I'm sick of massed mortar batteries...

[therifleman]

It come to a point where if both sides have mortars, a 1 hour minute mortar duel ensues, in which eventually one side's mortars knocks out the other sides'. Their combat effectivness is one big illusion, but everyone seems to just throw them into their army out of fear that their opponent will mortar them to death, if they don't first.

I think MP gameplay would improve if mortars were given a range nerf. Just enough so they aren't able to shoot into the opposing deployment zone right off the bat. It would make it much more of a defensive weapon, and it would put an end to mortar duels.

I rarely use them at this point. I remember one game where I was French against Russians. Russian guy thought he was being so clever, setting his 16 mortars up on an elevated hill behind a wall of stakes and infantry facing me until my 3 cav units snuck up to his lines through the woods and flanked him. To put it less elequently, his his mortars got by my cav. His infantry massacred my cav, but they took all 16 mortars and a handfull of line infantry down with them. The rest of my army advanced up and routed his inf because unlike my opponet, I did not blow a quarter of my money on mortar batteries.