Are Musket Men Overpriced?

It seems to me that musket men are highly priced relative to the benefits they provide. A pikeman is 1/3/1 and costs 30 shields. A musketman is 2/4/1 and costs 60 shields. Few people care about the extra point on offense, as few ever attack with musketmen.

What you're essentially getting, is a 33% increase in defense, for 100% more in price.

To me, it just doesn't seem worth it. New cities will struggle to build musket men, and established cities are probably far better of churning out knights. Knights are only a little bit more expensive, but are faster, much better at attacking, and almost as good at defending.

Why defend your cities with musketmen? Just stick a knight in there, and if the city gets in trouble, send a few more knights over to help out. Or just stick with pikemen, and upgrade on an as-needs basis, or don't upgrade at all.

That's pretty much what I do; I stick with 3-defense units until nationalism, and then go for riflemen. Musketmen are just overpriced and not valuable enough. Strangely, their 'mirror unit', the Medieval Infantry, added in PTW, are much cheaper, at 40 shields.

What do others think?

-Sirp.

I have to agree - in my games the moment I acquire gunpowder is usually accompanied by a groan as I realize that my now obsolete military will either cost 100's of gold to upgrade, or take 10's of turns to replace.

I do like to upgrade all my veteran pike, eventually, so I often try to bag some dead-end tech first and sell it for the cash needed to upgrade. You'd think by now I'd have a strategy for getting Leonardo's, but I don't. I just struggle through that period of the game, EVERY game. Also this is when I start building the bombard units which are cheap and as long as they are backed up with defenders, start to contribute more to my defenses. Fortresses, too.

But I do consider it important to get as many musketmen out as I can. Being attacked by knights I find that my cities take a lot fewer losses when I have just one veteran MM among other pikes. But basically I now put off gunpowder until I have some highly productive cities.

I suppose the whole issue could be skipped by negotiating out of wars until nationalism, then building a whole new defense from scratch with the draft. I'd only try this with a militaristic civ, though - hate to be stuck with mostly conscripts when thar's cavalry and armies running around!

I think that the Medieval Infantry is too cheap... It totally unballances the game imho in favor of attacking parties.

EDIT: so, yes I think the the musketman should be cheaper in PTW...

With Med INf. around one would actually need a strengthened defence, too, for towns. Maybe bigger, stronger walls......

The Medieval Infantry isn't that cheap. It's 10 shields more expensive than a swordsman in exchange for 1 extra attack.

Further, I think most players still build knights if they can instead of MDIs. If MDIs were too cheap, then everyone would build lots of them, and few or no knights.

I think it's great that there's a strategic choice in the middle ages between building offensive infantry and cavalry.

However, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of increasing the price of MDI up to 50 shields in exchange for an extra point on defense, making them 4/3/1. I.e. knights without the movement.

-Sirp.

Originally posted by Sirp
However, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of increasing the price of MDI up to 50 shields in exchange for an extra point on defense, making them 4/3/1. I.e. knights without the movement.

-Sirp.

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Similarly Musketmen could be 3/4/1, and cost 50 shields, which is what you find in the Beta Testers Mod (PTW). In this mod french musketeer is 4/4/1, 50 shields.

I don't care about the price of musketmen. They look so bad, I don't want them anyway!

IMO it is by far the worst looking unit.

Musketmen are so bad that the only way for me to ever have these in my armies is by forgetting to change production after the city governor suggests building one.

Seriously though, IMO situations where two 1/3/1 units are worse than one 2/4/1 unit for the same price are very rare, maybe only when strapped for cash in a Republic/Democracy because of the additional unit upkeep required for two pikemen. I rarely connect saltpeter before cavalry since that removes the pikemen from the build queue, and if I do it's because I'll trade the saltpeter away for cash, never for the ability to produce muskets.

Originally posted by Kemal
Musketmen are so bad that the only way for me to ever have these in my armies is by forgetting to change production after the city governor suggests building one.

Seriously though, IMO situations where two 1/3/1 units are worse than one 2/4/1 unit for the same price are very rare, maybe only when strapped for cash in a Republic/Democracy because of the additional unit upkeep required for two pikemen. I rarely connect saltpeter before cavalry since that removes the pikemen from the build queue, and if I do it's because I'll trade the saltpeter away for cash, never for the ability to produce muskets.

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The strange thing to me is that the ability to shoot objects at a distance should be a bigger upgrade because look at how musketmen were used in history.They should actually be better at offense but, due to being slow, not that great on defense. I mod them to have a plus 2 added to offense and defense lowered 1........dread

i really dont like musketmen. they dont seem to be able to defend as well as pikemen for some reason even though they have a higher defense rating. i usually speed through to nationalism, save my money and upgrade to riflemen. only time i want saltpeter is for cannons and i can get by without them. as for knights.....i'll stick with my samurai instead.

i dont bother with mid infantry period just like i dont make cavalry unless i HAVE to (like i need to take a city for its rubber or oil or both).

i think mustketmen cost too much for what you get lower the cost or raise its values. or both.

although upgrading gives you a slight boost in the historgaph. i alsoways seem to get leonardos workshop so upgrading for me is a given. en masse upgradesgive the histograph a slight boost, next time you do it look at the "power" section. you'll see it spike a little.

I don't like them that much either, but I always upgrade them anyway and build them if I'm short on defense. It frequently happens in my games that I'm done building up my cities about gunpowder time, so I have nothing to do in my cities but build military. If I have cash to spare, I'll upgrade to muskets. Heck, I'm going to have to upgrade to rifles soon anyway, and it doesn't cost anymore to upgrade them in stages than it does to upgrade from spearman to rifle directly. I'd rather have a 4 power defender against a cavalry than a 3 power too, and knights don't stand a chance.

Yeah, they are costing to much, although this might be intentional to make people think about using them or not.

In my most recent games I have been starting to "Not Hook up" the SaltPeter resource until I get cavalry, and build Pikemen instead during that time.

Apparently some genius at Firaxis figured that it costs twice as much to arm & train a man with musket as it does for pike plus full suit of armor. Where's Zouave when you need him?

Like many of you, in absurdly ahistorical but tactically mandatory fashion, I avoid saltpeter connections in order to build pikes. Or, if I feel like building cannons, I beef up my infantry before going over to gunpowder technology.

I suspect the real reason for shield-cost "inflation" with increasing tech is to keep the number of units manageable. But since this is not the "Ideas for Civ4" thread, I will restrain myself from pointing out any of the more sensible ways of keeping the number of units in hand. Must... restrain... self...

Originally posted by Ayatollah So
Apparently some genius at Firaxis figured that it costs twice as much to arm & train a man with musket as it does for pike plus full suit of armor. Where's Zouave when you need him?

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I disagree somewhat. Muskets up til almost the Civil War era were hand-crafted. Pieces were individually fitted and not easily replaced and maintained. Any blacksmith could make a pike and a rudimentary set of armor, but it took a skilled craftsman a long time to make a flint-lock musket.

Originally posted by Ayatollah So
Apparently some genius at Firaxis figured that it costs twice as much to arm & train a man with musket as it does for pike plus full suit of armor. Where's Zouave when you need him?

Click to expand...

You are forgetting the costs of supplying a musketman with fine wine, cheeses, and fresh-baked bread. A musketman is French after all (I don't buy that hogwash about "musketeers" for one minute!), and expensive tastes lead to shield inflation.

I don't think anyone is going to start taking notice of the attack of a musket man unless it's increased to at least 4. Even then it's marginal. Who wants to attack with an attack 4 musket man, risking 60 shields, when you can use a much cheaper medieval infantry, risking fewer shields in your attack, or with an only slightly more expensive knight and have the opportunity to retreat?

But then, I don't think the musket man's defense can be increased. That'd make it too hard for knights to make breakthroughs in the gunpowder age.

That said, musket men at 50 shields rated 3/4/1 is a good suggesion imo, although the shields thing is all I care about; not the extra offense.

Also, I do believe that in r/l compared to longbowmen, musketmen were much cheaper. Then again, they were also used for fairly similiar purposes. Of course what they should do is make the longbowman more expensive, more powerful, and make it the English UU; give them something decent. Other civilizations could have a crossbowman instead, or could be just stuck with the MDI. Of course this is a whole different topic...

-Sirp.