The Ancient machine gun: Carroballistae

[Thucydides]

Proviso: ok, I know this will get the blood rising in all those that do not want a complex military model in a city building game. Point noted. So lets just have an autoresolve function if you wish to skip combat. I will note that all of the earlier Caesar games had an extensive military component, and in Caesar II a tactical level link to Cohort (or was it Cohort II?).

Suggestion: The Romans had a great piece of torsion artillery, the Carroballistae. This was essentially a giant arrow loaded with one metre long iron bolts that could fire with lethal force up to 500 metres. Each century of a legion had a carroballisae that enmass could devastate an enemy line of infantry. It would be wicked to be able to build or buy carroballistae in the game, taking into account the relative expense of the machine (i.e. the player will be building them in very small numbers at great expense, with the possibility of a great payoff).

[Thucydides]

Suggestion: Each legion had ten onagers, a catapult able to throw stones of between 50-70 kilogrammes a hundred metres of so to hammer into walls. Make them even more expensive and difficult to build than the Carroballistae but lets still be able to build them if there is a tempting seige scenario to go with the weapon...

[Nighteyes]

Originally Posted by Thucydides

Suggestion: tempting seige scenario to go with the
weapon...

Sort of like one of Caesars Governers has turned roug and he wants you to rout him out and send him back to Rome for jugment, and then rule in his stead

[Thucydides]

From about 3000BC (some say even earlier) the Sardinians began building Nuraghe. Nuraghe are massive stone towers, sometimes found alone, sometimes found in protective clumps linked by walls. Nuraghe resemble nothing less than medieval keeps. Sardinia is covered with them, and some 8000 survive even now. It is thought that Nuraghe served a blend of purposes, for culture (worship), governance (a Sardinian version of a Forum) and, most importantly, defense (yes, castles).

The Sardinians stopped building Nuraghe when Rome occupied Sardinia. But wouldn't it make an interesting building in Caesar IV. The gamer would build Nuraghe to ensure the goodwill of the Sardinians, and they can serve all three purposes (cultural/governance and defensive). So castles in Caesar IV!

[prof786]

would nuraghe be the equivalent of the seige tower used in the crusades?

[sitearm]

Attached are 3 Carroballistae, 3 Onigers, and 3 Nuraghe.

* I think the fellow in the first Oniger photo with the beard and sword is Thucydides? *

Originally Posted by Thucydides

Suggestion: The Romans had a great piece of torsion artillery, the Carroballistae. This was essentially a giant arrow loaded with one metre long iron bolts that could fire with lethal force up to 500 metres.

Originally Posted by Thucydides

Suggestion: Each legion had ten onagers, a catapult able to throw stones of between 50-70 kilogrammes a hundred metres of so to hammer into walls.

Originally Posted by Thucydides

Nuraghe are massive stone towers, sometimes found alone, sometimes found in protective clumps linked by walls.

[Thucydides]

Originally Posted by sitearm

Attached are 3 Carroballistae, 3 Onigers, and 3 Nuraghe.

* I think the fellow in the first Oniger photo with the beard and sword is Thucydides? *

Bloody great photos!

Smiling at the "Is that Thucydides?" jibe... I'm not Greek, not fat, have no beard and am blond but otherwise close...

[Thucydides]

Originally Posted by prof786

would nuraghe be the equivalent of the seige tower used in the crusades?

Here is a relevant link on the Nuraghe. As you can see from the photos that Sitearm posted, they are pretty impressive structures.

http://www.sardegna.com/code/archeol...d/11/LINGUA/EN

[prof786]

wow. catapults and watch tower fortressess.
so did romans ever had anything like the siege towers.

[Thucydides]

Originally Posted by prof786

wow. catapults and watch tower fortressess.
so did romans ever had anything like the siege towers.

yes they did Prof, and highly elaborate ones at that. I'll post a little more on this later.

[Thucydides]

When Demetrius Poliorcetes besieged Salamis, in Cyprus, he ordered the Helepolis to be built... meaning "the taker of cities." Its form was that of a square tower, each side being 45 metres high and 25 metres wide. It rested on four wheels, each four metres high. It was divided into nine stories, the lower of which contained machines for throwing great stones, the middle large catapults for throwing spears, and the highest, other machines for throwing smaller stones, together with smaller catapults. It was manned with 200 soldiers, besides those who moved it by pushing the parallel beams at the bottom.

At the siege of Rhodes, 306 BC, Demetrius employed an helepolis of still greater dimensions and more complicated construction. Besides wheels it had casters, so as to admit of being moved laterally as well as directly. Its form was pyramidal. The three sides which were exposed to attack, were rendered fire-proof by being covered with iron plates. In front each story had port-holes, which were adapted to the several kinds of missiles, and were furnished with shutters that could be opened or closed at pleasure, and were made of skins stuffed with wool. Each story had two broad flights of steps, the one for ascending, the other for descending.

The Romans adopted this technology and improved it by adding battering rams, as well as machines for throwing spears and stones. For example, Rome used helepolis to destroy the walls of Jerusalem.

Constructing a helepolis would have required an enormous investment for the time. In Caesar IV, perhaps the gamer could be tasked with building a settlement in Judea to construct a helepolis to batter the walls of Jerusalem?

[Thucydides]

The aries, or battering ram, was often a vital piece of seige equipment deployed by the Romans. The idea was a much older one, the Greeks and the Macedonians both making use of aries in their seige warfare.

The use of the aries was further aided by placing the frame in which it was suspended upon wheels, and also by constructing over it a wooden roof, so as to form a "testudo", which protected the besieging party from the defensive assaults of the besieged. The beam of the aries was often of great length, e.g. 25, 35, or even 40 metres. The design of this was both to act across an intervening ditch, and to enable those who worked the machine to remain in a position of comparative security. A hundred men, or even a greater number, were sometimes employed to strike with the beam.

And I can not resist adding a quote from Thucydides (the real one that wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian War":

Discovering this the Peloponnesians twisted up clay in wattles of reed and threw it into the breach formed in the mound, in order to give it consistency and prevent its being carried away like the soil. Stopped in this way the Plataeans changed their mode of operation, and digging a mine from the town calculated their way under the mound, and began to carry off its material as before. This went on for a long while without the enemy outside finding it out, so that for all they threw on the top their mound made no progress in proportion, being carried away from beneath and constantly settling down in the vacuum. But the Plataeans fearing that even thus they might not be able to hold out against the superior numbers of the enemy, had yet another invention. They stopped working at the large building in front of the mound, and starting at either end of it inside from the old low wall, built a new one in the form of a crescent running in towards the town in order that in the event of the great wall being taken this might remain, and the enemy have to throw up a fresh mound against it, and as they advanced within might not only have their trouble over again, but also be exposed to missiles on their flanks. While raising the mound the Peloponnesians also brought up engines against the city, one of which was brought up upon the mound against the great building and shook down a good piece of it, to the no small alarm of the Plataeans. Others were advanced against different parts of the wall but were lassoed and broken by the Plataeans; who also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine, and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it fell with a run and snapped off the nose of the battering ram.

[sitearm]

Apparently the Helepolis idea "caught on"... see pictures of original and later versions below.

Originally Posted by Thucydides

When Demetrius Poliorcetes besieged Salamis, in Cyprus, he ordered the Helepolis to be built... meaning "the taker of cities."