A question about Musketmen

[HotDog Fish]

Are the musket men in civ3 using Match Lock or Flint Lock Muskets?

[Pygzilla]

or wheel lock?

[cracker]

Given the choice of building pikemen for 30 shields to get a 3 defense or building musketmen for 60 shields to get a 4 defense, which should you choose?

Which defense has a higher chance of succeeding: 2 pikemen + a cannon or 1 musketman + a cannon?

I have gotten to where I rarely build musketmen unless there is a very special circumstance that might warrant it.

The musketmen animations should also produce significantly large amounts of smoke in the progress of the game because that is one of the biggest features of blackpowder warfare.

[HotDog Fish]

I actually don't build musket men, just upgrade my pike men, but ummm...that's really not an answer to my question

[ETO_Peregrine]

The musket man (why two words?) replaces pikemen and is replaced by riflemen, so my best guess is that the musket man represents the use of all firearms from hand cannons to mass produced flintlock pieces. The musket man's defense rating suggests he is supposed to be an effective counter to knights, as soldiers armed with early matchlock and wheel lock weapons were intended. The appearance of the musket man also seems to fit in the 16th century, when knights were on the decline. The rifleman is clearly intended to be a 19th century infantryman, so the musket man's mandate seems to span the 17th and 18th centuries, putting him squarely in the flintlock era as well. I would like to see an intermediate unit that represents the offensively capable unarmored soldiers who were equipped with standardized flintlocks. 4/5/1 or 4/4/1 at 60 shields perhaps?

[Zouave]

Originally posted by HotDog Fish
Are the musket men in civ3 using Match Lock or Flint Lock Muskets?

BINGO. You hit the problem right on the nose.

Firaxis' units (and their values) are simplistic and lame, and here is why.

The original musketmen (or arquebusiers) carried heavy slow-firing muskets with primitive wheellocks or matchlocks. They could not carry bayonets.

THUS, pikemen and musketmen FOUGHT TOGETHER, such as in the famous Spanish tercios (which should be the Spanish UU). The muskets supplied firepower, and the pikemen held off knights.

In the early 18th century BAYONETS were able to be easily fitted to muskets, which then used the better flintlock system. Pikemen became instantly obsolete, and musketmen more offensive, even though cannon were Napoleon's prime mover offensively.

So with Civ 3 we do not have the AI using cannon offensively, nor do we have advanced musketmen at all. In fact, all of Firaxis' post-gunpowder units have absurdly low values, that owing to some artificial nonsense about trying to give civs without needed resources "a chance". Civ 3's resource appearance rates are also ridiculously low.

The best we can do about this is mod the game. See either Plutarck's LWC mod, or the one I posted, on the Complete Mods forum. Both have the two types of musketmen - primitive and advanced.