I tried a few 4X to not die idiot : Nerf Mortar Inf, for the sake of the 99%.

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    • I tried a few 4X to not die idiot : Nerf Mortar Inf, for the sake of the 99%.

      I'm still trembling a bit.

      You people know that generally, 4X are played by competitive and highly trained players only when they want to relax a bit from maps where they may be threatened. Recently, though, i was dragged in those maps by one of my officers, as per to learn to play "chill", stop to worry so much about putting alarms every 20 minutes at night, this kind of thing. I played one with my officer, and a few on my side, solo.

      I must admit that the relaxing effect was pleasant. It was pretty cool to accept to willingly play like an idiot and still be pretty much successful with it. In 1X, you meet as much incompetent players (a bit less, though, from my 2-3 of a kind experience), but you often need to be a bit serious about your offensive commitment to destroy them (the odds they will react are higher. In 4X, 1 hour real time and they are out). I even accepted the principle that "hey, maybe the guy will gold spam 100 strike fighters in the night and destroy you" without feeling i should work hard to prevent it. 4X are quick, so hey, if you die, no problem.

      However, i've remarked two things.

      1°) The level. God damnit the level. I thought X1 were the bottom of the average skill of players, god was i wrong. At least in X1, when you encounter someone with a 3 K/D, you can reliably assess that he at least learnt to farm noobs. In 4X, K/D is even more meaningless than it is in X1.

      I find it mind-boggling to say that i've INCREASED my K/D in EARLY GAME against COALITIONS from ALLIANCES, whose individual members where between 3 and 4 K/D. Happened in each single one. Should i play 4X, it would be a easy way for me to farm up to 15 to 20 K/D. After all, K/D is made to brag, right ?

      I of course know that if i had been pitted against a coalition of people from alliances i know to be trained and play challenges, like YE, Carthage, Redwolf, etc, i would have been crushed ---> they know how to play, to put it simply, and i am nothing spectacular. Just know the true basics of the game, and if you are 2 against me, you beat me, simple. In the same way, i know that if i encountered a proficient 4X player, exactly like in 1X, things would have been much different. I'm merely speaking of "the 99%"

      It's however a supernatural experience to see that at day 6 (ingame), if you decided to do something more elaborated than Motorised Infantry, MBT, Strike Fighters, or Corvettes, you are potentially the ONLY ONE on 64.

      Radar ? for pantsies.
      ASFs ? pffft, what good for ?
      Helicopters ? Blaaah i prefer Strike Fighter
      Artillery ? What is artillery ?

      Again, i find it ludicrous to be able, WITH FULL NIGHTS OF SLEEP, and a questionable commitment on the map, to kill 70 units between day 7 and 10, with the same group of artillery/gunship,without coalitions EVER even thinking "hey... we are the economical superpower, how about we beat him with diversity ?"

      Nay. And i asked.

      "Infantry is good because it allows to conquer quickly" (Sic)
      "I don't use ASF because i bomb Airports so i don't need air defense" (Sic)
      "MBT are good to help infantry attack cities" (Sic)
      "Heavy Bombers are the best air unit because they are very strong against infantry and have a long range". (Sic)
      "Artillery is too weak and i prefer ballistic missiles" (why not, on this one. 4X have a different pace, and elite bombers with ballistic missiles in point blank are a threat to respect)
      "Railgun is enough for my artillery and anti-air" (Sic)

      Those are the 3 to 4 K/D i'm referring to. There is ONE strategy, shared by 99% of players, and it's :

      "Infantry Rush throughout your provinces while you are not defending yourself".

      The counter strategy applied by 99% of players is :

      "Counter Infantry Rush throughout his provinces while he is not defending yourself".

      Oh, and there is the variant : "Go by the sea to attack his capital !" (attempted 8 times over 10, but it's the same in 1X)

      No wonder we see more and more 3-4 K/D that seem, for reasons unfathomable to challenge players, ignorant about basic mechanisms of the game.

      All this rant to bring to a single point.


      2°) Nerf Mortar Infantry.

      Several 4X players convinced me with reasoning and data that the Mortar Infantry deserved to be nerfed, even if there was a debate because (and i was amongst them) : "Mortar Inf, GOOD ? You must be joking."

      Mortar Inf is not good (and is not designed to be), but by the law of chaos, it is "exactly" one of the most unbalanced units for the overwhelming majority of players in this specific game mode.

      - Everyone spams inf.
      - 4X are 4 times more unforgiving about "letting your troops under artillery fire"
      - 4X players log in average once a day, which is once every 4 days ingame.

      Of course, artillery gets the same result than Mortar Inf, but as virtually nobody does them in the first place, nobody complains. If people were aware of the damages Artilleries can do, there would be thread about nerfing artillery. But they are not. And they spam max lvl infantry that is de facto a mini artillery.

      The range of the mortar infantry is ridiculous, and it's why we assumed the mortar was really not a big deal : 20 range ---> just rush the guy lol, if you don't have your own artillery nearby anyway.

      But in a context where nobody does Artillery, and where you log once every day ?

      A single mortar infantry may deal ~432 soft damages on the entrenched group, something equivalent to a lvl 2-3 ICBM, in the time span a player will react in average. And of course, it's about Infantry rush with stacks of 10 out there.



      I already conveyed the concerns of the players of 4X pertaining to the mortar inf, and i did receive feedback it was considered. Now, though, i add my voice to the choir after doing a field study of 4X ^^.

      Mortar Infantry is very clearly "meta" in 4X at least from and against the 99% that don't have the time to react, nor the knowledge to do artillery. Having something meta isn't problematic, but i find it dangerously close to a one trick pony thing. In X1, sure, MRLs are late meta, but if you do them early, you're dead, and they have several counters that don't rely on activity.


      So, to not die idiot : did i miss something in my 4X, about how people play and behave ?
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • In a X1, the usual night is naps of 20 minutes for decent latency and reaction time.

      In a 4X, i don't bother trying to sleep by slices of 5 minutes. Hence, i accept i will not be on the map for 2-3 hours IRL. It's a bit stressing in the beginning, but once you get used to it, it's very relaxing. After all, i was worried on the premise that if i was sleeping, my opponents weren't. It isn't the case at all.

      To compare it to a X1, not connecting for 8 to 12 hours is ludicrous.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • I think part of the reason nearly next to no one is using artillery is no one using radar, and without radar every bit of range you have more than the sightrange is not very useful and they are not using radar because that is the most useful when paired with artillery and only useful against inf spam from lvl 3 onwards.
      a.k.a. jem and and eres
    • I think one of the main reasons is lack of activity. If you only log on once or twice a day for a short time each, that makes Strike Fighters the most appealing unit use - because you get to see the results with your own eyes. They're fast and they have good range: you can log in, choose a target, and watch the attack. If you're using artillery, it's going to take several hours for them to get into position and you might well not be logged in anymore to witness the battle when they arrive.

      I think that's probably also why people tend to spam tanks and infantry, then give them long, zig-zaggy waypoint movement orders through their opponent's territory (which is really easy to defend against if you are more active).

      People who are active and still play like that, though... I have no idea!
    • GeneralZod31 wrote:

      there is no reason you need to log in every 20 minutes during a 1X game.
      Someone on the Internet is wrong and I need to correct them!!!!! :D

      xkcd.com/386/

      It's 100% true that you don't *need* to log in every 20 minutes for 30-40 days straight to be successful in a 1X game, but there are often periods (some are short, some are longer) when it's valuable to do exactly that (or to just and watch the screen with one eye for 2-3 hours).

      Maybe it would have been more accurate for you to write, "There is no reason for me [GeneralZ] to log in every 20 minutes during a 1X game."?