I was analyzing further why Grit proves overpowered enough, which he definitely still is. In fact, I think the Black Bomb, which is broken enough in its own right, is the only reason Grit in Dual Strike doesn't rampage with the ridiculous defensive charging courtesy of 0.4 Star Infantry that just punishes a player for their opponent exposing THEIR Infantry.
I was ranting to a friend that I didn't have a COP available for busting infantry in aggressive attacking to disrupt captures and buy time to build up a reasonable force to smash through Grit's nonsense, and remarked why the Light Tank and Gunship don't work even when Grit has so few Artillery. Then I realize another problem with the infantry+indirect spam: they have no common weaknesses. The obvious response would be that, yes, this does encourage unit variety, but that becomes theorycraft when THAT manages no efficiency as a result of needing tech units to smash the key culprit of the spam: the Artillery itself.
This is one of the reasons why I detest Days of Ruin making Infantry 1500G, not just because I'd welcome dealing with Infantry numbers as long as it's reasonable to thin their numbers, but also because it just feeds inexpensive unit spam anyway when you need infantry to even afford anything. It doesn't address the Artillery in the spam, when Infantry don't do anything to touch important armors. By the way, did you ever notice that the (rightfully or otherwise) declared Game Breakers in games incidentally mocks any and all important armors mercilessly, or at the very least simply benefit from important armors lacking any flow? (I'm looking at you with the latter, Super Smash Bros. Brawl.)
I particularly noticed when realizing that Gunships in Game Boy Wars 3 deal 7.5 HPs of base damage to Artillery (18 ATK to 12 DEF), better than that awful 65% in all of the Americanized games, which is at its stupidest in Days of Ruin where this results in a higher base toward the GD Light Tank due to the increase to 70% for that matchup. Even without the soullessness, I can just provide the following table of how much damage relevant units deal to the Artillery in each game:
| Attacker \ Game | FW | GBW1/2/T | GBW3 | SFW | AW1 | AW2 | AWDS | AWDoR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light Tank | 75 | 56 | 83 | 70 | 70 | 70 | 70 | 70 |
| Humvee | N/A | N/A | 100 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Gunship | (5) | 45 | 75 | 60 | 65 | 65 | 65 | 65 |
| Lite Attacker | N/A | N/A | 75 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Medium Tank | N/A | N/A | N/A | 90 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 85 |
| Heavy Tank | 95 | 87 | 111 | 99 | 105 | 105 | 105 | 105 |
| Bomber | 75 | 91 | (108) | 90 | 105 | 105 | 105 | 105 |
| Attacker | N/A | N/A | 108 | 75 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
As you can see, GBW3 just blows every other game out of the water in terms of damaging Artillery. It's not even close: the units in the American games need to have 120 Net Attack to even match the GBW3 units, which is simply not reasonable in general. Days of Ruin would be the closest, but even then, it relies on the CO Zone which hopes that it doesn't cancel itself out. As if that wasn't enough, Artillery in GBW3 don't come cheap either, so if it gets nailed, it actually will be a significant loss. It also has to contend with subtraction defense that keeps the already higher damage values from being gimped by terrain defense, further preventing the Artillery from maintaining HP by being on a cover tile.
And somehow, GBW3 Artillery manage to be broken enough anyway. Though granted, I suspect the 5 Range is rather much, their ability to move and fire got counterbalanced by cost denying them too many meatshields, and GBW3 still saw fit to increase the base damage values against Artillery anyway. It means that they're an innate balance problem until they're sufficiently checked otherwise. There's simply no reason something so inexpensive should get to railroad important armors as easily as it does without better counterbalancing than tech tanks and the Bomber not needing 130+ Net Attack to even have a chance of 1HKing them.
BTW, I hear stories that Days of Ruin does let tech units work, despite the absolutely miserable division defense among other things like the soulless 1500G Infantry problem, but nobody wants to play through the early game to try to see for themselves when the other guy will be rewarded for spamming Artillery and having them get away with charging into a position where they get flanked.
I may as well post the Artillery damage done values:
| Defender \ Game | FW | GBW1/2/T | GBW3 | SFW | AW1 | AW2 | AWDS | AWDoR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grunt | 45 | 23 | 80 | 90 | 90 | 90 | 90 | 90 |
| Bazooka | 35 | 21 | 57 | 85 | 85 | 85 | 85 | 85 |
| Recon/Convoy | N/A | N/A | 57 | 65 | 80 | 80 | 80 | 80 |
| Buggy | N/A | N/A | 66 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Humvee | N/A | N/A | 57 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Light Tank | 55 | 55 | 42 | 55 | 70 | 70 | 70 | 60 |
| Medium Tank | N/A | N/A | N/A | 40 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 45 |
| Heavy Tank | 45 | 23 | 33 | 25 | 45 | 45 | 45 | 35 |
| Artillery | 45 | 38 | 83 | 65 | 75 | 75 | 75 | 75 |
| Heavy Artillery | 35 | 33 | 71 | 70 | 75 | 80 | 80 | 80 |
| Rocket Launcher (GBWS) | N/A | 68 | 88 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Anti-Tank | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | 55 |
As demonstrated, Artillery generally hits harder in the American installments than it does in the Japan-only installments. The only exception to this other than the mirror match is Artillery VS Heavy Tank in Famicom Wars clocking in at 45%, the same as in AW1/2/DS and higher than in Days of Ruin, but that's a byproduct of Famicom Wars misbalancing tech units anyway as well as having oddball matchup values. I think the reason for the buff is because the American installments actually added 1HKs and first strike advantage, but I think it's generally an excuse all the same. because first strike advantage means that a followup direct now mitigates counterattack damage from the weakened unit rather than simply having to fear it less which it already was doing. Now I can see Intelligent Systems was aiming to make sure there was reward for positioning Artillery, but it's still a range unit that will have plenty of safety, and plenty of safety allows for flexibility, which reduces the skill in the positioning to begin with, so it ends up a case of overthinking on Intelligent Systems' part.
Again pointing to Game Boy Wars 3 Artillery, that thing doesn't deal as much damage as the SFW Artillery, let alone the American installments Artillery. 1HKs, and the very active unit RPS were around so it had more excuse to deal more damage, but the designers decided against it and left it to deal with the subtraction defense. And somehow, it's still more powerful than it should have been.
Suffice it to say that balancing Artillery would take a lot of effort. Effort yet to be displayed by any installment of the Nintendo Wars series.