The Role of Gatling Guns

Gatlings and Machine Guns are pretty good at creating choke points and protecting your flanks. Put them on a hill, even better if it has a fort or a citadel. They have a relatively high defense for the era, so they don't take that much damage, and they can still take a shot at everything that ends next to them, and a few strategically placed are as effective at slowing down a counter attack as the Great Wall. They're not great on offense, but they were not really used for that, except in colonial wars against technologically backwards opponents.
 
Their also really good at defending, ignore range and get 2 Attacks! If your defending in a fort, then they take 50% more damage from you, and when you attack twice, you take no damage!
 
I end up with a lot of them because I often play China, and have the cho-ku-no.

Completely forgot about civs impact. Yes, China and also England are sincerely my only candidates to open a fight with mostly gatling guns.
 
As someone who still plays vanilla except when I visit my friend's house, I can sincerely say that however bad Gatling Guns may be, they're still better than having crossbowmen upgrade into a melee unit. :D

Or does anyone contest this?
 
A lot of people say flight is when artillery loses its usefulness but artillery is viable a long time after flight as long as they're accompanied by AA guns.
I think the issue here is that usually, when you got artillery, you know that you will have a window of opportunity for warring since the AI won't have this tech is you researched and bulbed smartly.
The problem is if an AI has plane, you will have to wait for you to discover balistic. And at the point your AA are up & running, the AI will likely have planes AND artilleries on top of that. Then the war become more tedious.

Not even mentionning that usually balistic is not the tech path I prefer when I want to go total war. Usually knowning if you got oil or not with biology, then getting flight is usually my better bait.
Even if indeed fight planes have a small range but they are usually my go-to units vs bombers since they come online faster than AA guns, and let you keep your artillerie momentum.
 
I think the issue here is that usually, when you got artillery, you know that you will have a window of opportunity for warring since the AI won't have this tech is you researched and bulbed smartly.
The problem is if an AI has plane, you will have to wait for you to discover balistic. And at the point your AA are up & running, the AI will likely have planes AND artilleries on top of that. Then the war become more tedious.

Not even mentionning that usually balistic is not the tech path I prefer when I want to go total war. Usually knowning if you got oil or not with biology, then getting flight is usually my better bait.
Even if indeed fight planes have a small range but they are usually my go-to units vs bombers since they come online faster than AA guns, and let you keep your artillerie momentum.

Yeah cities do drop slower but I think it's more a result of higher def cities than number or types of units. Even after dynamite the AI still can't seem to deal with range 3 (or 4 by this time) units. Especially if you neutralize their air units. Heck I think it gets worse at it because it seems to stop producing as many land units and suicides the air ones it is building on AA guns. The only reason it gets more tedious for me is because I'm stuck watching air animations (thank god for the quick turns mod :D)

Are you playing with a modded tech tree? Ballistics is a prereq. for radar, combined arms and rocketry. How is it not on the total war tech path? Are we aiming for bazookas and mech infantry or something?

I'm not saying don't go for oil and flight. Flight is a prereq. for ballistics anyway. What I am saying is if you already have a big dominant land army you should get the tech that will allow you to continue using that big dominant land army. Then go for the techs for one you still need to improve a resource for and build/buy from scratch. If you didn't go the artillery route and are banking on an air force for domination then by all means wait until later. You don't have a lot of land units to protect, you don't need the tech so bad.

What I think is happening is people are going from dynamite to oil and flight, not a bad idea, I'm not advocating against it, but then after flight they're going for plastics to get RLs. Still not a terrible idea if you still have competition on the map. Usually after I've had artillery this long I don't have a lot of real competition left. Going for plastics first leaves you with gats getting slaughtered and artillery getting bombed for quite a while. You pretty much need to stop domination until you get planes and AA guns. Putting off RLs for 2 techs (railroad and ballistics) won't kill you. Instead you're getting machine guns that can dominate at least until mech infantry and AA guns that negate annoying bombers. At that point they can pull ahead in tech and it won't hurt. You've got the techs for units that can win the game for you. Now go for plastics. Most of what comes after that is gravy anyway.
 
Gatling Guns and the subsequent promoted units are best used for city defense.

Under what conditions would a gat be better for city defense than anti-air or arty? I think it’s only when one can’t be sure which is better (aa or arty) so the gat is a fair compromise. But I really am hoping you have some good suggestions, because I feel like I am wasting them.

I think gats get garrison duty just because you have them left over and they are not up to the task of helping to capture cities. Do you build gats for city defense? Or is city defense just the least bad option?
 
I think gats get garrison duty just because you have them left over and they are not up to the task of helping to capture cities. Do you build gats for city defense? Or is city defense just the least bad option?

For me it's because I already was using archers and rather than build a new unit I just upgrade the old one...

Any highly promoted ones are definitely more useful in the field as defensive lines or at choke points.
 
Are you playing with a modded tech tree? Ballistics is a prereq. for radar, combined arms and rocketry. How is it not on the total war tech path? Are we aiming for bazookas and mech infantry or something?
No I don't play a mod. I genuinly thought that ballistics was quite a bit far after flight. IIRC you will need at least 20 or 30 turns after flight to get AA guns. Might be a bit off since it's from domination games which are for me lower on science.
When this happen, I prefer to build ONLY fighters if I'm low on oil, and attack the runnaway AI with arties + fighters. I can't wait 30 more turns and have the chance to be outched a bit more.

And yeah, I do agree that the plance animation is so annoying, especially the WWI type for some reasons.
Since its the centenary of WWI, maybe we can ask Firaxis to do something about that? :goodjob:
 
It really does suck going from a unit that is the most useful one for that era to one that is very useless in conventional warfare.

When I have maxed out tradition I plant them in cities. This makes them cost free and it makes my army stat higher so that other factions are less likely to declare war on me because I'm weak.
 
I don't see gatlings as utterly useless. Still are ranged units, so can make damage without taking it. Sure aren't nearly as durable as riflement, but still they get defensive bonuses and can fortify.

I think the problem here is that you get out of the composite/crossbowmen monopoly and gatlings pale in comparison...

I like to combine them with riflemen for the front line. Riflemen to control ZOC and take some hits, and you get neat ranged attacks to any units entering in the front line.
 
AS VicRat says, you have to do something with those crossbows (and they usually have promotions). And AIs usually send out more melee units into the field than us - GGs can cut them down without wasting cannon/arts or bombers.
 
No I don't play a mod. I genuinly thought that ballistics was quite a bit far after flight. IIRC you will need at least 20 or 30 turns after flight to get AA guns. Might be a bit off since it's from domination games which are for me lower on science.
When this happen, I prefer to build ONLY fighters if I'm low on oil, and attack the runnaway AI with arties + fighters. I can't wait 30 more turns and have the chance to be outched a bit more.

And yeah, I do agree that the plance animation is so annoying, especially the WWI type for some reasons.
Since its the centenary of WWI, maybe we can ask Firaxis to do something about that? :goodjob:

Yeah I'm not saying one way is better or worse. Obviously if you don't already have a big land army it's definitely better going for air units. I'm just saying if you already have a bunch of gatling guns, artillery and cavalry it's better to get the tech that makes those units useful sooner rather than later. Delaying it means you have a bunch of units sitting around doing nothing waiting for you to get your air force going.

Basically the way I see it is you make a choice. Either rush dynamite early and focus on land warfare or rush flight and mainly use planes. If you're a dynamite guy you need ballistics asap to keep rolling. If you're an air guy you can put it off and go for plastics. You'll need the infantry to take cities anyway.

I like to start early and enjoy land warfare more so I tend to go dynamite->scientific theory->ballistics->biology->plastics->radar. I like this approach because I can completely ignore fighters if I want. That leaves extra oil for navy and bombers and doesn't require a bunch of units built from scratch to continue dominating. I think this approach is for a dom game that started in the industrial or earlier. This is the type of game that probably has a lot of gatling guns that used to be crossbows and why I say this approach fits pretty well with the OP. A side benefit is that it leads you to get railroad pretty early too which means a 25% prod bonus and Neuschwanstein which is a great wonder for warmongers who need all the happiness and gold they can get. I usually go Order with this route since workers faculties can help offset the later RLs a little and Order is a better choice for an empire that's already in the lead and covers half the map.

The other option would be to go scientific theory->biology->flight->plastics->ballistics->radar. Great choice too, definitely better for science. Play peaceful most of the game, have some infantry ready to upgrade for city taking. Your economy should be pretty strong since you weren't supporting a large army early on so you can buy planes when you get the tech. You can ignore the bottom of the tree a long time doing this and can get radio early for the early adopter tenants when you go this route. You do have to build a lot of units from scratch and really do need at least a few fighters going this way but that's the only downside imo. The only reason I don't do it more is because air warfare smacks a little too much of SoD combat and I don't like that. I think Autocracy is the way to go with this method since it'll help you get those planes faster and is just plain better for fast late game domination and catch up.
 
I generally think of gattling guns as my military unit of choice for a very brief period in the game. Crossbows are amazing for a while, and you should already have some of these, so you don't need to produce many gattling guns to get them. I like ranged units a lot more than melee ones, so I will still pick gattlings over the matching infantry line units. You can kind of create defensive death traps with gattling guns if you can place them on hills and in cities.

Still, once planes come around, they are basically useless, and crossbows are arguably better until they stop doing damage. It's a small window of usefulness, but if you get industrialization relatively early, I think they are still useful.
 
I just use them as support. And they're still nice to have in coastal cities for firing at melee ships that try to batter their way in.

And.... if You have gatlings with two shock promos... and you see a impi on flat land.... open fire! Chances is good that it'll get oneshot!

That's how I wiped out the shaka's empire the other day via frigates/gatling+riflemen sea invasion xD
 
I think the problem here is that you get out of the composite/crossbowmen monopoly and gatlings pale in comparison...

I agree. We're having a thread grappling with the fact that there is a unit which walks around and does damage and offers support to your army... ok, yes, correct, this is what units are supposed to do. It doesn't do everything. Good.

Though I agree with some others that they end up being most useful as fodder for super-powered cities. But that's just yet another problem with overly dominant city attack strengths.
 
They are best used as canon fodder so your artillery can get in range unscathed. They're also pretty decent at soaking up arty hits and messing up artillery unfortunate enough to get near them. They are pretty strong when fortified too. Mainly a defensive and support unit. I rarely make them and often keep xbows around rather than wasting money on the expensive upgrade to them.
 
I nearly never upgrade my Xbow if I'm going to dom. Too expensive and not useful. Except with England and China.
I upgrade them if I turtle and need to protect a city, specially in front of AI borders and land on plain/grassland.
 
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