How do we calculate the amount of armies worth saved when you use a mortar on it? Do we multiply the amount of armies with the percentage of it hitting?

Chance of failure x 0 + chance of success x reduction x armies on that territory

I'd think, or

chance of success x reduction x armies on that territory

for short
To put in some example data, if the territory has 1M, the mortar reduces by 10% and the success rate is 42%, then the average expected savings is:
0.58 x 0 + 0.42 x 0.1 x 1M = 42k

so thats an expected reduction of 4.2%

are all mortars that bad? cause if thats the case i would rather upgrade a hospital....

I totally ignore them myself.

Paying money to delay capturing territories in that area for 1h per shot for a chance to do only 20% damage is just not enough to bother wasting my time and ￦ on them.

how about if the mortar is adjacent to the second highest stack in the level?

Depends on the cost tbh . . . I've seen some expensive mortars, where the cost of mercs to do the same damage was comparable without the % chance of missing.

BUT if adjacent, I think that gets it 70%? So if the price is right and I don't need that territory asap (for a bonus which gives key market, hospital, merc camp, etc), then it may be smart to use the mortar for that.

BUT . . . let's say it is a key territory to get something, and you pay/wait/fire/Miss, pay/wait/fire/Miss, pay/wait/fire/Miss, pay/wait/fire/Miss . . . yes, unlikely, BUT sooner or later this will happen to someone, same as digging a 1% epic, 99% poor will eventually get you an epic. And when it does happen, that's >4h and who knows how much money wasted, for no gain.

@Shin

Mortars are for now useless. Because of their geographical limitation it makes almost no sense to wait on the money to accumulate, then another hour for them to load, only to discover that in that time you have alredy conquered all the territories around.
Even if mortars are going to be placed in strategical positions next to the big stacks, I doubt it I'll use them:
1. they don't do much damage
2. there is a chance they will just miss
3. You get a legendary tripple strike, which should easily take care of all the bis stacks for you.

I'm starting USA soon. Let's see if I'll change my mind about them

If there were an advancement to bring the hit % up and the cost down, things might change. There is one to increase the damage, but it's a 4-factor computation of time/cost/success%/damage, and currently all factors are poor - takes too long, (most but not all of the loadings) cost too much, misses too often, damage is not enough.

One of the key design issues with mortars is that they are most effective at what they directly border - which is what you need to conquer already to get to the mortar to be able to use it. The best way to benefit from a mortar is to find the cheapest path there in terms of armies required, and maybe even ignore JS at whatever cost that comes at.

If the range were bigger, the chance to hit higher, the delay lower ... then it wouldn't be so limited in use.

I imagine they'd be ok on a first run, before you have a lot of extra mercs to work with- they're one extra way to turn money into saved armies, and on your first run you move slowly enough that waiting an hour to fire isn't a big deal. However, the positioning and cost to conquer still probably need to be adjusted and the miss chance eliminated- there are times when the mortar itself is the highest cost territory in an area. I ran into on mortar in Hardened China that was between two high value targets and actually used that one, but it's been really rare for them to be useful on hardened levels and those should be slower than normal levels and make them more useful...

@krinid

thanks for pointing out more uselessnesses of the mortars!

I imagine they'd be ok on a first run, before you have a lot of extra mercs to work with

If you are on your first run and out of mercs, you're still better of upgrading hospitals and army camps than investing in mortarts.

If you multiply the hit chance with the reduction, you're already far below the average savings i get from my hospitals. And thats ignoring the fact that my hospitals work for free and without a 1h cooldown.

I have ignored all of them I have ran into so far.

RIP sucks to hear that it's useless

It's just the first iteration of mortars . . . I suspect we'll be seeing tweaks in the coming weeks.

Whether it's lower costs, lower load times (what soldier needs an hour to load a mortar anyhow?), larger range, higher damage (actually phase 3 Adv exists for this), higher % hit ratios, etc, I suspect we'll see something, either through base capability, artifacts or advancements. Or maybe another 'special reward' ... there are still lots of levels without Hardened versions, and any of those could be added to get a reward of 'The Bomb' or 'Boom boom baby' or 'Boom chakalaka'.

I think Mortars are the new active artifacts, they will become useful at some point in time when Fizzer improves it enough to give it a fighting chance.

While I agree the mortars are a pretty undesirable feature of the game right now (on par with arena territories for me in terms of disappointment when discovered), I'll add a few notes from the earlier levels. For context, I switched to beating older levels for the mine bonuses after completing Europe 1066 on first ascension (and while waiting for the 5.14 update to be available on IOS).

* The mortars seem to have 100% accuracy for adjacent territories on early levels and are a bit cheaper than using late-game mercenaries (assuming no discount mercenaries advancement investment) on Final Earth and Peloponnesian War.

* On Final Earth, I ended up using it twice, for decent value, though wasn't in danger of running out of mercs.
* For Drakemor's world, the location seemed pretty bad, so it was the one of the last territories I conquered.
* For K-PX I probably could have saved a few minutes to maybe an hour (max) on playtime by using the mortar since I miscalculated and ran out of mercs near the end.

Since I actually have 20% bonus mercs, my takeaway is that the mortars would likely have a non-trivial savings the first time around on certain early levels. Hopefully they'll be improved with time - the 1 hour load time is by far the most annoying aspect from an enjoyment perspective IMO.

Well it shouldn't be long before a new button appears: "Pay 10 coins to finish loading mortar immediately".

suggested improvements for mortars:
1) should be free (or at least much cheaper) to load, and/or load instantly. Currently it cost as much to load a mortar as it would cost you to hire mercenaries to do the same amount of damage, and that has 100% chance of success + you do not have to wait for it!

2) probability to hit should increase with every shot. So for example the first shot has a 10% chance to hit, but if you fire again at the same target the second shot will have a 20% chance, the third a 30% and so on... That would make it a lot more interesting...

3) range should be increased as at the moment that alone makes them worthless, as you have to wait conquering a territory to be able to fire on it! They should be able to fire at least 4-5 more territories away, so that by the time you get there you have had the chance to load and fire them (missing) a couple of times. United with 2) this would make it worth to give it a shot... (pun intended)

4) should not have a limited number of hits or should hit all the time. Why one should be spending money and time to shoot a few times knowing that after missing them all (most likely with the current hit rate of 10-20%) you can not even keep trying?

With all these implemented I think I may consider trying them again...

Cheers!

Edited 8/26/2021 23:04:16

The territories they are on can be ridiculously expensive before you even load one. I'm staring at one thats 1.3B for the territory and 90% of the territories around it are less than half that. Theres one territory within its range thats 1B. They're worthless. Is it fun? I guess but not at that cost.


How about when we get one let us accumulate them just for that level and deploy them where we want. Could use them like an expensive triple strike on a stack at the end of the level. I'd almost be willing to buy a 2billion artillery shell then ;)