Stealing Amytis's Heart (Siege Tower Guide)

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Siege Towers have 15% more health, deal 30% more damage, cost one less population and deal 50% bonus damage against buildings.​

One might ask how do you make the best of Amytis? How to win her and show her that you are not just some Babylonian randoms who win with the mighty charge of lancers... by showing her the true might of the Babylonian Siege Towers!

First thing you might ask... ok but what can I do to make them work?

1. Villagers are your #1 garrisoned units in these Siege Towers. They are the cheapest and basically pay themselves off! They also repair your siege towers really fast, keeping them on the go! You know that tip where it asks you to have about 70 villagers? To really steal Amytis's heart, we are going to double that!
2. Consumable units (You might be baffled to hear that Nubian Archer consumables provide exactly 12 every 5 minutes... and are available at Rkhaotis.)
3. Sappers (with Champion Upgrade)
4. Shield Bearers
5. Your own troops! Ranging from the most pop-efficient to the least pop-efficient of course.

But why villagers? The real question is why not! They are available to train instantly and can be paid to pay off their 50 food cost debt immediately. Your soldiers if garrisoned in them are not paying their debt as they need to fight and tank HP as well. This also gives your Siege Tower the largest mileage.

Right on, let's study the simple concept of Siege Towers.

1. They are the tankiest ram before and more tankier after their champion upgrade.
2. Each garrisoned unit adds 5 pierce damage stacking up to 60 pierce damage. It does not matter who they are.
3. At best you can field 10-12(or more with consumables used as garrisons) Siege Towers without hurting your ability to replace/repair them if one dies.
4. Siege Tower has 22 Attack Range (That's a typical ungeared Bowman with Composite Bow upgrade) this can be increased to roughly 32 Attack Range.
5. Only the ranged attack can crit.
6. Splash damage CANNOT crit. Only the primary target is critted on.
7. You cannot garrison ox carts or caravans in them.
8. Yes you can fit siege towers with 12 people inside a merchant transport, but don't make the mistake of putting all your eggs in one unprotected basket.

And if you're invested in this to work, you will need to know.

0. All Siege Tower + 12 garrison will count 16-17 population.
1. Think of them as mobile Guard Towers/Forts, 1 won't really do a dent in enemies but 4 will start to ramp up and deathball hard.
2. Not every Siege Tower needs to be garrisoned to the max immediately. By spreading out your garrisons across Siege Towers you are effectively increasing your arrow spread but decreasing the damage initially until you are full.
3. Control Groups you will need to establish 2 control groups for a "medic" Siege Tower and their medic villagers.
4. You'll be surprised how fast 12 villagers can repair and garrison as soon as possible. The second you see a Siege Tower HP dropping too low, withdraw and have the rest cover it, and let the medic do the work.

That's all you need to know!

Let's get down to the advisor halls.

Spoiler: Age 1

Villagers cost 10%/15%/20%25% less Food and have 20%/30%/40%/50% more health.
Let us constantly train villagers and keep our "medic" group more durable when they need to do repairs.

Villagers gather Wood 6%/8%/10%/12% faster from Trees, carry 6%/8%/10%/12% more and have 10%/15%/20%/25% conservation
Siege Towers have a heavy wood investment so do our gardens! We can use him to reduce the burden.

Villagers gather Gold 8%/12%/16%/20% faster from Gold Deposits, carry 8%/12%/16%/20% more and have 20%/27%/34%/40% conservation
Since we might not use caravans, we may have to rely on more gold mining to prop up our economy here!

Buildings build in 8%/12%/16%/20% less time
Just a general advisor that helps overall.

Storehouse upgrades cost 45%/55%/65%75% less
A jack-of-all-trades advisor that helps with improving our early game economy by reducing the upgrades significantly.

Spoiler: Age 2

Town Centers have 20%/30%/40%/50% more health, deal 20%/30%/40%/50% more damage, build in 20%/30%/40%/50% less time and cost 10%/15%/20%/25% less
This will be our go-to advisor as he will make town centers cheap enough for us to keep up our massive villager production.

Buildings cost 8%/12%/16%/20% less Wood and have 4%/6%/8%/10% more health
He will keep the wood cost cheap enough that an early Siege Tower won't delay our buildings.

Shield Bearers are 10%/20%/30%/40% more resistant to melee-infantry, melee-cavalry, crush and splash damage.
Shield Bearers cost the same and will help with holding the early game onslaught and can be garrisoned later.

Armory upgrades cost 20%/30%/40%/50% less and research 20%/25%/30%/35% faster, Armories cost 20%/30%/40%/50% less and build in 20%/25%/30%/35% less time
You'll be surprised how fast armory technologies can make 1 siege tower do its thing.

All Military units move 4%/5%/6%/7% faster
Your siege towers need more horsepower? Try her to move faster (+0.3-+0.5 movement speed).

Although not impressive, they do allow a late-game economy to be jumpstarted earlier. Something we shouldn't have to worry about as we are training villagers constantly and then using them for war when time permits.

Spoiler: Age 3

Siege Towers attack 50% faster and further and have +1 Area Damage when using their Ranged Attack
Great for shooting anything down. If you can repair your siege towers more often, Farzana can offer consistently more DPS out of these babies.

Battering Rams, Siege Towers, Rams and Farbjoðrs have 8%/12%/16%/20% more health and move 8%/12%/16%/20% faster.
If we need to make the Siege Towers faster (by almost 1 movement speed!) and tankier (by roughly around 300 more health give or take), we can use him.

Siege units cost 8%/12%/16%/20% less and train in 8%/12%/16%/20% less time.
I get it, our Siege Towers cost the most and train the most. If they are attacking early we might not be able to use them to our advantage. He can cut costs by 60 wood and 20 gold while training them 7 seconds faster.

Spoiler: Age 4

Are you crazy? Of course we're putting Amytis here! No one else deserves to be here.

Ready? Now onto the gear hall!

Spoiler: Ram Head

You will run into these ram heads more often than usual and they will be your entry-levels.

The highest damage Ram Head in the game giving you massive ranged AND melee DPS.

Adds a significant +15% health to infantry damage, useful vs those pesky Woad Raiders and boss units.

Definitely more horsepower on those Siege Towers.

Spoiler: Arrow

We do not really want critical chances on our Siege Tower mainly because our Siege Tower can't *melee crit with it* and we don't have the quantity nor enough critical stats to make good use of our ranged attacks!

Great range stat value!

This is our go-to as it gives us both damage and health that we can use.

Or we can go for all damage here.

Very powerful rams indeed.

I need to teach those Swanships a lesson.

Horsepower.

Spoiler: Armor Plating

Entry-level Armor Plating for our Siege Tower.

I like health, but I want damage too!

Farzana made me put it up here!

Sleeping with the Council gives this mixed health, damage, and horsepower for your Siege Towers.

If you fear the mighty crush damage.

Going all-in damage (not recommended!)

I'm going to show the Romans what their puny Legions do to the Siege Towers.

I don't really like what those woad raiders and war elephants are doing there...

Spoiler: Engineering Accessory

Balance is always good even if it cost a lot more to pay.

Sleep with the League and have the highest damage out of this category.

Sleep with the Legion and have the highest health out of this category.

This Siege Tower need more horsepower!

Geared up now? Shows those pesky Egyptian Siege Towers how inferior they are to the Babylonians and win the heart of Amytis!

 

I mainly talk about how a1 and a2 advisors should be synergizing with your villager production and/or economy
a3 we go for Titus, Farzana, or Ligeria
a4 amytis

For gear slot
Ram head - we want either full dmg (Athenian Iron Forged Ram Head) or Khnum/Aries for building bonus damage. If you can get Ram Head of Solstice that works well as it can give your siege tower a little MS speed. We need to also remember that ram head also boost our ranged damage significantly as well.
Arrow - we remember that siege tower can't crit using its melee ram damage so its crit chance stats are being wasted based on the fact we can't spam enough siege towers to make a crit every attack (and even if we could we would likely kill anything in our path anyway without a crit), so we opt for health, damage, or building bonus damage arrows. We don't really care much about having max range arrow since that's only +2 or +3 attack range on something we can't use on buildings and we can lure enemy units into getting closer to us anyway.
Armor Plating - We prefer this to be health or have situational EHP bonus (like crush armor vs siege), but if you're feeling bold, you can opt for damage and health, we really don't want to do damage-only armor plating since this contradicts one of the pros of siege tower having a super high HP. We're just creating a War Wagon that cost 600 food, 300 wood, and 100 gold at 16-17 population each instead.
Engineering Accessory - Personally can go full health or full damage or a little bit of both (Cedar Beams) as long as your economy can sustain it. I offer that Northern Hold sells an engineering accessory (Rugged Beams) that offer a little bit of health and damage at no extra cost.

I mean... you got Arrows of the Moon which has greater damage and greater building bonus damage. The only thing you're gaining from Arrows of the Solstice is the maximum range which if you had by itself is not that good (22 -> 24)

With Engineer Farzana, you get 22 -> 30 with the arrow but then again this translates to +3 range from the arrow itself at a loss of damage and building bonus damage.

 

Updated that Engineer Farzana is one of the best age 3 slot now.