Hi. Ethiopia main here. I don’t see any benefit in sending Sebastopol Mortars and I think they are so worthless that they are actually bugged. A few patches back their damage got nerfed (to 300 damage from 500) to prevent the 1 Sebastopol Mortar card in Age III from being OP, but their damage was supposed to return to normal (500) in Age IV. Instead, it just gets buffed by 25% which makes it a measly 375. Let’s compare the SM with other cannons below, and remember as they are an Age IV cannon technically, they are best compared to the Heavy Cannon.
Sebastopol Mortar- 375 attack (Age IV) (6 ROF) extremely slow, very expensive, can’t be made in factories, the infinite shipment card costs 600 influence (and a card) after the first send. It doesn’t even have more HP than the cannons below. Their siege attack range is 34 compared to a mortar with 40 and it has significantly less siege attack. 2 mortars costs 900 and 1 SM costs 1,000 influence. Why would anyone choose the SM?
Papal Bombard- 430 attack (7 ROF)- has Deflection (!!!) and with card, Holy Fire. This cannon is considered relatively weak from what I know so it being superior to the SM says something.
Heavy Cannon- 600 attack vs infantry (6 ROF)- free, can be made in factories, not too slow, very powerful (literally wins games). Same AOE (4) as an SM, same HP, higher speed. AND it’s affected by cards. The SM isn’t even affected by Italian Firearms.
Falconet (Age III)- 300 attack vs infantry (4 ROF). 2 of these costs 1,000 influence, the same as 1 SM. for 2 SMs I can make 4 Falconets and so on. Falconets that are not even upgraded to Field Guns are a better deal than the SM! After 20 seconds with a ROF of 4, a single Falc will do 1,500 damage. An SM will do 1,250 damage.
Field Gun- Higher attack than the SM, for half the cost.
Great Bombard- 500 attack (8 ROF)- a whopping 5 AOE, free, can be made in factories.
When the African Royals first came out, the AOE team made a tweet saying, “What is your favorite unit and why is it the Sebastopol Mortar?” This was my favorite unit, and yeah maybe it could be “lamed” in Age III, but why make it utterly worthless in age IV? It’s Ethiopia’s special unit much like the Great Bombard is to the Ottos or the Gatling Gun is to the Americans, and it absolutely needs to be fixed. I can almost hear people laughing behind their monitors as they focus fire by slow firing SM.
My proposal is simple; correct the Age IV damage to 500 base attack. Age III I don’t really care (although currently that Age III shipment is not even as good as 2 falconets but there’s a lot of things wrong with Ethiopia).
