This is interesting. Does the AI know how to use it?

Brilliant. Thank you.

I may finally use these, good job.

Maybe trebuchet could gain a fire bomb on gold medal? But its range was less of that of the regular attacks. I agree with that the rapid reload is weird for the builder. Maintenance is fun though.

There is a lot of strategy games with this kind of mechanic, where a siege weapon kind of unit become imobile/very slow to be able to use it's main attack. Siege tanks and lurker in Starcraft 1&2, trebuchet in Age of Empire 2 & 4, canons in Age of Empire 3, Dvar artillery in planetfall...
It's just a mechanic that work well both thematically and game design-wise

>if the trebuchet has to be settup, then it cannot move but fire at great range

It's similar to how Dwarven "kat'usha' works in AoW Planetfall. Except it can move but loses +2 Range buff and must spend whole turn to get it again.

Great suggestion for the trebuchet, that immediately made me think about Age of Empires 4, which Ive seen a couple casts of recently :)

I like the range change on the trebuchet, but rather than a cumbersome trait and reload, I think it would be better if the trebuchet has to be settup, then it cannot move but fire at great range (and maybe increased defense).

But I don't like the changes on builder and battering ram.
The builder is already a very powerfull unit when you know how to use it (setup forts for structures and future colonies, watchtower for vision, roads to ease the supply line). I can agree for the maintenance skill, but not for giving it a combat role as it's vulnerability is the treadoff of such a unit.

The battery ram is a proper T2 unit made for siege. It has a powerfull 1 hit attack that you can't retaliate against (though it can't retaliate), and it has a lot of HP and bonus against ranged attacks. Offensivelly, it is a very hard to kill unit that can serve as cover for your melee unit, and in defense it is a great unit to place where your gate was after it got destroyed.

I havent played AOW2, so I dont know ^^ sure I could add Fire Bomb to trebuchet, question is how to balance that

Can you recreate AoW2 catapult and add Fire bomb to Trebuchet?

T1 Ram planned for the next version of Balance Mod. Sometimes I build it if I need some big meat just next turn or really want to crash the gates.

Trebuchet is not popular among me just because it's machine and there's no effective way to repair it while in the wilds (Dread hero with repair machine but will you have them or not). As defense unit it's good enough.