Worst UU - France's Musketeers

i think the musketeers are the worst UU in the game. the only difference between them and the base unit is the movement bonus of an additional 1. Does anyone agree with me? Or are there any other contenders?

Generally Khamer's Ballista Elephant wins at these "worste UU" polls. The French Muskateer has some supporters some consider it top notch, however most seem to consider it on the weaker end, but not terrible. In my oppinion it's middle of the road, that extra 1 movement is increadibly strong, but it's weakness lies in the general weakness of musketmen; ie they go obsolete too quickly.

GONeill85 said:

Does anyone agree with me?

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I think you have never really try to use the potential of musketeer. They can also be seen as knight that does not fear elephant or pike, or as 2-square movement defender.

The worst UU is map dependant. On pangea, the dutch and portugueses UU are very, very weak. With some setting, bowman and skirmisher just serve no purposes. If you win before the modern area, Panzer and navy seal are useless. So there is a lot of contender, depending on the game.

At least, french UU come gast enough for me to alway have to build some. Are they decisive ? Hard to say, but they can save you.

its quite cool move 2, recieving defence bonuses unit.
There are few that are much worse...
I personally dislike Babylon Bowmans. I think they are worse UU than Muskets.

About Balista Elephant i dont agree. When playng with AI, you often counter stacks, They attack preferable (aka assasins) units which even not receiving def bonuses. That’s crazy XP and GG generation, if used right.

That 1 move extra isn't significant is a joke!

Bowmen, SEALS, Panzers, Ballista Elephant, and the HRE UU are all worse for example. They're probably the weakest of the musket UUs but still well ahead of the bottom stuff.

TheMeInTeam said:

and the HRE UU are all worse for example.

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Please, can you explain ? If you beeline for them, I tend to found them pretty impressive, since they are improved longbowmans and can attack city or ennemy stack without much problem. They may not be powerhouse, but I tend to find them pretty useful.

TheLazyHase said:

Please, can you explain ? If you beeline for them, I tend to found them pretty impressive, since they are improved longbowmans and can attack city or ennemy stack without much problem. They may not be powerhouse, but I tend to find them pretty useful.

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1. They replace pikes, not longbows
2. Their only benefit over pikes is against melee. The only AI unit you will face with melee is the mace. Maces are not common defenders and often are not even in overwhelming #'s on offense for the AI.
3. They suck terribly against any non-melee defender, specifically longbows.
4. They come at arguably the worst time in the game to wage war...right when then AI starts spamming castles to make wars take forever.

Granted, they do offer some field battle flexibility compared to regular pikes, but their weak base str and city attack (they suck so bad vs cities they're worse than swords against archery units) coupled with the fact that xbows utterly pants them and lack of all purpose attacker status really work against them (you'll probably just wind up mixing them in with a stack with slightly higher #s than normal pikes).

Useless? No, but behind the musketeer, which is an all-purpose, draftable unit that can kill an enemy unit then return to the stack, quickly reinforce the front lines, or potentially threaten multiple cities (while ignoring the castle defense bonus - a big nuisance since they don't have a hard counter and any defensive terrain puts them ahead of knights).

2 moves also allows for some healing + catchup if you decide to pair the musketeers with 1 move siege...and this UU is a very common choice as a stack filler to back up cannons so it's not like it's super rare to use them.

TheLazyHase, can you explain how do you use them effectively. What do they have in common w/ the longbows.
What? You are going to mass cover xbows as stack defenders and proceed w/ a lot of trebuchets.

The UB of HRE is good but the UU sucks big time.

TheMeInTeam said:

1. They replace pikes, not longbows
2. Their only benefit over pikes is against melee. The only AI unit you will face with melee is the mace. Maces are not common defenders and often are not even in overwhelming #'s on offense for the AI.
3. They suck terribly against any non-melee defender, specifically longbows.
4. They come at arguably the worst time in the game to wage war...right when then AI starts spamming castles to make wars take forever.

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Thanks. For the 1), I talk about that later in the post.

TheMeInTeam said:

No, but behind the musketeer, which is an all-purpose, draftable unit that can kill an enemy unit then return to the stack, quickly reinforce the front lines, or potentially threaten multiple cities (while ignoring the castle defense bonus - a big nuisance since they don't have a hard counter and any defensive terrain puts them ahead of knights).

2 moves also allows for some healing + catchup if you decide to pair the musketeers with 1 move siege...and this UU is a very common choice as a stack filler to back up cannons so it's not like it's super rare to use them.

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Good summary for musketeer (even if I was already using them that way)

bestsss said:

TheLazyHase, can you explain how do you use them effectively. What do they have in common w/ the longbows.

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They defend better than longbowman against about everything. I prefer a 9-strength land against 8-strength mace than a 6-strength longbow against a 8-strength mace, for example. The same for longbowman. Except maybe china, I never seen AI xbow attack city, so that's not much of a problem.

... then again, you'd better switch when janissaries begin to come around. But that would common sense, I think.

But the Landsknecht is best because it has all big numbers and stuff! Simple math shows it's the best UU: +100% + 100% = +200%! Now what can top that ?! It beats the second best UU, the Quechua, by many numbers (that has only +100% +25% +10%).

</sarcasm>

TheLazyHase said:

They defend better than longbowman against about everything. I prefer a 9-strength land against 8-strength mace than a 6-strength longbow against a 8-strength mace, for example. The same for longbowman. Except maybe china, I never seen AI xbow attack city, so that's not much of a problem.

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You conveniently forgot:
a) Bigger hammer cost
b) No innate first strikes
c) No innate city defense
d) No CG promotions
e) No Drill promotions
f) EDIT: higher tech requirement

TheMeInTeam said:

Useless? No, but behind the musketeer, which is an all-purpose, draftable unit that can kill an enemy unit then return to the stack, quickly reinforce the front lines, or potentially threaten multiple cities (while ignoring the castle defense bonus - a big nuisance since they don't have a hard counter and any defensive terrain puts them ahead of knights).

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Cuirassiers are way better at both killing enemy units then returning to the stack and at taking cities.

Musketeers struggles with longbows in cities and knights. With no withdrawal chance you loose a lot of units attacking cities.

They can do some pillaging and defend, that's about it. Very weak unit.

It's a very weak UU, not sure it's the worst though. There are other one's that suck too, like the panzer or the camel archer.

Silu said:

You conveniently forgot:
a) Bigger hammer cost
b) No innate first strikes
c) No innate city defense
d) No CG promotions
e) No Drill promotions
f) EDIT: higher tech requirement

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No drill and no CG are not exactly the worst thing on earth, since combat is alway at least decent and open anti-XXX promotion (one of the problem of CG - I admit drill is fine in this regard). Most of the time I don't use CG for a single reason : a lot of the work of a city defender is to take on attacker. Landsnekt perfom a lot better than longbow in that.

Windsor said:

Cuirassiers are way better at both killing enemy units then returning to the stack and at taking cities.

Musketeers struggles with longbows in cities and knights. With no withdrawal chance you loose a lot of units attacking cities.

They can do some pillaging and defend, that's about it. Very weak unit.

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Musketeer does not struggle with longbow. They are about the same as knight, and have nothing to worry as counter. If you struggle with longbow, then the problem seem to be a lot more of "no enough siege" than "musketeer is weak".

Don't forget that cuirassier are a lot latter AND still have trouble with pike and elephant. And losing cuirassier to elephant is really bad.

TheLazyHase said:

Musketeer does not struggle with longbow. They are about the same as knight, and have nothing to worry as counter. If you struggle with longbow, then the problem seem to be a lot more of "no enough siege" than "musketeer is weak".

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Siege slows you down and you will severly nerf the benefit of the musketeers 2 A musketeer will of course not struggle against a damaged longbow, but against a healthy one odds ain't great.

Don't forget that cuirassier are a lot latter AND still have trouble with pike and elephant. And losing cuirassier to elephant is really bad.

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I don't agree that cuirassiers are a lot later. With a usual research path they will be 1-2 techs away. Pikes and elephants rarely make any problems for me.

Windsor said:

I don't agree that cuirassiers are a lot later. With a usual research path they will be 1-2 techs away. Pikes and elephants rarely make any problems for me.

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So, if you research gunpowder late and then beeline for cuirassier quickly, there is no much time. I does agree.

You can also see that musketeer are one tech away from knight (IIRC), and seeing that the 3 more tech (nationalism, music, military tradition) are not exactly cheap material.

Never played the game using French, but was against them a lot of times. I see no major disadvantages of this unit, and combination of 2 of them and 2 knights running around my territory pillaging my improvements was not making me happy. With other civilizations they send knights and I kill them with pikes. In this case I have to have knights designated for defence.

When I think of bad UU's, I do think of the French, but I think of many others that are far worse.

The Impi is one UU I have never feared and I can't really see a use for at all. Gallic Warriors are just hardly better than swordsmen...and in an area swordsmen don't need to be good at (defense). The Conquistador is pretty darn amazing, but they are useful for such a short period of time, they are all but usless.

I would consider them all worse, and others are quite situational. Vultures don't do well against axemen, for instance...and that is what they replace. While Dog Soldiers do, they have little hope against anything else.

I put the French UU with these. The 2 moves is situational. If you can work well with your spies, Musketeers and Knights will quickly move to take down a whole empire. If something has gone wrong in your plans (or you didn't plan to use spies), you will likely be weighted down with 1 movement trebs that will not allow the UU to shine.

It's situational. But it still does better than more mobile spearmen that is just going to get smacked with an axe or arrow anyway. Or a mounted unit that may be obsolete before you get the techs for it.

Of course, it depends so much on playstyle...

The Jaguar can be great if you push for woodsman III (particularly so early, but the healing and first strikes don't go out of style when forests are cut down), but for someone that is more interested in a RIGHT NOW advantage, its not exactly going to be as good with them. I see people talking bad about Bowmen a lot. I love them! I put them to use by having fewer city defenders and going to war early and often, allowing their bonus against early melee city attackers translate into a better offense.

The Musketeer is higher end of the "bad" UU's, to me. It's no Numidian Cavalry or Preatorian, but it sees the field a lot more under my command than Impi, Vultures, or Conquistadors.

"I see people talking bad about Bowmen a lot."

glad you said that-

after ripping off a poster's (obsolete- a lower tier player to Attacko) theory
and reading the weekly drill threads that come - weekly- and already being about the greatest user of archers of all time- one can make an uber unit from a bowmen-
combat- switch to drill- ect- (mix- cover, formation- )

did a bowmen rush walkthrough but this was sans the drill exploration.

IMO the Portuguese UU (Carrack, is it?) is somewhat poor...

For me the worst military UU ( it is hard to argue against the lack of fighting abilities of the Indian UU ) is the Korean UU. A military UU that can't kill in offense... hooray ( P.S In MP it might be a quite useful unit, with the human love for melee units and battles in the open ... but in SP, with AI love for defending in their cities with archery and/or gunpowder units .... ) C'mon, even B. Phants can kill in offense

About musketeers ... well, I guess that a lot of people uses them as regular 1 move units , as part of a stack with maces, siege and pikes. obviously they look weak if you use tham that way, in the same way that combining gunships with infantry is a bad idea Musketeers shine when they move with knights ( at best ) against cities with little or no defense ( spy revolts to the win ) ... if you don't do that, they aren't better than regular muskets

@Rooftrellen

I have to disagree with you in atleast 2 UU, the Spanish and the Celt one. It is not hard to get the techs to get cuiraseers ( and the spanish UU ) via the Liberalism path ( tech lib, get natio, trade for/research music + gunpowder ( this one is better to research ), tech Mil Trad ) and the spanish UU , besides having terrain defensive bonuses and fortify ( making them considerably harder to dislodge than a cuiraseer ) have a bonus vs their better counter ( pikes ) . Mass Conquistadores combined with spy revolts makes a good window of attacks IMHO.

About the Celt one: c'mon, you really think that the Guerilla line is about defense? Guerrilla line is ALL about offense ... just look at guerrilla III : + 25% attack vs hills + 50% withdrawn chances ... or even guerrilla II , with the double move on hills ( you can chop forests, but you can't raze hills ). That makes the G Warrior the only melee unit that can withdrawn and given the AI love for hill cities .... The G. warrior also can be built with copper ( instead of only iron ) and comes with a free promo that it could never get by normal means ( and opens a promo line that would be normally closed ) ... a CR I Gerrilla III G. Warrior ( 8 XP, given that both Celt leaders are Charismatic ... ), a very easy to get unit, will have 50% withdrawn chances, double movement on hills, +50% defense on hills , 30% vs cities in flatlands and 25% vs units in hill tiles ( making a nice 55% vs units in hill cities ) ... I can definitely assure you that this is a combination hard to beat for the price it comes and it is even better with the Agg free Combat I in top ( read Boudica )