Promotions for Gunpowder Units

What's the consensus on how to upgrade your gunpowder units for effective fighting? Lately I've just been going with straight combat strength so I can be offensive or defensive with the unit and only going for city garrison promotions for a place that is likely to get hit with a stack of doom.

Has anyone found some combinations of promotions for them that work well? City Raider promotions work so well in the early game. I also notice when you upgrade an old CR unit to gunpowder it still keeps that promo, and becomes very deadly.

I definately like pinch later on when the foe starts having gunpowder units everywhere, but what about before that?

With a few leader's mostly I promote along the combat line until I start running into opposing gunpowder units then I switch to pinch for the ceond promotion (first if agressive). I go CG if s city defender

Some leaders that are different

Churchhil Redcoats: A very dangerous unit and I mix them up, giving a good number drill II and drill III promotions.

Zara's Orome's: Always Dill III and Drill IV unless going against other gunpowder units, then I mix combat and drill lines.

CivMcNut said:

What's the consensus on how to upgrade your gunpowder units for effective fighting?

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Consensus?

We don't hear that word very often around here.

I'm not knocking your question, btw, it's a valid one and could prompt an interesting debate (to which my thoroughly unhelpful contribution is to say "It's situational").

But if you can find any kind of consensus here, you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

The promotion you aim for is Pinch for obvious reasons. And if someone can't figure that one out, they either lack the total fundamental aspects of warfare & promotion bonuses.... or lack the basic concepts of simple mathematics. Most probably both.

For the love of God, please lets not hear weak flanking again. If someone can post me shots of deity players actually using this weak promo (who can actually win on that level) then I won't get so heated about it.

The Funny thing is the AI uses Falnking all the time on its Cavalry and it is effective - at least to make me as hell. Every stupid Cavalry withdraws from hopeless battles, but destroys the Siege Weapons. (There MUST be a promotion/unit/whatever to couter this BS!!!!)

Anyway... never manged to put Flanking to a good use myself... Seems the AI just has superior ... uhm ... tactics there...

Uhm back on topic....

The most effective Gunpowder units for your offensive wars are obviously the CRIII you upgrade from Maces...

As for newly built units... Pinch, (Ambush if more appropriate)...

Well, of course it depends on what kind of units you are facing. That's why I usually give most of the promotions just before the attack, so I can see what kind of promotions are needed (of course the stack-protectors get their promotions earlier).

About flanking: Flanking can be a valuable promotion if your unit has really low winning changes. When you are attacking with 15 Cavarly against 4 Riflemen, I would give the flanking promotion to every Cavarly until the odds start getting around 30-40%. That's because of the way withdrawal changes work. If your unit has <0,01% change of winning, a combat promotion won't get the odds much higher. However, with flanking promotion you get 10% change to survive the battle, which always weakens the defender a little bit.

AI has 50 Riflemen stacked... so you plan to make 50 Cavalry, with flank... and then at least another 50 cavalary in addition to that to FINISH THE JOB?

Hmmm.....

As for the maceman upgrade. It's nice to have those upgraded guns. The problem is that upgrades cost 3x as much in gold. So the irony is, just making another unit, not only gives you better odds (2 units is better than one upgraded one), but you also save a unit (volume) by skipping the third that upgrading would have cost you.

obsolete said:

AI has 50 Riflemen stacked... so you plan to make 50 Cavalry, with flank... and then at least another 50 cavalary in addition to that to FINISH THE JOB?

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Well, 50 Cavarly with flanking and 50 with combat promo will do better job than 100 with combat.

Um cavs normally come from stables. Pretty sure pinch is allot better if you are attacking against not too heavy defensive bonuses(though if he have a stack of 50 of any one unit why the heck aren't you using siege weapons :S)...

As for the original question: leave your units unprompted until you face combat or combat the next turn as combat 2 is obviously better against longbows(which are soon obsolete anyways so no need to bother with cover). Drill is rarely worth it unless you get at least 1 drill promo for free as the first drill promo is so bad... If you get free drill promos they are decent if your enemy doesn't use units immune to first strikes. Assuming you are fighting with loads of siege weapons drill is better to mop up than combat as it is less likely that the unit get damaged. Drill is also quite decent fighting against collateral units as well.

Most of the time counter promos is head and shoulders above the other promos when you know what you are fighting but otherwise combat is best unless you get a free drill promo(or two) and/or have highly experienced units and are fighting with/against loads of siege weapons.

obsolete said:

The promotion you aim for is Pinch for obvious reasons. And if someone can't figure that one out, they either lack the total fundamental aspects of warfare & promotion bonuses.... or lack the basic concepts of simple mathematics. Most probably both.

For the love of God, please lets not hear weak flanking again. If someone can post me shots of deity players actually using this weak promo (who can actually win on that level) then I won't get so heated about it.

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A. Gunpowder units cannot get flanking promotions, so that point is moot.
B. As stated before, promotions are very situational. Pinch is not always the best promotion. Especially for mustketmen if there are civs that do not have gunpowder yet. Once every civ has gunpowder then yes pinch is a strong promotion but not the only one to grant. Some units should have formation promotions as well to protect stacks in the open field against cavalry. The antiseige unit promotion can help with cities defended by MG's. Going to war with all your units promoted the same way is about as smart as not bringing axes and spears with your swordsmen. Barring an agressive civ, I tend to promote units built in cities that produce only two promotions to combat1/pinch. My military cities that can give me 3 promos I go for combat 1/2 formation.
C. Pinch doesn't do squat vs tanks. Unless it is a pinch spearman

I promote 2/3 to 3/4 of my gunpowder troops with pinch first (assuming the AI have also reached gunpowder). The others will go up the combat line directly and I'll toss in 2-3 with formation.

When I got BTS I noticed they had added drill as one of the possible promotion lines, that would be a good one for the brand new types of units I suppose. I will have to check into this wait until you fight tactic to promote, to often I'm concerned they will get attacked unpromoted and have a lesser chance of winning.

I used to promote a lot of gunpowder units to CG, but I'm doing that less and less being that when wars are fought in my territory I like to go out of the city and fight with my units before the enemy can pillage my tiles, and CG is useless there. The thing I like about straight combat promotions is the AI can't hit you with the one type of unit your stack is ill prepared to face.

I pretty much always go down the combat line with gunpowder units. Drill can be nice for protective leaders and for Oromo Warriors, but combat promotions are more consistently powerful for many reasons, not the least of which is that knights and flanking cavalry have immunity to first strikes.

If the computer has teched to riflemen, I also grab pinch.

In the very early days I will mix in a few woodsmen or guerilla musketmen to defend my Maces when in favorable terrain. The rest will follow the combat line. This allows my existing pathfiders to be disbanded. I don't give musketmen the formation promotion as Pikemen are better. I'll start giving some pinch if I come across other musketmen.

Later I'll be using grenadiers who replace my maces and specialise these as city raider (from upgrades), combat or pinch. Again pikes are still used in the anti-cavalry role supported by formation promoted cavalry and elephants if I have them. I'll still be using muskets in a secondary role.

Later when I eventually get rifling, riflemen replace both the pikemen and muskets.

I then beeline for Assembly Line and build combat1/pinch Infantry and save all my gold to upgrade most of my older gunpowder units to Infantry to take advantage of the window of opportunity when the AI upgrades all its gunpowder units to the weaker SAM Infantry.

Refar said:

The Funny thing is the AI uses Falnking all the time on its Cavalry and it is effective - at least to make me as hell. Every stupid Cavalry withdraws from hopeless battles, but destroys the Siege Weapons. (There MUST be a promotion/unit/whatever to couter this BS!!!!)

Anyway... never manged to put Flanking to a good use myself... Seems the AI just has superior ... uhm ... tactics there...

Uhm back on topic....

The most effective Gunpowder units for your offensive wars are obviously the CRIII you upgrade from Maces...

As for newly built units... Pinch, (Ambush if more appropriate)...

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Everyone knows the hardcounter for cavalry is pikemen

Nah, mostly Drill, especially if I'm protective.

Drill isn't worthless. If you're warmongering you probably won't have a tech lead, granted, and drill won't be used as much, granted. But, it depends what kind of game you're playing. If you're playing a turtle and tech game, say as elizabeth or darius or something, and you get riflemen when your target opponent has muskets and knights...then you should use drill. When it's strength 14 against 9 or 10 you should take advantage of that lead and give your guys drill, they'll thank you for it by winning battles and barely taking any damage

City raider, hands down!

Defiant47 said:

City raider, hands down!

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Good luck promoting gunpowder units with CR.
Read the title of the topic

CivMcNut said:

What's the consensus on how to upgrade your gunpowder units for effective fighting? Lately I've just been going with straight combat strength so I can be offensive or defensive with the unit and only going for city garrison promotions for a place that is likely to get hit with a stack of doom.

Has anyone found some combinations of promotions for them that work well? City Raider promotions work so well in the early game. I also notice when you upgrade an old CR unit to gunpowder it still keeps that promo, and becomes very deadly.

I definately like pinch later on when the foe starts having gunpowder units everywhere, but what about before that?

Click to expand...

City Raider is a great promotion to have, but you can get this only if the gunpowder units originated by upgrading from medieval units.

As you mentioned, the Combat line of promotions is a good all-purpose approach to take. However, it may be helpful to mix this in with other promotions.

For instance, if a gunpowder unit has 3 promotions to begin with, I find it useful to spend the first 2 promotions on Combat I and Combat II, and the third promotion on one of the following:

1) Combat III
2) Formation
3) Pinch
4) Medic I
5) City Garrison I

There are exceptions to this guideline. Since the Medic and City Garrison lines can go beyond level 1, I will have some units specialize in these, instead of the Combat line. I generally have 1 unit per city specialize in City Garrison, and 1 unit overall specialize in Medic (it needs to be a leader unit in order to get Medic III).

What I rarely do is dabble in different promotion lines for a single unit, unless one of those is Combat. For instance, I will rarely ever give Pinch AND Formation to a single unit.

Apart from the exceptions, my gunpowder units will take Combat as the main promotion line, with 1 slot possibly spent on something else. So, continuing with the 3-promotion example above, I will have one of the following:

Combat III, 1/4 of the time
Combat II + Pinch, 1/4 of the time
Combat II + Formation, 1/4 of the time
Combat II + City Garrison, 1/8 of the time
Combat II + Medic, 1/8 of the time

This applies to the age of Cavalry. For units from the age of Tanks, it becomes:

Combat III, 1/2 of the time
Combat II + Pinch, 1/4 of the time
Combat II + Medic, 1/8 of the time
Combat II + Drill, 1/8 of the time

With a Protective or Aggressive leader, I use a similar strategy, except that all units will be 1 better in Combat, City Garrison, and/or Drill. I will also have a few units specialize in the Drill promotion (but only in rare cases).


I have found that having the Red Cross national wonder can provide a lot of free promotions to units that otherwise need to spend a promotion to get Medic I. Once I get Red Cross, I generally have the Red Cross city's units specialize in Medic, and units from other cities don't even bother with Medic.

I'm a big fan of drill - it helps your armies keep moving faster as you take less damage. But I like to spend my attacks on units that are either a tech level behind, or which have been weakened by bombers/cannon/artillery. So with good odds already on the attack, my main concern is keeping momentum going. And drill promotions do that really well.

A very common path for me is:

- Drill 2, then pinch, then combat promotions.

Makes a unit with guaranteed first strikes, plus a strong attacking bonus.

Added to this I will have stack defenders who will get straight combat or combat + formation promotions. Medics are probably old units since there is no point in promoting them.

Draftee units which start with no promotions usually end up in this stack defender role getting a combat promotion, or get CG promotion and used as garrison units. I prefer not to ever leave a unit on drill 1, so the drill 2 units are mainly built in my HE city.