I wouldl ike to start a debate over this subject. Personally, apart from being the key to the Heavy Catapult, I see no use in this apart from killing perfectly useful villagers. If you use siege weapons to knock them down (in DM) you can defend attacks from other units to save the towers. Also you don't have to retreat once their army comes. OK, 25 food is cheap but surely massed towers would make easy work of them. Let's say the enemy send 50 villagers over. Every ballista tower shot is 20+1. Without jihad, that's 2 shots = 1 villagers. With it, that's 4 shots = 1 villagers. Roughly 10 villagers should die to 15 towers on the way due to obstacles. Then they start attacking. Their army comes, neutralizes the villagers and it shouldn't be too difficult to massacre villagers with scythes/elephants before they even reach the towers. Villagers do take time to train too.
CenturionZ_1
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