@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 ;)

I'm currently doing the hardened levels and as I do them for the first time, I try to get all the tech achievements. Therefore, at times i'm just waiting for my smelters and in these instances, I tried out the mortars for fun. Once, I'm pretty sure I loaded a mortar where every territory in reach was already conquered by the time I started loading the mortar. As I said, I clicked on them just for fun. But the game let me load it to tell me an hour later that there are no valid targets. Not exactly ideal, or is it? Haven't reported as a bug yet because I'm not totally sure whether I might have overlooked a territory in reach and weren't able yet to check this for sure in my current level. Anyone can confirm or disprove this?

I clicked on one towards the end of AsiaPD that was nowhere near an unconquered territory, I mean at least 30 away if not more because I was curious of what you just pointed out. It looked like it wouldve gladly soaked me 600M or so to shoot at nothing but solid colors. Should rename mortars Snake Oil Salesman lol. I just ignore them now. May be enhanced in future updates but their just something shiny to to entice you to spend high risk low reward as far as I can see. Kinda like Roulette.

Yep, it lets you do this. It also lets you IM a merc camp with 1 army (but not 0) or FB if you have 1 territory (but not 0) left.

But when you do this, you can clearly see that no territories are available right? Why would you load it?

That said, maybe he'll adjust it so it puts up a warning ... but maybe there will be a Tech or Adv in the future to expand range, which means maybe at the time you load it's useless, but 20 mins later after getting a Tech it would have been nice to have it available and not have to load from that time.

But as it stands now, no Tech, No Adv, and even if there were, the hit % would be <20% so No thanks.

I still say let me throw them in my backpack for later. If you dont use them you lose them. IMO that kinda flows with the way the game is designed, plus throws a little kink in it by not carrying over to the next level like powers or digs.

I missed my first attack with 70% odds. not giving mortars anymore money

Would love to see a frag grenade added that would decrease adjoining territories to the one hit. So maybe 20% on the target, 10% for all adjoining territories, 5% for all the ones touching those. Thoughts?

Missiles.

agreed i wasted 2-3 tries missed everytime said fizzer that :P

How about when we get one let us accumulate them just for that level and deploy them where we want.

Now that's a brilliant idea. Essentially it's a Power that's limited to use on the current level.

The are some basic usability issues needing addressing too. I'm on Android app so I'll be curious if these are different in another platform.
+if I'm in my level when the mortar loads, I get no notice, no anything, just gotta remember to check.
+if I'm not actively playing when mortar loads, I get a notice, but still have to remember where it is.
+I think a very basic (and free, gdammit) fix would be for the mortar to glow when it's primed to fire.