First,the devs give them the barrage damage in the last year.Some of our friends think this is a buff to them,but I think this is a nerf.Just because this damage will make Mortars focus on units not buildings,and this damage does little use.I think the devs will not cancel the barrage damage or make the AI focus on the building,just because if they want to,they have already done it before.
So the only way is to make their barrage more useful and more reasonable.
I have 3 advices:
1.give them 1.3X bonus to infantry,but -0.1 bonus against Cavalry,Shock infantry,artillery and villager.
or
2.give Mortar 40 basic damage,Captured Mortar 32 basic damage,Morutaru 25 basic damage,but -0.1 bonus against Cavalry,Shock infantry,artillery and villager.
or
3.give them 1.5X bonus to infantry,but let Mortar cost 5 pop,Captured Mortar cost additional 100 gold,Morutaru cost 4 pop.
I think this will not make them too strong to break the balance.
And some of our friends said that will make falconet and horse artillery useless,I don’t think so.Because the Mortar’s low fire rate,low deployment and low fire rate can’t let them take over the infantry gun.For the last I want to say,the infantry gun is also effective to the buildings,but no one says they are break the balance.Lol.
Why european ones higher?? Captured cost more pop slots and these civs lack proper anti inf artillery. It should be the other way around, specially vs skirmishers
I think there is a simpler solution and that is to bring its area damage back to 7 or 6, back when sweden was the only 1 that could attack units with mortars though back then their base barrage damage was 40 its now 30. Its still low damage but higher dps when microing on large groups of units more so low health units(skirm/bows/light infantry) even with its 30 damage.
Now that i think about it more, a new and unique role can be opened up by mortars as a massive aoe(area of effect) low damage with a dot(damage over time) effect that can be given a debuff with a card called “Shell shock” that slows or stuns units.
Make the damage even lower (15base damage or less, with no negative mod) and just increase the area damage to like 10. As with 3 mortars with micro can cover a whole battle instead of bringing a falconet (a more focused dps unit vs a large wide spread damage LOW but CONSTANT damage). Just an idea, as i don’t think the dev team is going to take barrage away and might as well in brace it with something new. I like to think of it as a RPG game you have your melee dps/tank up front then your range dps then casters(artillery) one is casting fire ball(Meteor) and the other is channeling Rain of fire(aoe constant damage).
My proposal:
-Make mortars prioritize attacking buildings
-Add a card that increases (a little) the damage (and maybe area of ​​effect) of Mortars and Culverins against infantry (and could also deliver 1 Mortar and 1 Culverin). With this card the Mortars could have the same damage and AOE that the Swedish Mortars had with the “Barrage” card. Perhaps this is an additional effect that can be added to the “Advanced Artillery” card.
I like the idea of making mortars only attack buildings again. They’re terrible at attacking troops and they shouldn’t ever do it. What might be cool is if they get a large splash damage bonus to units - so if you have troops near a fort or walls being attacked by a mortar they all take splash damage. That would kind of get across the idea of siege mortars breaking forts and their garrisons.