Mortars are pretty meh, but the industrial era upgrades are very powerful. And they can hit anywhere on the battlefield that you have vision on, unlike crossbows / arquebusiers / line infantry / dragoons / etc that requires direct line of sight. 

I fought one epic siege battle against something like 20-30 longbows with line infantry / dragoons / arquebusiers / upgraded cannons (not artillery, didn't have access to that yet), on a map with a chokepoint and where I had a massive advantage in terrain. I was able to park my cannons safely out of range and cycle my dragoons to keep them alive; pretty much all of my infantry (line infantry w/ some arquebusiers, and maybe 1 or 2 crossbows) died tho lol, b/c a stupid amount of longbows are still capable of killing early modern / industrial infantry, lol. Anyways, the cannons and most of the dragoons survived, and I upgraded the cannons / mortars into industrial / wwi artillery a dozen turns or so later, which is an insanely powerful unit w/ the ability to shoot into battles from off the battle map.

Outside of that, mortars are pretty useful in what they're supposed to be used for, which is as a portable / buildable and more powerful version of siege artillery. They're most useful when fighting against other units with fortifications and/or a terrain advantage, because you can park them out of range and negate whatever advantage a city has with fortifications and terrain.

That said, I only had one war across several playthoughs though where I had early modern / industrial units and was fighting against an AI that could actually fight back :/ 

And that was my first playthough, where I had left the AIs on the eastern continent fairly unmolested for most of the game, and one of them picked english / mughals and thus was able to field massive amounts of longbows. (note: longbows are probably one of the only pre-modern units that can pose a real threat to a gunpowder based army, along w/ maybe massive amounts of mongol horse archers; line infantry and dragoons basically make all pre-modern melee units completely and totally obsolete – and massed artillery, I think, should do pretty much the same to anything pre-industrial)

If you're fighting stacks of swordsmen and/or crossbows with arquebusiers, you really don't need anything else, lol, but modern and probably contemporary warfare almost certainly is dominated by infantry / artillery / cavalry => tanks, if I were to guess, and mortars are the precursor to that in the same way ancient era archers are to crossbows / gunner units.

Anyways, TLDR; if you're fighting against a human (or capable AI) opponent in the full game, mortars might be useful because:

1. they have 8 range and can hit anything you have vision on, and can thus attack in addition to your ranged infantry units
2. they're situationally useful when attacking defenders w/ a terrain / height advantage, fortifications, and other ranged units, and they're useful defensively for the same reasons; range and line of sight makes a really big difference in some cases, but it's entirely, totally terrain dependent. also, mortars are more useful in bigger battles (note: the battle map will increases in size when more armies / reinforcements are attached), b/c you have more room to operate in and that 8-range becomes much more relevant
3. also, mortars / cannons can usually get a bigger height advantage than anything else b/c of their attack range and b/c they don't require direct LOS like gunner units
4. their upgrade (late industrial / wwi era artillery) is insanely powerful, so it's worth building them just to upgrade them later on the cheap
5. lastly, if you do build mortars, they should be added in addition to a solid main army of at least 5-6 units of infantry / cavalry / etc. personally, by late game (~turn 120) I had a few stacks of 5-6 gunner infantry, plus a unit of 3-4 mortars / cannons that'd join in on bigger pitched battles and sieges, and a few independent cav units to scout, raid, and pin stuff

StorytellerDave wrote:

When I finished my first playthrough I noticed that the feedback part asked if I used Mortars. I did not. So in my 2nd run I used them (altough it didn't ask me that question this time).

Anyways here's my feedback. They are irrelevant.

Arquebusiers have basically the same damage and they can attack in melee. Mortars get +4 range and the ability to break walls. The range is irrelevant, you'll rarely ever have to attack from that high a distance and the breaking walls also irrelevant. I did attack proper stone walls in my first siege - It would have taken 3 rounds for the walls to break, however the units inside died WAY before that so what's the point of breaking the walls? In my second siege with mortars there were only fences. I attacked a unit, it survived with a bit of HP, the fences broke completely, however the unit still has the + strength from fortifications and from building cover. So what exactly did my breaking of the fences achieve? Nothing really. I suppose you can now attack that one unit with cavalry which....sure. Maybe that will come in handy to someone at some point, but it's not enough for mortars to be useful. They take an extra research to get too.

In summary- just use Arquebusiers, they're the same unit but cheaper and work in melee fights.

I'm not sure if You were here for one of the earliest OpenDevs with combat scenarios. Japan against Korea I think it was.

The opposing AI side had mortars far in the background of the battlefield. Alot of people, me included, struggled with that one, before figuring out some tactics. The AI's mortars kept picking off the players units one by one, while their melee units kept the players units pretty much unable to reach the mortars. Sure once You figured out the battlefield terrain and learned to "hide" in the woods and "lure" the AI's mortars to come closer, it felt fairly "easy". That was after having repeated the same battle on the same battlefield over and over again until figuring out the tactics. However it took many attempts for many of us. Some even gave up. I have seen videos of experienced 4X gamers just lose that battle and call it a day. 

So I think mortars can be very useful under certain conditions and using the right tactics.

zimmah wrote:

Lord_Funk wrote:

StorytellerDave wrote:

When I finished my first playthrough I noticed that the feedback part asked if I used Mortars. I did not. So in my 2nd run I used them (altough it didn't ask me that question this time).

Anyways here's my feedback. They are irrelevant.

Arquebusiers have basically the same damage and they can attack in melee. Mortars get +4 range and the ability to break walls. The range is irrelevant, you'll rarely ever have to attack from that high a distance and the breaking walls also irrelevant. I did attack proper stone walls in my first siege - It would have taken 3 rounds for the walls to break, however the units inside died WAY before that so what's the point of breaking the walls? In my second siege with mortars there were only fences. I attacked a unit, it survived with a bit of HP, the fences broke completely, however the unit still has the + strength from fortifications and from building cover. So what exactly did my breaking of the fences achieve? Nothing really. I suppose you can now attack that one unit with cavalry which....sure. Maybe that will come in handy to someone at some point, but it's not enough for mortars to be useful. They take an extra research to get too.

In summary- just use Arquebusiers, they're the same unit but cheaper and work in melee fights.

I'm not sure if You were here for one of the earliest OpenDevs with combat scenarios. Japan against Korea I think it was.

The opposing AI side had mortars far in the background of the battlefield. Alot of people, me included, struggled with that one, before figuring out some tactics. The AI's mortars kept picking off the players units one by one, while their melee units kept the players units pretty much unable to reach the mortars. Sure once You figured out the battlefield terrain and learned to "hide" in the woods and "lure" the AI's mortars to come closer, it felt fairly "easy". That was after having repeated the same battle on the same battlefield over and over again until figuring out the tactics. However it took many attempts for many of us. Some even gave up. I have seen videos of experienced 4X gamers just lose that battle and call it a day. 

So I think mortars can be very useful under certain conditions and using the right tactics.

Yeah I remember that one, I loved it, but it really showed how interesting battles can be and how different units have different strengths and weaknesses.

Indeed. It really made me appreciate the complexity this combat system can introduce with all things interacting. Terrain, various unit types, distance, river (which stopped you or the enemy for a turn if you tried to cross, which you could use to your advantage of course, but also be a disadvantage), ZoC/zone of control, woods to hide in, both from sight but also to take cover in from ranged damage etc. 

RNGZero wrote:

Lord_Funk wrote:

I'm not sure if You were here for one of the earliest OpenDevs with combat scenarios. Japan against Korea I think it was.

......

So I think mortars can be very useful under certain conditions and using the right tactics.

I remember that scenario battle as is gave a majority of the community a ton of trouble. Although mortars are not the strongest unit, they are consistently effective at doing their job and apply pressure to the other side. 

I'd love to see a similar type of unit for other situations. 

Agreed.

I also remember @PARAdoxiBLEs incredibly clever tactics in a video he shared in a thread, on how to go through that scenario with Zer0 deaths/losse. A pure genious tactician. As well as a text guide with screenshots on Steam, link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2190896765 :)