r/totalwar • u/Quirky_Attention3230 • 22h ago
Warhammer III Mortars
Why is it when the AI uses mortars they land every shot but when i use them my guys cant hit the broad side of a barn. All the kills they have they got as i ran towards them. got on the mortars pretty quick from there.
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u/Great-Parsley-7359 21h ago
Dude your army is shit tier
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u/Quirky_Attention3230 16h ago
Garrison, and yes. but also the mortars landed every shot. They dont do that when I have them. xD
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u/Great-Parsley-7359 15h ago
Bc you fight against faster units? Your mortars are lower in level (level = accuracy)?
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u/Tadatsune 21h ago
I hear this complaint all the time - ie, "The AI dodges all my artillery" - but I really haven't experienced it myself despite playing on VH. Yes, sometimes the AI will dodge an artillery round or a spell, but if you pick your targets well you should hit a lot more often than not.
I wonder if you aren't picking your targets well?
Mortars in particular have a high arc of fire, so they're especially bad against fast moving targets... but that's how it should be. You're looking to hit slower moving, high body-count infantry units in concentration: that means, you don't aim for independently moving units, but rather for the front line of a mass of oncoming troops, so even if you miss the first unit, you should hit whatever's behind them. Also, like with AoE direct damage spells, you should take advantage of units that are engaged, and therefore stationary. Infantry locked in melee have a tough time pulling out (unless there is a second unit there to hold the enemy and allow them to withdraw), so they're excellent targets. Enemy ranged troops that are busy firing on your guys are also often too slow to react, and will have trouble dodging artillery fire.
On the receiving end, try to spread your troops out and keep them moving if you can. Erratically change troop direction when enemy artillery fires. Lead with faster moving troops to draw fire. A large group of bunched-up infantry moving in a predictable line is easy pickings for enemy artillery.
I do wish that we still had access to "loose formation" but alas...
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u/Ratiasu The throng is mustard! 20h ago
Arty dodging is a thing, and happens 100% of the time, but only with floaty projectiles. Grudgethrowers and mortars are very affected, whereas cannons seem to be fine.
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u/Tadatsune 20h ago
I've racked up hundreds of kills in a single battle with doom rockets, which use mortar-type indirect firing arcs. I've also nailed powerful single targets with the AP rocket. I've rarely had it miss... yet this forum is convinced that the doom rocket sucks because you can't hit anything with it (oddly, whether can't hit single targets or infantry seems to change with the poster). Sorry, but this just doesn't match my experience.
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u/MasterStannisSupreme 17h ago
I found the ai dodges more if you actively aim at them, but I’ve not noticed the ai dodging as much as I’ve seen on here
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u/Ratiasu The throng is mustard! 8h ago
I can't speak about doom rockets. I nearly never use them apart from my most recent campaign where I used it on lizardmen artillery dinos, with great success. Grudge throwers and mortars, though. They do. I could go into a campaign right now, and make it happen 100% guaranteed.
Obviously, you're free to disbelieve it. I've got thousand of hours playing only gunpowder factions, so I know what I know.
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u/Tadatsune 7h ago
OK, man. I just loaded up a custom battle, Empire vs. VCounts. I gave myself 2 mortars and filled the enemy army out with mostly chaff - skeletons and zombies. Relatively flat map, with a little bit of a hill for the mortars to fire from.
Result?
The first battery got 260 kills before it was overrun. The second battery kept firing for almost the entire battle, scoring 370 kills.
Now granted, there were pretty ideal conditions for mortars - elevated position, clear LOS, high concentrations of low armor infantry, etc. But I think this rather definitively proves that you can indeed hit targets with mortars, if you pick your targets right.
I must admit that I was completely unable to hit anything moving, but I chalk this up to the fact the enemy used a single line formation. I still maintain that I could have gotten some kills if the enemy had used some sort of formation with any sort of depth to it, though I admit it was disappointing that I couldn't seem to hit any moving skeletons either manually or via autotargeting. There wasn't much in the way of "dodging" that I could see, FYI... just a failure to of shots to connect because the enemy line was so thin.
But this just goes back to my point about choosing targets. You need to pick what you are likely to hit. All of those kills took place after the enemy was engaged in melee and thus stationary. I guess the Nuln gunnery school needs to start teaching a course on how to lead a moving target, or something, but at the end of the day, this failure was largely due to the enemy's single line formation, which is highly disadvantageous for mortars.
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u/Quirky_Attention3230 16h ago
Its not them dodging per se, its my arty just straight missing. the mortar shell will land around the unit, but they hit every shot smack in the middle of the unit.
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u/Tadatsune 15h ago
They were supposed to have fixed that thing where your ranged troops would aim for the corner of an enemy block instead of the center, but their "fixes" doesn't always hold in my experience. Not sure if that's part of your issue, but in any case the best advice I can give is still aim for the front & center of the enemy army to maximize hit potential.
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u/Ill_Ad2480 19h ago
Skill issue. Also you are not beating that army.
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u/Quirky_Attention3230 16h ago
I wasn't trying to win, just kill the arty. How should I improve my own mortar activities? cause my guys always just whiff.
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u/NotBerti 22h ago
You are questioning why you lost running with a poor settlement garrison towards guns and mortars?
You cannot win. The heroes alone can beat that shit.
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u/Quirky_Attention3230 16h ago
I wasn't trying to win, i know that, fought it to kill the arty. the post was about the AI nailing every mortar shell while when i use them the shells cant hit anything.
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u/Moriwara_Inazume 22h ago
It’s a half stack of ranged units, you can’t really win them with just one dogs and bats