Can someone around here give me some advice how to fight
Machine guns assuming one has only rifles and cannons.
Under patch 3.17 MG are immun to collateral damage.
Therefore when you are in tech lead you can use them to block and adavance and protect your SODS.
Any attempt to stop this units ended in a bloodbath.
So is there any way to fight them effectively when your advanced units are rifles and cannons?

Thanks.

Morgan

In the field, not really. When attacking cities, sure. CR Cannons eat up MCGs with few enough casualties. Sure, they don't get collateral damage, but still they often end up being the first guys up to fight the attacking Cannons, so they will go down to siege anyway.

Airships can help against MG
I also advise you to build a LOT of grenadiers under the woodsman/guerilla or (worst) pinch promotions, then upgrade them to MG and see some them doing short work of anything.
I once (cyrus) had G3,C1,Pinch Grenadiers -> MG and 5 of them obliterated on a hill city a stack of approx 30+ rifles. Not funny.

Machine gunners don't get defensive promos: thus the cavs come and help, esp w/ siege promos
cav w/ c1/charge (25% vs siege) beats them. However that's bit odd combo w/o much use outside beating gunner, yet even standard flanking 2 (or c2) works fine.
if you can get 17 xp cavs for the flanking2/c1+charge gunners are no issue at all.

Cav is one of the best unit in the game, no real counter, and flanking 2 is 50% chance to survive, as long as you attack.

Airships can help against MG
I also advise you to build a LOT of grenadiers under the woodsman/guerilla or (worst) pinch promotions, then upgrade them to MG and see some them doing short work of anything.
I once (cyrus) had G3,C1,Pinch Grenadiers -> MG and 5 of them obliterated on a hill city a stack of approx 30+ rifles. Not funny.

Guerilla 3? That extra hill attack bonus and withdraw chance will surely be useful on those MCGs ;)

Airships and lots of CR cannons are your only way around that problem until you can bring better siege or air support. I've never seen the AI mass a great deal of MGs, so just a few extra cannons should do the trick.

Try Flanking II Cavalry. It will generally damage the MG and have a 50% chance of survival.

Marines have +50% attack vs Machine guns.

I found out a few days ago that CR3 cannons do very well against MGs in cities and Cav does a good job in the field. Of course the Cav I was using was C3/pinch. MGs don't get their gunpowder unit bonus against either (I don't believe they do at least). You won't win every fight but once the MGs get chewed a bit they go down quick. I had more trouble attacking Inf with this particular stack than MGs. I only had Riflemen(10)/Cav(15)/Cannon(17) while he had MG(2)/Inf(5)/Cav(7) in a city. Lost 10 cannons but didn't lose a single Cav/Rifle. The Cavs ran down a few MGs in the open with ease. OK, non-promoted units would get chewed up but I'm a promotion hog. Single promotion cannons would still be the way to go against MGs in a city and Cav in the open.

A correction:

MG are not immune to collateral damage. MG , as every other siege unit, are immune to siege collateral damage. They can still get collateral damage from other types of units ( like planes or the chinese UU )

Of course the Cav I was using was C3/pinch


DABegley, MG are not gunpowder units, they are siege (rolo's correction about siege is also true, bombers smack them alive); thus, pinch is wasted promo vs them (although it can help to put them as defender depending on the stack you attack). flanking II+combat 1+ charge is the best you can get vs them for 17xp.
It has been mentioned many times Flanking II is a very good promotion that works like charm.

The best unit depends upon the level of promotions both units have. Normal machine guns tend to go pure drill, which make flanking cav more :hammers: efficient at damaging them. Combat or CG promoted MGs are better with cannon if you can get highly promoted cannons.

The real solution is to use air power (even airships will work) or arty.

bestsss

Yup, I know that pinch was not useful against MGs except that it made the AI defend with the MGs versus the Inf in the same stack in the field. I put that in purely for accuracy, not to say pinch was useful against MGs. Sorry if that was unclear. I had a couple C1/F2 Cav in there as well but they both died without inflicting significant damage on the MGs. Charge would have been helpful but when I initially attacked they didn't have MGs or cannons so I didn't build any. 2 cities in MGs started showing up. Your right, I probably should have built a couple charge Cav.