t1 land units in late game compositions.

[Evan_]

Is it a good idea to pad out my percivals with t1 artillery

On paper it seems like a good idea, because they are dirt cheap (a 35th of a percival), get overkilled horribly, and can finish off things with low hp in one shot. But I know they can donate veterancy and/or mess with pathfinding, as well as die in droves against aoe.

My general unit composition has been: 3 percivals, 1 parashield, 2-4 t1 arty, with an occasional flak/field engineer. I've played a few games with it before and it was alright but I can't be sure of it's exact effectiveness since they were all one sided/on turtle maps.

Also which t1 arty is the best in which situation? I usually play in teamgames so I often borrow factories from my symbiont or illuminate friends.

[biass]

Anything a t1 arty would be good for would probably be done by the percival way better, and making the arty would result in a player who only made more percy = have more percy then you

[Exotic_Retard]

its mostly only good on paper. it actually does work vs other percies because of horrible overkill, but if something like t3 mob arty comes into play or any other t3 unit then the overkill problem disappears.

the disadvantages are:
1. it misses a lot of shots so its worse than on paper (on paper you dont need t3 units at all when you have arty)
2. pathfinding - this is the n1 issue i would say, since this one decreases the effectiveness of the rest of your force.
3. well its own effectiveness might be not worth its price but its a little dubious
4. veterancy isnt really a big issue - you need to kill ~20 of them to get 1 vet for a t3 unit, so yeah.

its not that arty is bad, indeed we can see that in a bunch of cases dealing with things like mass zhtuee spam is a very lengthy and annoying process, but you do eventually win.
this means if you need to delay someone then it can be good.

overall i would say its not useless but it might be simpler to just spam t3 units since there are situations where arty could do the job better but its not much of an advantage

[Morax]

Also which t1 arty is the best in which situation? I usually play in teamgames so I often borrow factories from my symbiont or illuminate friends.

You will want to borrow from your "alien" friends more than the two you listed in that statement. Mass zthuees with a nano sera/gun/t2 comm can be extremely threatening even in late game. If you have double-nano and allow the comm to absorb damage while the zthuees rain terror down from afar you can beat the living crap out of any turtle base. This works great with a shield/gun aeon comm, shield/gun UEF, but prolly not Cybran stealth/gun.

I would opt to mix medusa in for a percival support if you can get cybran tech as the stun works on them like most other units, and with the 4-second reload time for a percie, that extra wait can be the difference between a lost or won battle. If you are behind on eco and could only produce so many percies, are stuck in a situation where 10+ are about to parade on your 5, some good micro and stun could win that battle for you!

Fobos are not as effective imo late game as the zthuee for raw power and medusa for stun.

Try this out in a sandbox and see how well you can melt bases or micro against larger armies.

Good luck!

[TheKoopa]

1) zthuees are fobos
2) Medusa only stun t1 and t2 units