Marksmen 8 per turn (max tech's+upgrade)528 88-144 attack 40, defense 30 range 8 NO range penalty to damage
Balista 14 per turn (max tech's+Upgrade) 420 84-140 attack 36 defense 26 range 9 +50% ranged defense

which unit is truely better? Personally i use both but seriously which do you think is better?
Ranged usually are the ones to attack other ranged troops... so right away balista has the advantage
but there slower...by 2 movement, but then again what do you use ranged for? to hit the enemy before
you encounter them, either defending, or attacking your enemy, usually when defending you sit inside your castle and attack till he breaks in.

which means also, your balista would get 50% ranged protection doesnt have to worry about melee damage, put him in a tower inside your castle and the defensive bonus's and damage from ranged drop waaaaay down... 20% tech defense 20% castle defense (also a tech) the Tower defense bonus, plus the 50% ranged defense.... thats alot of defense you have to blast through. youd be lucky to do 400-500 damage with a ranged attack... so obviously for defense there better right? what about attacking? the higher ranged puts them out of range of most attacks.... there range defense puts them as the best unit for a siege (any one would intelligently defend there ranged units with melee...) the more i look at the numbers... the more im starting to lean towards balista for all.... the Ranged differance isnt that much.... with 150 balista in a stack you can STILL inflict 1k max damage at full range. But i dont know, what do you guys think? The numbers above were based on what you can produce in a turn, its basically the 8 marksmen or 14 balista you produce in a turn multiplied by there health and what not.
Stack of 80 (10 turns worth) marksmen = 5280 health 880-1440 attack
Stack of 140 (10 turns worth) balista = 4200 health 840-1400 attack (if attacked only by ranged
that gives the balista unit a theoretical HP of 6300) Now the Range penalty is not listed (at least i cant find it) so i dont know
how that would effect the overal damage. But the damage is so close.... and the 140 balista would
have a overal health benefit and defense against ranged....

but then bah on the other hand you gotta think that when a balista is hit with 1k damage thats 25% of the unit.... where as with marksmen thats 20%, means more men are left alive to do damage with the marksmen so if hit the marksmen pull ahead.... I DONTK NOW BAH someone post there thoughts, i wanna see more points and sides.

I'd say balista MAY be the troop of choice if you were going to play very defensive, but for any offensive manuveur marks are much better.

The key differences are speed and the range penalty. Ballis will slow your whole army down or get left behind, whereas marks will move as fast as most troops. Most players don't think about this very much, but if you're attacking, the faster you can get to the enemy the less troops he/she'll have. Not to mention that if something goes wrong your ballis are dead (anything can catch them) whereas your marks CAN escape much easier. Of course if you are fighting a defensive war only, speed isn't much of an issue.

The range penalty, however, is a very big deal either way. I'll have to search around to see exactly what it is mathematically (I'll post it in here when I do).

[EDIT:]
Ok, I found this, "Basically if the range is 1 then the stack is attacking melee and there is a 70% attack penalty.
If the range is 2 to 3 there is 0% attack penalty.
Then every additional hex of distance (of course up to maximum range) there is a 5% attack penalty addition. So for an attack of range 7 there is an attack penalty of 20%."

So at a range of 8 the stack of ballis will be only doing 75% of their "normal" damage" while marks will be doing 100%. This is enough to count if you use either in large numbers (and at far distances from the enemy).

Now, of course the ballis DO get more range, they can attack from 9 hexes away. Hooray! But only at 70% of their normal damage. I'd usually rather (and it's usually possible) just wait the extra time and move my marks into range. Plus, the marks should get there faster anyway, because of their speed advantage.
[/EDIT]

You also state that ranged are often the ones to attack ranged. I disagree with that. Only if two players are playing the wall and tower game. If you're engaging the enemy in anything resembling an open field, it's usually better to attack the enemies' melee with your ranged, and once you break their attack/defense move in and slaughter their ranged. And for seiges, the enemie's range still isn't the first target. I'd say that comms are the first (don't want them building MORE walls or structures inside), and then it depends on how soon you'll have the walls down. If it'll be a while, go after the ranged, if not take out the melee that'll give your melee the most trouble for preperation for when you DO breach the walls.

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Last Edited : Wednesday, 4 August 2004 - 21:45

Actually, when you take into account the balista SIZE BONUS:

Size Bonus : +1% damage per 2 enemy troops.

They probaly have a LOT more potential than marksmen. Lets say you're going up against 20 heavy calvary.

Marksmen do 88-144 attack, -6% damage for the fact that HC have 6 more defense than marksmen have offense. So 82-135 damage.

Against the same calvary, Balista would start with 84-140 damage, -10% damage for the offense/defense difference, but +10% for the size bonus. So that's 84-140 damage...but then the range penalty comes in. I'm not sure how significant that is. Markmsmen still probably come out on top.

But lets say its a stack of 50 macemen.

Marksmen: 88-144 to start off. -2% damage for offense/defense. 86-141.

Balista: 84-140 to start off. -6% for offense/defense, but +25% for size bonus. 99-166. THEN comes the range bonus, which probably brings them down to at or below the marksmen damage.

Balista are best against basic and advanced troops, where large stacks are common place. It's close in expert troops, and in master troops where large stacks are hugely expensive and rare, marksmen win. Balista depend on your enemy putting all their eggs in one basket. Marksmen are the safer bet, at least in late game. Get some balista early on and you'll tear up those stacks of 80-100 scouts

Mmm....+40%/+50% damage...so delicious....

Yeah, see my post about the range penatly (just edited it in).

Here it is in better format:

Range/damage

2/100%
3/100%
4/95%
5/90%
6/85%
7/80%
8/75%
9/70%

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So at max range the stack has to be at least 60 pop to break even. And if its larger then the balista are gonna come out on top. But marksmen just seem better.

If you have a 60 pop heavy calvary coming after you, you have bigger things to worry about than little details.

Don't forget about the speed either. The marks will get to that 60 pop stack faster. And like I said, if you're attacking more speed usually equals less enemy troops when you get there.

Now in skirmish games? What do you think? You might have a strong case for ballis to be made there...

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Oh definitely, in skirmishes the huge stacks are common, you put a stack of 800 balista in a tower and you can punish ANYTHING that challenges you. *glares at Pimp*

just for the record: attack the 800pop ballista with about 10 5pop ballista armies (till the defense is down) and then use the free kills you have.

cardfan's stated range penalties for ballis are ok.
My question is what happens to the penalties when in a tower?

Second ballis loose more BP% when moving than marks.
Does anyone have a table of BP% lost per hex for a balli over a given terrain?

So for example we have to reasonable sized stacks of ballis and marks, each is 5 turns standard production, so we have 105 ballis, and 60 marks (21 & 12 respectibily per turn).

Then we face them against two foes: 1st a HC stack of 5 turns (30) and 2nd against a stack of falcs of 15 turns (270 ). Both will attack at range 8 and do maximum possible damage.

The balli will inflict 4 kills on the HC and 30 on the falcs, while the mark will kill 5 HC and do away with only 19 falcs. (This is without 1000 max damage).

So on big stacks ballis are better, on smaller stacks marks do the most pain.

I personally think marks are better, since they move faster, do not loose so many BP% when doing so, and they have no range penalty.

Last Edited : Thursday, 5 August 2004 - 07:33

i play both usually assigning balistas as defensive inside towers inside walled up castles. Marksmen are my main offense units cause as stated before, i hate having to catch the balista up to my attacking force, however, now that siege weapons are more useful and almost needed in a offensive effort.... (standing at a wall for 4-5turns getting shot up no longer appeals to me in a invasion.) balista wouldnt fall behind as you would have to wait for cat's or ram's to catch up anyway, and balista can move just as fast.

Early on balista, later game marksmen?
Balista all the way
Marksmen all the way
have a mixture of both.

which do you prefer? me its mixture.

I was strictly a bali person just ask Sage what my big bad bali did to him in a skirmish game not too long ago...However with the change in seige machines I've decided to work on a new strat employing bali marks cats and rams to see what I can find that works...Personally I love 100+ bali eating up troops...It's like watching lambs being lead to the sacrificial alter...

Several details given in various posts are inaccurate above.

1) Ballis have a movement of 7, marks have a movement of 10, so there is a movement difference of 3 (not 2).
2) Max production of ballis per turn per barracks is 14 (not 21), marks is 8 (not 12)

I'm not entirely convinced the ballis +1% damage per two men in a stack works correctly.

Given that at equivalent production rates (14 vs 8) marks will win against balli every time IF they can keep inside the marks 8 range (because of the movement rate difference this isn't overly difficult - though there are lots of factors to take into account here, terrain, enemy troop position, etc). This of course assumes equal comms, attack/defense techs, both sides using (or not using) towers. Considering that marks win in spite of the 50% defensive bonus that ballis get, when it comes to shooting up other troop types marks kick out a very high amount of damage per man compared to ballis. So basically I prefer marks over ballis (though I sometimes get ballis). If/when I am ever forced to lock myself up in my castle I would seriously consider ballis as a preferred unit - and if the enemy is attacking with ballis then it becomes an essential unit since from a defensive perspective you don't get much luxury in where to place your units for range positioning.

Ballista movement IS 8 now.. I think it was changed.

yeah i recognized it lately ina a battle.

8? Okay I missed that change, thanks. That starts to put ballis as a bit more viable as an offensive unit.

plus the numbers i crunched above are for 14 - 8 production ratio's.... in a fight 10 turns worth of ballis vs 10 turns worth of marksmen, would = balis winning no hands down, no matter what....

Ballistas vs Marksmen directly would ofcourse win. However the marksmen's job is not to attack other ranged(most of the time) but to support your melee, moving at the same pace and taking down/weakening your opponent's melee.

@ gueritol -- It's my understanding the you keep losing 5% damage for every additional hex of range. So, to complete my chart:

Range/damage
10/65%
11/60%
12/55%

@ Fanatic -- I too thought that ballis had MP of 7, but since I don't use them that often I decided to not bring it up. 8 does help, but that still makes them the slowest unit in the game (after cats movement has been increased to 9).

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Last Edited : Thursday, 5 August 2004 - 20:26

Fan, I took my numbers from the online help...so.


What about BP lost per hex moved on ballis and marks?

Sage - the -6 difference in att:def is 6% of damage not 6 points of damage, so if for example your range of damage is 50-100 then with a -6 it is really 47-94.

Topic - Also you must consider the research costs and the opportunity costs of that research and the actual costs of building that unit.

It's really a tough call, I consider my self a pretty good ranged battler and I prefer balli early though if I get an early kill and get the resource bump I will switch to marks for their superior kill ratio, dont forget that Marks suffer no range penalty. Like I said, tough call. Go with what you're comfortable with.