Barrage

[Brael]

Is this a useful promotion? I've used it a few times but it's difficult to really see a noticeable impact in my experience. Usually I go city raider for my siege units but lately I've been thinking there might be a better alternative since the point of siege is to deal damage to several units rather than having a higher chance of surviving the first unit.

[rah]

That's why I don't promote my cats until I know if i'm using them on offense or defense. If on offense against cities, CR, if I'm using them in defense or against enemy SODs outside of cities, barrage can be a better promotion.

And if it's real early and my opponent doesn't have mounted units, I may even use drill for in the field cats.

[Ming]

I agree with Rah (no real surprise). I don't promote my cats anymore until I know how they will be used. City raider is a great promotion, but not if you are defending against an enemy SOD

[Cort Haus]

I've found Drill to be quite useful in getting a bite in against the strongest defenders in the field, followed up by Barrage. Against cities, some Barrage is nice once the stronguns have been battered down by CR.

[rah]

Against cities, i'd argue that a couple extra CR's accomplish the same goal. But agreed it's like after a stack of cannons attack, even your warriors are useful again.

[Blaupanzer]

Higher barrage provides greater depth of damage in encounters (3 units collaterally damaged versus 6 with a siege unit with two barrage promotions. Siege units promoted that way have a hard time surviving direct city assault whereas CR promoted units often do survive. Of course if you are going to be knocking on a lot of city walls, then a beneficial second promotion for a significant subset of your siege units would be the target device that permits more rapid battering of the cities' defense percentages.

[rah]

While I tend to agree, I consider cats disposable units more than any other unit. I really don't care what they are, I just need to have enough of them so survivability is all I notice. If you hit with enough it doesn't matter what they are. Hence CR if against cities or something else if against stacks. I can't mix them up too much because during MP games you stack attack and if you think about it too much, you run out of time.

[Brael]

Cats being disposable is why I'm wondering about barrage. It seems to me that if you're using collateral damage, whether or not there's a tough defender that in the process of taking everyone else down the defender will also drop. City Raider gives you better odds at winning, but winning for a siege unit is survival. Is it really worth bumping the odds on your siege units from say 5% to 15% or 70% to 85% when you'll end up needing 50% more units compared to barrage siege?

The only advantage I'm seeing to a CR unit (and drill too for that matter) is that as long as you're just using it for cities it should reach a higher overall level while barrage is pretty much guaranteed to die within 2 fights but deal much more damage in the process. For that reason CR seems like a promotion for a non disposable unit when the point of siege weapons are to be high damage disposable units.

The only time I can think of an exception to this idea is early in the game when axes and trebuchets are significantly more expensive than regular units.

[rah]

Just because I consider it a disposable unit doesn't mean I want to waste it. The purpose of siege is to reduce defenses and nick units so my units are stronger. The more nicks the easier it is. But I have this sneaking suspicion that if we did extensive tests, that the results would end up pretty close.

[Brael]

Well, in one of my recent games I started playing with this concept a bit more and think I've come up with the situations for CR vs Barrage, I still can't find a good situation for drill though.

I've got a city pumping out 11 exp units so the option is CR3 vs Barrage 3, in my war I have cannons/infantry while my opponent has paratroopers, infantry, and artillery. A Barrage cannon typically runs a 2% survival rate while the CR cannon runs a 65% survival rate against fresh units. Earlier in the game when it was cannons vs rifles the survival rates were more like 65% vs 80% with 3 promotion units.

So what I'm coming up with for a general rule is:
Stacks under 5 units - CR is better, not getting those 6 units of collateral damage really hurts effectiveness.
Tech parity/superiority - Barrage is better, units already have high survival rates.
Tech inferiority - CR is better, the survival rate difference is huge.

I guess replace CR with drill for units out in the open, but drill isn't nearly as effective a promotion.

[Ming]

I think you need to play around with Drill more... You are correct that it's better than CR when in the field...
Since you are cranking out units with 11 exp points, try creating some drill III units and see how they work in the field. The +2 First Strike chances can be quite effective for siege unit survivablitily.

[rah]

Drill III are nice in the field unless you're facing horse archers. But if not, and they survive and get a couple of CRs on top of that......

[Blaupanzer]

Why HA in particular? Do you run around with your cats not stacked with other units, like spearmen?

[Ming]

I think he's implying a stack that has horse archers in it and part of combined arms. Horse archers are immune to first strike, so they are likely to be the original defending units when you attack the enemy SOD with cats when the SOD is on clear terrain.

[rah]

Thanks for saving me all that typing.