Why can't Gunpowder units take City Raider promotions?

Yes, why can't Gunpowder units take the City Raider promotions, while cannons, macemen and armor units can? This handicap makes Macemen better City Attackers than Musketmen (WEIRD!). Moreover CR3 Macemen that are upgraded to Riflemen retain their CR promotions - unfair!

Another issue is of course why Armor units can't take the March promotion while Mech Infantry and Gunships can. (I think even Naval units can take the March promotion.)

While I'm considering modding the CR issue, I'm not really sure on the balance implications this would cause. Right now I'm better off building CR3 Macemen than C3 Musketmen and it feels very broken. (Btw, shouldn't it be much cheaper to train Musketmen than Macemen? As Musketmen don't wear fancy armor and muskets should be pretty cheap to make and don't require much metal at all. Right now Musketmen are more expensive which makes this even crazier. Sure make the Musketmen more expensive, for game balance, but let me keep my CR promotions, please.)

Because it's how the designers made the game You can mod it if you like, or scan through various existing modpaks if there is already something that suits you.

krille said:

Moreover CR3 Macemen that are upgraded to Riflemen retain their CR promotions - unfair!

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I dont think thats unfair - that does increase the value of your veteran units making upgrading them worthwile.

As for you main question... Sure the choice to make GP units not get CR is somewhat arbitrary. But the game seems to work well as it is: different untis have different niches in the game. Veteran untis - as mentioned above - become valuable. And last but not least inventing GP does not cause to huge of a leap - which is probably better for smooth gameplay.

And while i dont want to go to deep down in the "realism" discussion - nothing is brocken with building Maces and Muskets at the same time. Medieaval ages were long and for quite some time the tried and prooven medieval units coexisted and fought with success along with the early gunpowder units.

macemen unit itself is stupid. historically there were no 'macemen' armies, but pikemen/halberdiers and musketmen. pikemen beat any feudal footmen (which macemen are as i think).

krille said:

... Moreover CR3 Macemen that are upgraded to Riflemen retain their CR promotions - unfair! ...

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If you can remember, upgrade your Swordsman with CR promotions > Macemen > Riflemen. I almost always give CR promotions to Swordsmen, therefore I will have some fearsome Riflemen.

Actually maces (and more importantly war hammers) were used by medieval infantry AND cavalry.

During the Middle Ages metal armour and chain mail protected against the blows of edged weapons and blocked arrows and other projectiles. Solid metal maces and war hammers proved able to inflict damage on well armoured knights, as the force of a blow from a mace is large enough to cause damage without penetrating the armour.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(club)#The_European_Middle_Ages

edit:

Refar said:

And last but not least inventing GP does not cause to huge of a leap - which is probably better for smooth gameplay.

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Macemen = 8, Musketmen = 9. Enabling CR for Musketmen would make for a VERY rough transition.

Now I think the real reason may have something to do with CR3 giving +10% vs Gunpowder while CG3 "only" gives +10% vs melee, thus a CR3 GP unit would have an advantage vs units of the same type with CG3.

I think when they were designing the game the CR gunpowder units were simply too powerful. By this point in the game it is not hard to have 2 promotions right off the start. Making a whole army of CR2 muskets and rifles and being able to upgrade them to CR3 would make for easy city conquering. Have you noticed that if you have an upgraded CR3 rifle, it can decimate almost any troop in a city until infantry. I think it was a little too overpowered so they took it out to keep the game balanced.

I think it makes sense that musket men are designed to be city defenders, but that riflemen should be able to be both city defenders and city attackers. "musket" isn't clearly defined, so there could be a few moddels that your musketman is equipped with. I've seen muskets that people set in a monopod, with a rope type fuse that contacted the black power to fire the ball. That type of weapon would most certainly be better in a sheltered area like a city than in the field. Odds are, it's going to rain on you at least once while you're away from your home base, so you might end up with equipment that doesn't work, and the dirt is going to jam up a more primitave weapon before it does a more advanced one. However, I see no reason why a "rifleman" who likely has cartridges, and probably blasting caps, wouldn't be able to siege a city.

With the muskets, it might also have to deal with that it is a lot easier to fight a city's defenders that are using medieval era things (swords, maces, pikes, longbows, etc) with weapons that work just as fast then something you have to take forever to reload and was still new tech at the time. As it was stated, medieval units and gunpowder units were mixed for a long time (usually guns supported by pikes for anti cav and then cav, and maybe some swords)

Why can't gunpowder units get CR promotions? Because two games ago, I had city raiding, drilling, marching infantry who could wipe out entire civilizations in just a few turns without siege.

If Medieval II Total War is accurate - it seems that it is - early hand-cannons where most a frightening device than a proper replacement for melee units. Until the 1700, the real gunpowder revolution was in cannons, not man-portable guns. That's why swords were useful up until some scenarios in World War I - the last successful cavalry charges taking place by 1917 in Israel/Palestine region, English sabre-wielding cavalry against rifle-wielding Ottoman troops. What made melee weapons useless was machine guns - which that Ottoman troops lacked - not rifles. If the glorious infantry charges proposed by WWI early generals were possible, their troops should have made good use of all of those bayonets. Remember that knifes and bayonets are in use up to date.

So the most saddening historical inaccuracy in Civ IV is not that musketmen are of little aggressive value, but that Gunpowder does not add any artillery option, as bombards, ribauldequins, mortars, bombs, field cannons, which were the real revolution in gunpowder. Add to this the game informing you in Civilopedia that you should have a BIG advantage by having gunpowder, which is definitely not the case. You may skip gunpowder until very late without any game-breaking consequences.

I see, makes sense. Thanks for the explanations. I guess the real issue is how Macemen retain their CR3 promotions when upgraded to Riflemen. I think that on upgrading a unit to a non-CR unit type, for every existing CR promotion the unit has it should be removed and the unit should lose one level (so new promotions can be picked instead). This would seem balanced to me. In fact, I think you should be able to repick ALL promotions on upgrade (anti-archery Mech Inf, c'mon now).

krille said:

Yes, why can't Gunpowder units take the City Raider promotions, while cannons, macemen and armor units can? This handicap makes Macemen better City Attackers than Musketmen (WEIRD!).

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No one ever builds walls or castles in your games?

The +75% that macemen get from CR3 doesn't make them better than a musketman if the defender gets +100% from a castle, which they don't get against musketmen.

HerrDoktor said:

So the most saddening historical inaccuracy in Civ IV is not that musketmen are of little aggressive value, but that Gunpowder does not add any artillery option, as bombards, ribauldequins, mortars, bombs, field cannons, which were the real revolution in gunpowder. Add to this the game informing you in Civilopedia that you should have a BIG advantage by having gunpowder, which is definitely not the case. You may skip gunpowder until very late without any game-breaking consequences.

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Gunpowder untis (including muskets) do however ignore Walls and castles Defensive bonus, which compensates for the lack of gunpowder artillery to some extent.


And as i think of it - that might be the reason why they not get CR - CR was designed to overcome forification bonus. Now GP units do disable the fortification bonus to some extent, so CR out of the box on top of it would be to much.

Calouste said:

No one ever builds walls or castles in your games?

The +75% that macemen get from CR3 doesn't make them better than a musketman if the defender gets +100% from a castle, which they don't get against musketmen.

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No one ever builds siege weapons and/or ships w/ bombardment and/or air units in your games? Or even spies? Actually a Maceman won't get +75% from CR3, instead the defender's strength modifier is reduced by 75 percentage points (in case of a negative modifier, the modified strength is the defending unit's natural strength divided by (1+abs(modifier)) multiplied by it's hp/100). So CR[n] essentially negates CG[n].

Besides, Armor units can take CR bonus. Even more so, I currently play on marathon and wasting a few turns on leveling enemy fortifications doesn't really hurt much. And you'd still want to get rid of any cultural defense.

Refar > I think CR was designed to negate CG, not fortifications.

While Rifling is still long away, I managed to get Chemistry and Grenadiers earlier than anyone else (which is weird). Thanks to this I'm now building Macemen that I upgrade upgrade to CR3 asap, then I upgrade them to CR3 Grenadiers. These Grenadier totally PWN anything the AI's got (including Musketmen and soon, as they arrive, Riflemen too). I don't even have to sacrifice any cannons to take cities anymore. So, I agree, CR3 GP units are GREAT. Still, I'm considering implementing one of these:
1) Macemen upgrade to Panzers (and, perhaps, Cannons).
2) Macemen lose their CR promos when upgraded to GP units. (And lose just as many levels to compensate.)
3) Enable CR for GP units.

Which of the above (or anything) seems the most reasonable?

krille said:

Still, I'm considering implementing one of these:
1) Macemen upgrade to Panzers (and, perhaps, Cannons).
2) Macemen lose their CR promos when upgraded to GP units. (And lose just as many levels to compensate.)
3) Enable CR for GP units.

Which of the above (or anything) seems the most reasonable?

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#2 sounds the most realistic. Melee units would have to learn new fighting tactics upgrading to GP. I couldn't tell you which option works best in terms of playability though.

just my 2

LM

You grab a musket. I'll start running around in circles off in the distance. After you fire and most likely miss... watch out for my mace. The mace is kind of silly though I think the guy with a spear should be able to beat both.

ezwip, not really. Spears work well against cavalry, due to the high impact velocity of the knights (mounted units). This is however not the same with melee units (such as macemen) and the pike would most likely NOT penetrate their armor or shields.

Regarding musket and pike formations, the pikes were only their to protect the muskets from cavalry charges.

1. armor can't get march since it would be impossible to make faster tanks... seems realistic to me tbh.
2. macemen are scarier then musketmen. I prefer facing someone wielding a musket (slow reload, shortranged attacks) over facing someone with a mace (1 blow will kill you, no place to hide).

I see your points on balance and differences in technology, but I wonder if the lack of CR promotions is due to the emergance of the European theatre concept of battle, which occured near the invention of gunpowder. You know, when battles went from "YARGHH!!! I'M GONNA SLAY YUR BLOODY ARSES!!!!" to "G'day mate, can I kill you now? Or would tomorrow be better?" (Yes, I know I exaggerate, but you get my point.) Now that war is "civilized", maybe there is no room for crazed city raiders?