while back: get an enemy knight to
follow one of yours very closely (2 or 3 units behind, depending on how fast
the nights are), and then tell your catapult to fire at YOUR knight.  If you
get the timing/distance right, the fireball will land right on top of the poor
idiot following your knight.  Just don't forget to tell the catapult to stop
after the job's done !

Another use for catapults (works only against the computer): accumulate a 
bunch of them (3 or 4), position them at different distances behind your front 
line of people, and have one of your knights walk up to an enemy building.  
Then tell him to run back and hide behind your other people.  What that will 
do is to cause all of computer's people to attack you at once.  Just be 
prepared, and your catapults will take care of most of the attackers.  Once 
that's over, the computer's town will be empty, so you can march right in.

sl...@lrc.med.uwo.ca (Stephen Lai) wrote:

>I find them quite useless, because as they fire, the enemy units are moving 
>away from where the fireballs land; as matter of fact, a bunch of archers are 
>much better than the catapults. However, as many of my units are stationary 
>in a defensive position, enemy catapults end up doing a lot of damages to my 
>units. How can my catapults be better utilized?

line up about 6-7 foot men in front of the catapult.  Then about 8
archers behind the footmen, two catapults behind the archers, and 2
Knights along side the footmen.  Use the knights toi draw enemies
within firing range of the archers or the catapults.   
so
f = footmen
a = archers
c = catapults
k =knights
       C    C
A A A A A A A
 F F F F F F F
K                  K