The only other way to make them effective is use them so your melee can exit door and damage the enemy ram. Well, nice tactic, punishes careless players, but it is only time consuming and annoying.
On live it was funnier. You could repair it, but there was a special cannon (make it available at r4/r5 keeps) that prevented oil repair. Just a thought.
Rams are buggy, rams are exploitable. A player can screw the attacker by allowing the ram to die, not swing, missplace it etc. Maybe allow people to attack doors like in older times? I know this will make it easy. And ofc, hitting a castle gate with a sword and bow is NOT REALISTIC. But, if we wanna be realistic, cannons destroyed castle doors much easier than rams. There were siege towers, ladders, actually every kind of siege machine one can think of. So, just to save us from the boring waithammer, can you give us more options to attack doors?
About doors. People caged should not able to use doors. Caged goes for champions challenge morale 1.

