It depends on lots of factors in the game, but Cats/Heavy Cats are far more less powerful now. The best civ to have them is Sumerian for sure with a more rapid fire rate. Cats vs Cats and Hittites are better on this occasion.
I'm beginning to see a change now in weapons of mass destruction, Helepolis are more rampant nowadays. What is cool is that you need Cats to destroy, which would mean almost the dissapearance of Cats if they were not that good against Helos. Priests are another good weapon against Helos.
Beside that, not much get to a pack of Helepolis and they destroy everything so fast is down right scary. Sure Helepolis don't have splash damage but you target the first incoming unit, and you let them fire as they please after that, targeting what may get too close. You don't lose "extra" damage this way like doing 800 pts of damage to one unit.
Last night in a game, I played a 2v2 with Vidguy, Mack and ChuftCapn of the DOA Clan. Random civs on a gigantic narrows/pop 75/stone age start/High ressources. Vid was Egyptian, I was Greek vs Mack (Choson) and Chuft (Hittite). Again I like those Narrows maps, it turned out to be a crescent shape continental land mass. If you will, there was water all around the map like a continental map, there was a sea in the middle like a meditteranean map except the connection of this "ring" was broken.
Egyptian and Choson were facing each other and the Greeks and Hittites had the ends of the crescent.
To cut the story short, I went Helepolis and Heavy Cavs mostly. Helepolis were trashing everything and cavs would go at the Hittites Cats turning around them and having fun. To be economically efficient, At one time I was sending one cav at a time and controlling it around the cats and buildings. Rocks were falling everywhere on them and buildings.
Chuft had to use Chariot Archers too because of the Egyptian Priests of Vid. In all that confusion, he managed to convert quite alot of cats also. Egyptian Dumbos were efficient too at charging them under all this confusion. Besides a few disembarkment and sneak attacks (Chuft and I had towered the hell out of our part of the map because of this so it was hard to do, we had to meet on the land with combined armies. We managed to push them back several times and the border was shifting on their part of the map, which was cool. We managed to steal some gold and stone in the process. We were trading at the bottom of the map also because gold would get scarce very fast (I think it was 2 goldmines/players for a total of 8).
In the AOE days, the Hittites Cats would have splattered everything on their way, but they were very inefficient last night. Chuft kept building them only because I was sending waves of 20+ Helepolis.
Helepolis worry me more than cats presently. Cats can be dealt easily with. One deadly combo is surely the engineered full access to siege workshop of Romans, Greeks and Minoans. Assyrian have full access but no Engineering. Helos and HCats make a nice "partner" in a team let me tell you that.
To finish the story, this game would never end, and an awful lot of ressources went into units and attacks and gaining and losing grounds slowly. Any weak spots were covered everywhere (Chuft made a killer disembarkment on my side but I managed to kick him out. Wonder looked hazardous to both teams after chatting after the game, but we decided to go that way, both teams and surprisingly enough AT THE SAME TIME. I didn't heard the sound of my building wonder because it was overlapped by the wonder sound of the enemy. I filled up all the side of the wonder with builders but theirs must have been more ready. They finished with a 125 years advantage or so, so WE had to go wonderbusting.
We decided to go across the sea and not through the terrain that had seen so many deaths. Vid cleared the map and we moved our armies in 4-5 Heavy Transports to land near the wonder. We made our way there through alot of fighting but my bunch of Helos died miserably. Naturally, it was tower hell around the wonder BUT those #$%^%$ Choson Ballista Towers can reach the Helepolis. Game over. :^(
This game lasted almost 2 hours with about no breaks at all during the game. It was one of the best game I played recently. The timeline at the end game was equally divided between the colors. Very rarely I see stalemates lasting that long where you always attack or defend during all the game. Wonders was the only way to go at the end.
Besides Catapults and priests, in an evenly match where ressources is available to both sides, what can you do against Helepolis? I didn't go through Mathematical figures or test in the scen editor because it is not always how it happens in the game, but pretty much everything else seems doom.
Armoured Elephants (Persian preferably, maybe Carthaginians with extra HPs)? Dunno also about Academy (Fast Greeks, High HPs Carthaginian or extra-shielded Macedonians). Cat triremes are okay when Helepolis must go near the water so watching shallows and other areas like that is a good option with even having them attack ground there.
At least we have a scissor-paper-rock with the siege weapons. Cats don't cut it as before. Helos destroy everything. you need Cats for the Helos.
IF you have a civ that get Helos and goes against a Stonie civ only (and worse with no engineering), well it is pretty clear what plan of action to follow. On the other hand, if you're the unlucky one, better finish this off in Bronze and forget about Ironing. You spend all your ressources in a bronze war because if it goes Iron, you better end this quickly or be very agressive so he don't spend 1000 wood and 1500 food on Helos. Ballistas are dangerous, but not as Helos.
It's only a matter of time. Eventually, you'll see far more Helos in ROR than in AOE.
Angel Omnivac