The Role of Gatling Guns

I’m struggling to find a role in my games for Gatling Guns. Early on, Archers are great for barb hunting and fending off any AIs that are foolish enough to try to attack me. Then comes the upgrade to Composite Bows which are great for attacking cities and are arguably better than the fragile Catapults. Crossbows are still very good at attacking cities – so much so that I don’t feel the need to build a bunch of Trebuchets from scratch.

But then comes the upgrade to Gatling Guns and I’m lost. They are severely underwhelming at attacking cities (Cannons are now essential in this role) and the combined “city attacks” and “defending ranged unit attacks” start picking them off one at a time. If I try to attack units in the field, I had better hope they kill them and there are no other enemy units around, or else they’ll get slaughtered on the next turn. The only thing I can do with them is “retire” them to cities for defense.

Am I missing something here? Can anybody suggest a better, more productive role for my Gatling Guns than sitting in cities and collecting dust?

I use them to protect artillery. They have decent melee str so you can line them up in front of your artillery to protect them. Pikes upgraded to lancers can sit on the flanks or behind the lines ready to take a city that's been whittled down. Tbh it's infantry I cant get much use out of in the late game. Once the mounted line becomes cavalry or pikes become lancers they're the only melee I need any more. Only time I use melee much after the industrial is if I've got some good UUs in the line, Indonesia, ottomans, sweden, America, Aztecs. A line of gats in front of artillery is nearly invincible.

I use them to defend and collect dusts from my too many cities that I've conquered.

Gatling guns with +1 range are great. Like VicRatlhead5199 said, I use them to protect artillery. They soften up the enemy army so that melee can finish off the units, while artillery bombards a city.

Gats w/o the +1 range promotion aren't that great. Better to have cavalry/tanks as they have the same range and are more mobile.

Gatling guns, are very powerful, but only when coupled with honor, to supply solid upgrades. Holy commas. If you're intended on playing a warmonger game, honor is a must for your 2nd tree choice, or first if you're that type of player. With honor, the +50% xp will boost your early archers. By xbowmen you can easily have 3 (rough/flat) promos, range (always before dbl attk), dbl attk, march. When you upgrade these beasts to Gatling guns, they're very very powerful. Sprinkle in a few muskets to soak damage and get +10 heal per turn, and they'll boost your gatlings even more, since they'll be healing each turn with march. Add a few cannons as well.

With heavy honor tree, you get culture and happiness for a garrisoned unit. Gatlings become out dated very quickly. I use them to defend my captured cities, and balance my happiness. By this time you should have Great War bombers or artillery. Switch to heavy mounted units, if you haven't. When machine guns are upgradable, your once great arm of gatlings becomes strong again.

Outside of honor and lack of promotions, I do find them very lack luster.

Yeah, basically there are two types of Gatling Guns :

- the ones that have range because you upragded them from super-promoted XBows. Those are great, you just use them like you used CBs and XBs before.

- the ones that don't have range. Those are pretty bad, but can still be used, as they hit pretty hard and don't die that easily. I basically never build them, but you can use them to protect your flanks while still dealing some damage. Basically they become expendable units that you can use to draw fire away from artillery, mostly.

You can get +1 range gatling guns fairly quickly if you're building them in a city with barracks, armory, military academy, and brandenburg gate. Even faster if you have the +50% experience social policy in the honor tree, or if you're playing as the Zulu.

I use them for city defense normally, though if they're highly promoted I will go on the offensive with them (move a couple in to attack a city, move them out and heal them while others move in, rinse and repeat.)
Don't forget, though, that if you're playing as England, you only have to build a lot of Longbows and upgrade them to get Insta-Doom Gatlings.

Even with +1 range, GGun are pretty bad IMHO.

They hit pretty ok, but they do lack hp and more important at this point of the game, they can't really damage cities. Arties are better as hititng both cities AND units at this point. Just by the fact that 2x more arties can hit compared to a GGun.

In my domination games, even 10+ upgraded GGun usually die in this part of the game. This should not happen if this unit was decently balanced. They should increase the defence, maybe with a decreaded attack, idk.

I think the big problem I have is that they die too easily. I know ranged units are supposed to be susceptible to being attacked, but my Gatling Guns seem to be made of porcelain. Even with the Range promotion, they're still in the 2 hex range of the city attack. So with a front line of melee units, followed by a line of Gats to protect the Arties behind them, the Gats still won't last long unless the City and the other AI units start attacking the melee units.

Maybe I just need to utilize mounted units more than I currently do. I usually leave them behind to mop up any leftover barbs or rebellion units from unhappiness. Perhaps I need to bring them to the front lines as well.

Gguns can make a formidable offense with the range promotion on cities if done right. I don't usually do these things right so I tend to avoid Gguns sometimes since the advent of flight usually leaves an advantage to great war bombers who can easily destroy the Gguns since Gguns just don't have the anti air technology that is required to protect yourself from the great war bombers. Obtaining a Gguns offense, often leaves players wide open to an aerialaattack that requires biology for oil and flight itself which makes the airplanes. Both of these technologies come very expensive sometimes especially when going for industrialism.

Gatling guns aren't fragile. Their melee defense is the same as their ranged. 30 is not bad at all for a unit that doesn't take damage when it attacks. They can fortify too. I'd rank them over riflemen any day of the week. If they seem fragile it's because they're starting to go obsolete and it's time to research ballistics.

If you have a large land army you want to continue to use you need to research ballistics sooner rather than later anyway since AA guns are the only way to make land armies viable after flight. Otherwise just mothball the land army and switch to tanks and planes.

I may use them until I have riflman and cavalry. Upgrading from xbow is very expensive and often not necessary.

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VicRatlhead5199 said:

Gatling guns aren't fragile. Their melee defense is the same as their ranged. 30 is not bad at all for a unit that doesn't take damage when it attacks. They can fortify too. I'd rank them over riflemen any day of the week. If they seem fragile it's because they're starting to go obsolete and it's time to research ballistics.

If you have a large land army you want to continue to use you need to research ballistics sooner rather than later anyway since AA guns are the only way to make land armies viable after flight. Otherwise just mothball the land army and switch to tanks and planes.

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So will A A guns from ballistics research help you out against great war bombers? It seems from what you're saying here is that getting the A A gun with ballistics will be a lot faster than getting the biology and the flight technologies for the development of triplanes that prevent the great war bombers. Another advantage I see with aa guns is that it doesn't come with the risk of not having oil like biology and flight do.

4N4C0ND4 said:

Even with +1 range, GGun are pretty bad IMHO.

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Agree completely with this and your explanation. IMHO, machine guns are no better.

Teproc said:

...Those are pretty bad, but can still be used, as they hit pretty hard and don't die that easily. I basically never build them, but you can use them to protect your flanks while still dealing some damage. Basically they become expendable units that you can use to draw fire away from artillery, mostly.

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This, but, sad to say, even for my gats w/ range and logistics. I don’t deliberately put them in harm’s way, but they almost never survive to the end game. A fully promoted unit is fun, and too valuable not to use. Unfortunately, they tend to go from full to zero health after a single counter-attack. I use them up, and try not to feel bad about it. (No doubt, part of the problem I have with deity!)

If I have a (very) few left by time when I can build anti-air, then I am quite happy. Even then, their role stays the same. Very rarely, a unit might be garrisoned to a coastal city near the front, but usually that role is better served by artillery or anti-air unit. I tend to keep all my ranged units busy, so I am hard on arty too, but that extra hex distance means they don’t get killed by cities.

Gatlings that had started out as a Scout, and that are heavily promoted, are total beasts. any other is marginally bad.

Gguns could be beasts since the scouts have that promotion that doesn't pay the costs for movement.

reddishrecue said:

So will A A guns from ballistics research help you out against great war bombers? It seems from what you're saying here is that getting the A A gun with ballistics will be a lot faster than getting the biology and the flight technologies for the development of triplanes that prevent the great war bombers. Another advantage I see with aa guns is that it doesn't come with the risk of not having oil like biology and flight do.

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If you intend to go on the offensive with a land army instead of an air force it is better to take AA guns because triplanes have a pretty short interception radius that is easy to wander out of. It's easier to place AA guns where you need them and they don't use oil that you would rather be putting into bombers, ships and tanks. I'm not saying it's faster but if you really want to continue using a land army and have a lot of gats you want to use instead of deleting or mothballing you should not put ballistics off too long. It leads to radar anyway so it's not a bad investment.

I actually did rush ballistics pretty early one game a while back. Machine guns are wicked if you get them early enough.

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. The AI kind of stinks at using the sweep function and tend to just suicide their bombers on your AA guns. I've had games where oil was in short supply and wasn't able to build many planes since most of what I had went into my navy. I found they're pretty easy to get along without.

Just take a break from war for a while if bombers become a problem. AA guns aren't that far away

When i play mp i use them for meat shield if i rush Modern era, pick free 6 foreign legions from Freedom and go to war. I kill units around and keep legions to attack cities. Sinc they need lot of money to upgrade i prefer mixing them with FL. Otherwise they aren't a good completion of a strong army.

One of the worst units for me excepted that only condition.

I end up with a lot of them because I often play China, and have the cho-ku-no. March them up ahead of cannons, and they can inflict some damage while taking the hits that would otherwise to go your cannons. When they get hit move them back, and it allows you to put your cannons in the best spots, and mow down the first line of troops that get in your way.

At first I didn't know what to do with them, but I would rather lose them than lose cannons.