Gunpowder Age Offensive UNits

DrewTate

Prince
Joined
Sep 4, 2005
Messages
596
So when you get gunpower you are able to build a grenadier and then a rifleman correct?

I had macemen and some grenadiers and was attacking a city and just getting slaughtered by a longbowmen. This is after I bombarded it down to 0% defensive bonus.

What are the best offensive units of any age? I dont know what to attack with.
 
Use suicidal cats/cannons to weaken the enemy, and then attack with grenadiers/cavalry.
 
Well, the computer will almost always have each decent city defended with mainly archery units. Bad part is, very few units gain a bonus vs archery. So really, just about any unit with a high strength for a particular age is good for attacking cities with the city raider upgrades. Bombard the city to 0%, and if you still can't take it easily, use the collateral damage of siege units to your advantage. I almost always play as the Chinese because i just love their UU. It's good against pretty much everything and one of the only units in the game you can get away with producing nothing but. Plus it's the only non-siege unit that deals collateral damage, so cities defended by large numbers of units are a joke.
 
First you can build musketmen, which are relatively useless - the most I've done with them is built 1-2 for defending a stack. They're not a horrible unit, but you'll generalyl get one of the better units soon, so they're not really worth worrying about except under strange circumstances. Next up are grenadiers, riflemen, and cavalry.

Cavalry are pretty nasty because you can build them quite quickly (press hard to get liberalism first, use the free tech to get nationalism, then fill in military tradition and gunpowder). While they're toast fighting riflemen at all, much less with city defender and fortifications, it's easy to get them while your opponents are still struggling with pikemen and macemen. You can do quite a bit of damage with a cavalry rush, especially if you're the Russians.

Grenadiers are also prety quick to get after gunpowder, it's not uncommon to actually get them before riflemen. They're a decent unit and beat up most of the medieval units pretty well, but their real strength is that they annhillate riflemen on the offensive with a +50% attack bonus. Riflemen come later and are a good solid unit. They defend well against everything but grenadiers, and
Combat and possibly pinch promotions make rifles/grenadiers decent at taking cities (as long as you use cats to remove defenses). To really have an offensive unit, coddle some city raider III macemen and pikemen, then upgrade them to rifles or grenadiers later. It's expensive, but CR3 rifles (and later infantry) are very effective.

Don't overlook researching steel for cannons if you're really keen on gunpowder-era combat, cannons can get city raider promotions and that coupled with collateral damage make them the best buildable gunpowder-era city attackers.
 
Okay thanks guys. So when I have a stack of macemen, should I upgrade most of them to grenadiers then?
 
It depends. If you're in a relatively peaceful spot you may want to wait all the way until assembly line to upgrade, thought that's really risky if you're not good on diplomacy.

Most of the time if I plan to actually fight with them, I'll upgrade all city raider (or sometimes just CRIII, depends on how many I have) maces/pikes to either rifles or grenadiers. If I expect to be fighting other people with rifles, I'll upgrade them mostly to grenadiers, but if not I'll probably use riflemen. Aside from city raider units, ususally I'll only upgrade units with 10xp or more as upgrading gets really expensive for an entire army. Non-city-raider units will usually end up being all rifles or a mix of rifles and grenadiers, you don't want to leave your army vulnerable to cavalry by going all grenadiers.
 
Not really, since rarely does the AI use mounted units to defend cities. You're much better off with macemen for that era. Basically, i suppose the best units for attacking cities for each era IMO would be Swordsmen, Macemen, then possibly Knights, then either Riflemen or Cavalry if they don't have Riflemen or Musketmen of their own to defend with yet... if they do then use Grenadiers, then Tanks, then Modern Armor. Of course there are many substitutes you can use...especially if you take UU into consideration, but that seems to be the general best order. Again, basically just whatever unit has the highest strength available taking any default bonuses for city attack or bonuses against archers or gunpowder units (since that is what the AI will use mostly for defense) into account.
 
Pikes are awsome at killing horses but don't do much otherwise, I like to have one in each border city plus 1-4 in each army depending on if I have elephants and how many mounted units I'm encountering. Mostly they're there for stack defense and to pick off horses that try to go by.
 
General Role

Catpult, Cannon..Softening up Cities or invading stacks
Spears, Elephant, Pikes, Rifles.. Anti-Mounted unit (special ability)
Archer, Longbow, Rifle...City Defense (Garrison promotion/ability)
Axemen, Swordsmen, Macemen, Grenadier...CityAttacker (Promotion or Ability)
Chariot, HA, Knight, Cavalry...Anti-CityAttacker (High Strength)


*The Axemen and Macemen Also make decent City defenders because the can counter the City Attacker units

*Mounted units make decent City Attackers because of thier raw Strength (but thier promotions are not good for it.)

At about this point the 'paradigm' changes so that it is
City Attacker=Artillery, and any unit that was promoted with City Raider
City/Stack Defender=Infantry/Machine Gun

Then Tanks and Airpower come back in and its
Defender=Infantry, Marines, Mech Infantry
Attacker=Tank, Modern Armor
Anti-Tank=Gunship
Artillery=Bomber, Stealth Bomber
Anti-Air=SAM, Mech [Fighter, Jet Fighter]
 
Macemen are your last opportunity to get 'city raider' promotions. As they upgrade, they can be very lethal. It can expensive to upgrade but these guys are worth it. Depending on the circumstances, I often put off getting 'rifiling' so I can build a few more promoted macemen, which become 'Mech Inf' with raider ability. Now you the the movement without having to drag artillary around with you. Most units are not worth ugrading but this is the exception.
 
Jmaz said:
Macemen are your last opportunity to get 'city raider' promotions. As they upgrade, they can be very lethal. It can expensive to upgrade but these guys are worth it. Depending on the circumstances, I often put off getting 'rifiling' so I can build a few more promoted macemen, which become 'Mech Inf' with raider ability. Now you the the movement without having to drag artillary around with you. Most units are not worth ugrading but this is the exception.

Tanks and all siege type of weapons like artillery get City Raider promotions too.
 
The Lardossen said:
Tanks and all siege type of weapons like artillery get City Raider promotions too.

That's true! But a RaiderI+II promoted melee and later gunpowder unit belongs in every pre-tank stack.:p
 
maybe gunpowder units should get 25% bonus against all non-gunpowder units? To represent gunpowders superiority
 
As to the original post's issue, if the defending longbows were in a city on a hill and had one or two defender promotions, they are very formidible, indeed! If there are 3 longbows in such position you'll need to have, I'd guess, four suicide cats or cannons, to be sure of taking the city even with grenadiers or riflemen (unless you suicide with many other units, like about 25 horse archers).
 
:) redcoats can easy wipe out long bow men (never give them cover) redcoats are the counter to garnadiar s they easy wipe out caverly (cossacks to:) )the only unit it doesnt cover (of its era) is cannon but redcoats easy beat them this make redcoats the units to base the army on offensive or defensive
 
Why do you guys say suicide cats or cannons?

if I take a stack of 10 macemen and 2 catapults to go attack a city, I bombard the city until the defense bonus is down to zero, then I attack with the general units?

Why do you guys suicide your cats?
 
Cats/cannon have the ability to deliver collateral damage to multiple units.
So it will probably die itself, but it will knock several defenders down a few points, making them easier targets for your other attackers.
 
Suicide cats hurt the defender directly by fighting and do collateral damage to up to 6 other units, which makes it much easier for your other units to take the city. Cats are cheaper than the other units you'll be using, and you don't need to be careful with them for promotions.
 
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