Gun Powder units

[Calavente]

Frankly CIV4 has completely skipped the first 3-400 years of gunpowder development and jumped in to the 18th century (muskeeters and safe Cannon) Useable firearms appeared way before them. Anyone interested should look up what a handgun actually was.

well adapt to FFH2 and try to imagine proposing wacky handgun / cannon, when some people have fireballs ....
you would have to propose a well functionning firearm.

plus : having a unit means you can arm 100 men or 1000 men with it : it should be reliable.
you have to consider that the beaker spent in research is the time experimenting to reach a "safe"/efficient model of firearm. or even just that someone invented handguns.. but the "beakers" is just the king (you) saying : "those things looks fun.. have my scientists look into it to give some to my men"
(before that, you won't know it, but maybe every master sergeant of the champion unit had a pistol... or every champion unit with city-raid have 2-3 bombardes, but it was of a very low impact on the battle so the unit is not considered a firearm welding unit... )

I mean, from the 13th to the 17th-18th, firearms were not available/reliable/efficient for arming whole units, so, very reallistically, civ4 only presents musketman when the technology of firearms allows for arming whole units with it !!!

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I find that some of the choices are strange. Especialy that the Calibim don't seem to have canons.
Now, I can perfectly understand why you would not feel confortable about giving a bunch of Moroi rifles, as they could turn on you, but why not canons?

 

[Calavente]

so to resume it :
Svartalfar & Ljosalfar : elves : don't like the "make it burn and it explodes" thing..

Doviello & Barbarian State & Clan of Embers : they are barbs ... would you give firearms to a berserker that can shoot his boss in the back if he disagree ??? those civs all have a mentality of berserker. so no firearms. For other weapons, skill counts and you might impress the other with your own skill. with primitive firearms the only skill is to aim roughly : no skill necessary : those individualistic crazy barbs won't like it, save maybe for one or two guys in the pack but that won't make a real unit.

Infernal & Mercurians : have you ever seen a holy ost or hell pit with firearms ..? be realisitc;

Calabim : well you won't like having your bloodpets ...sorry, "human fellows"... be able to shoot things at your back, would you ? plus : why invest in "power for packs of human" when your civ is oriented with the "accumulation of power in a chosen few".

Hippus : mercenary without firearms... no mounted infantery, no dragons, no...
well .. I can't really understand why.... but maybe it's because those weapons are not usable on horses ? but the can build axemen and longbows.. so that's not the reason .. maybe because you can't fight with the "hit and run" technic ?

on the other hand, if you really need muskets to attack.. you're an unlucky guy

 

[Humakty]

Hippus : a bunch of rag tag brutes, never thinking ahead of time, only seeking the best opportunity to pillage. I wonder why those primitives, only forming a coherent society for the sake of profit, are allowed to have libraries, at least CoE have an higher goal than pillage everything and go for another target. Living on the saddle never led, historically, to great scientific discoveries.

 

[zbelg]

I can understand balance, but I really don't understand the argument that more 'primitive' civs shouldn't have guns for flavor. Civ is a very dynamic game, if you've overcome being a barbarian civ and gotten to the point where you can research Blasting Powder, you've become civilized enough that you should be able to use it. I don't like limiting weapons to fit into fantasy cliches, I'd like to see orcs with guns if they've progressed to that level.

 

[EverNoob]

Hmmm maybe it could be explained by social differences. Maybe to the Hippus the arquebus isn't considered a weapon for a true warrior. Someone who uses an arquebus could be seen as "less of a warrior" since it requires less skill and training than other weapons. Something along the lines of how the Samurai refused to use guns (at least openly?) in Japan.

 

[Calavente]

evernoob : I like your view of things
why not, maybe then say that orcs, (oups the clan), doviello, barbs and hippus have kind of the view on firearms :
"no skills needed means I won't use it" (as : either "I can't show my superiority" or "it isn't the way of the true warrior")

I LIKE IT !

it's too bad FFH limites firearms to muskets with revolvers or longrifle skill comes into play so those self-imbued warriors would use it !!

as for that :

I can understand balance, but I really don't understand the argument that more 'primitive' civs shouldn't have guns for flavor. Civ is a very dynamic game, if you've overcome being a barbarian civ and gotten to the point where you can research Blasting Powder, you've become civilized enough that you should be able to use it. I don't like limiting weapons to fit into fantasy cliches, I'd like to see orcs with guns if they've progressed to that level.

going that way :
"why can't the grigori reforme themselve and beging to believe in some gods ?"
"why can't all civ kidnap lanun divers and learns to harvest pearls?"
"why the elves won't ever overcome their treehuggers way ? I'm sure they can be convinced to cut those f***ing trees and build catapults !"
"why can't the kazad learn magic ? their cousins the luirchips can do it ..."
...etc
with your reasoning it seems always possible to revocate all the particularisme of any civs !

 

[Dora190]

I mean, from the 13th to the 17th-18th, firearms were not available/reliable/efficient for arming whole units, so, very reallistically, civ4 only presents musketman when the technology of firearms allows for arming whole units with it !!!

Um yes they were. They were used on a large scale despite being dangerous. James IV (Scotland) was so infatuated with cannon that his army was one of the most heavily served in the world, he was in fact killed by an exploding cannon. The Japanese were heavily into cannon & arquebus early on and were arming large numbers of troops.

CIV 4 is being completely unrealistic in fact. By your logic swords would have not been used until they could make high quality ones that wouldn't break, or bows wouldn't be used until technically advanced versions like longbows were available. Or in Vanilla version flight would jump straight to jets.

On another note, I don't have a problem with some nations not using muskets. But I do have a problem with the Musket Spam, not to mention the relatively high values these things get, as I said I would prefer if:

They were called Arquebuiers(sp?)
They were cheaper (75% of current cost?)
They were less effective say 6 (5 + 1 Fire) with a +50% vs Mounted (although historically cavalry tended to make mince out of early black powder units if they weren't supported by something to stop the horses), +25% defensive mod for garrisoning. (The AI may not spam them as much then)

It should be remembered that the 4 Musketeers rarely if every used the weapon they were named after for a good reason, they were big heavy and you only got one shot. It therefore paid to be able to use a sword. Muskets were really a single volley club, that could inflict harm, accurately, out to about 50 yards on a good day. They were not Lee Enfields or Winchesters.

 

[Calavente]

well technically I really think that some of the warriors have swords or cutlass.
But swordmen appears in civ when the smiths knows how to make many swords and some armor.
some warriors had bow or javelins but their use and making were not well known. their use in warfare was delayed until someone thought about an archery range to TRAIN those morrons that only know to brawl to use a bow and kill someone with it.

thus you can form armies and not just militias.

I'm really consitent in fact.
In civ4, longsword used by aristocrates can't help you form an army... you just have warriors with sword. They have to learn how to use it.

You don't have to have a perfect weapon to make units, you have to at least polish it's fabrication to provide it to enough people. As the really first version, the crappy ones, can't be mass producted, you don't get units with them. So civ is reallistic ! You won't get any units in civ armed with fleurets as this is a duel weapon and cannot be used on a battlefield.
for bows : they can be used before longbows as even short bows can be "mass producted".
in vanilla, you don't have the early planes / ballons. you get directly to the ones that impacted the battlefield : the fighter / bomber. the other ones had no such impact so : no units !



As for the dates, I just took some that were stated and had not checked it. musketeers were used in the XIV in china and XV-XVI in europe. so what ? can't you play a game in civ where you beeline to muskets/cannons and get them around the XIV-XV century ? that's realistic. before that, firearms were for the few, not for armies.
You have not showed me any real army using enough firearms to be considered a firearm unit that used not at least the arquebuse or cannon. those are reliable enough.
Show me some armies that massively used more primitive firearms ?
true: some were sometimes used, individualy sparsely... but in civ it can be the equivalent of CR promotion or anything the like.

EDIT : I'll add something: you don't know the size of the unit :
why should arquebuse be cheaper and less powerful than the longbow?
that's true for each soldier, but maybe the unit (as each individual cost less) has two time the the number of soldiers than an longbow unit ? thus the 9 is normal.

or maybe an arquebuse unit is composed of half firearms and half pikemen... those are not shown.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

well technically I really think that some of the warriors have swords or cutlass.
But swordmen appears in civ when the smiths knows how to make many swords and some armor.
some warriors had bow or javelins but their use and making were not well known. their use in warfare was delayed until someone thought about an archery range to TRAIN those morrons that only know to brawl to use a bow and kill someone with it.

thus you can form armies and not just militias.

I'm really consitent in fact.
In civ4, longsword used by aristocrates can't help you form an army... you just have warriors with sword. They have to learn how to use it.

You don't have to have a perfect weapon to make units, you have to at least polish it's fabrication to provide it to enough people. As the really first version, the crappy ones, can't be mass producted, you don't get units with them. So civ is reallistic ! You won't get any units in civ armed with fleurets as this is a duel weapon and cannot be used on a battlefield.
for bows : they can be used before longbows as even short bows can be "mass producted".
in vanilla, you don't have the early planes / ballons. you get directly to the ones that impacted the battlefield : the fighter / bomber. the other ones had no such impact so : no units !



As for the dates, I just took some that were stated and had not checked it. musketeers were used in the XIV in china and XV-XVI in europe. so what ? can't you play a game in civ where you beeline to muskets/cannons and get them around the XIV-XV century ? that's realistic. before that, firearms were for the few, not for armies.
You have not showed me any real army using enough firearms to be considered a firearm unit that used not at least the arquebuse or cannon. those are reliable enough.
Show me some armies that massively used more primitive firearms ?
true: some were sometimes used, individualy sparsely... but in civ it can be the equivalent of CR promotion or anything the like.

EDIT : I'll add something: you don't know the size of the unit :
why should arquebuse be cheaper and less powerful than the longbow?
that's true for each soldier, but maybe the unit (as each individual cost less) has two time the the number of soldiers than an longbow unit ? thus the 9 is normal.

or maybe an arquebuse unit is composed of half firearms and half pikemen... those are not shown.

1st rulle of civ. What you see is what you get. If the unit is called musketman, and has 3 figures with muskets, than it poseses only muskets and any weapons visible on the model. No other support troops, only what is shown.

Your other points are however mostly accurate.
Another isue is that a sword or longbow can take years of training to master, but a musket takes hours at most. That means that you can spam a huge unit weary quickly. A unit of musketman in FFH could be representing a unit the size of 50 units of swordsmen.

With firearms, you are literaly limited only by the speed of the gunsmiths.

Early firearms were used primarily for decimating advanced infantry. Preferably slow, heavily armored troops. Hence I think that musketmen should be city defence units.

Still, this does not explain why the Calibim can't use cannons. They already use them on their ships, so I see no reason why the canon (being a nationaly limited unit as I recall) can't be fielded. Naturaly the crews would have to be loyal and hand picked but still.

Alternatively, I don't see why gunpowder units ignore building defense. Just becouse you shoot a led ball instead of an arrow does not suddenly mean that the wall is going to give way. And besides, archers are by far more accurate than muskets. The same goes for canons, early canons were in no way able to scater a city wall with a single shot. It took long periods of bombardement. Althou they were by far more effective than other siege weapons.

 

[Dora190]

1st rule of civ. What you see is what you get. If the
Still, this does not explain why the Calibim can't use cannons. They already use them on their ships, so I see no reason why the canon (being a nationally limited unit as I recall) can't be fielded. Naturally the crews would have to be loyal and hand picked but still.

Alternatively, I don't see why gunpowder units ignore building defense. Just because you shoot a led ball instead of an arrow does not suddenly mean that the wall is going to give way. And besides, archers are by far more accurate than muskets. The same goes for canons, early canons were in no way able to shatter a city wall with a single shot. It took long periods of bombardment. Although they were by far more effective than other siege weapons.

I think the cannons in naval units is because no one has figured how to do it graphically without - battles at sea before cannon were effectively land battles fought over water, a few ships used ballistae but they weren't that effective. (the term Fo'csle is a concatenation of Forecastle which was the forward fighting castle of the ship, a tower from which archers shot at the opposing ships crew. Some really big ships had ballistae and, possibly - very possibly, catapults)

Cannon were, on the other hand, very effective at taking down walls. Walls up until the advent of gunpowder went up to prevent scaling ladders, they really did get pretty high. There are fairly reliable accounts of walls being 30-50 feet high. However they were thin and fragile, Cannon literally blew them away. Designers had to scale down and seriously thicken up walls. Any walls you see today are survivors of the age of powder not bow, something that seems to confuse on a regular basis. Old castles got those thick walls in response to gunpowder they weren't built that way originally.

That said I agree, muskets shouldn't bypass walls, but I think it may be hardcoded in the gunpowder unit.

well technically I really think that some of the warriors have swords or cutlass.
But swordmen appears in civ when the smiths knows how to make many swords and some armor.
some warriors had bow or javelins but their use and making were not well known. their use in warfare was delayed until someone thought about an archery range to TRAIN those morrons that only know to brawl to use a bow and kill someone with it.

thus you can form armies and not just militias.

I'm really consitent in fact.
In civ4, longsword used by aristocrates can't help you form an army... you just have warriors with sword. They have to learn how to use it.

You don't have to have a perfect weapon to make units, you have to at least polish it's fabrication to provide it to enough people. As the really first version, the crappy ones, can't be mass producted, you don't get units with them. So civ is reallistic ! You won't get any units in civ armed with fleurets as this is a duel weapon and cannot be used on a battlefield.
for bows : they can be used before longbows as even short bows can be "mass producted".
in vanilla, you don't have the early planes / ballons. you get directly to the ones that impacted the battlefield : the fighter / bomber. the other ones had no such impact so : no units !



As for the dates, I just took some that were stated and had not checked it. musketeers were used in the XIV in china and XV-XVI in europe. so what ? can't you play a game in civ where you beeline to muskets/cannons and get them around the XIV-XV century ? that's realistic. before that, firearms were for the few, not for armies.
You have not showed me any real army using enough firearms to be considered a firearm unit that used not at least the arquebuse or cannon. those are reliable enough.
Show me some armies that massively used more primitive firearms ?
true: some were sometimes used, individualy sparsely... but in civ it can be the equivalent of CR promotion or anything the like.

EDIT : I'll add something: you don't know the size of the unit :
why should arquebuse be cheaper and less powerful than the longbow?
that's true for each soldier, but maybe the unit (as each individual cost less) has two time the the number of soldiers than an longbow unit ? thus the 9 is normal.

or maybe an arquebuse unit is composed of half firearms and half pikemen... those are not shown.

I'm really not sure where to start

Javelins were used by the ancient Romans, Greeks - however bows in warfare were used before they were around, quite competently by the Assyrians, Hittites, Sumerians in fact by just about everyone. In fact archery has been around far longer than metallurgy, its far easier to bend wood than melt metal and what has an archery range got to do with anything?

Formation of armies predates militias, in Europe at least, by quite a bit as they are products of a civic code and has nothing to do with military technology.

Longswords wielded by aristocrats do form an army they're called knights, look up how feudalism worked and you'll see what I mean.

Mass production is a 20c thing, before that all weapons were crafted and that paragraph is a bit confused. Your argument about early aircraft is an interesting one, as they most certainly did have an impact. The first one flew in 1903 they were a component of the military within 20 years and had by then demonstrated most if not all of their possible roles by then. They most certainly did have an impact in WWI. For the record balloons did have an impact, Napoleon used them to get accurate tactical information about his opponents. I'm pretty sure most European armies utilised them.

Muskets were adopted by the Chinese in the late 16th Century copying European designs, not they other way round. - Edit I stand corrected there is evidence of Muskets in Late 14th China, but precious little technical information.
[/I]
Why should the arquebus be cheaper and less effective? Because it was. If you had given every Frenchmen at Agincourt a 15th century arquebus and told the English what was happening the result would still have been a massacre of the French. It was a piece of cr!p. Its only advantage was that it took hours to train someone to use it. No army switched over to them completely because of this. Its an interesting point but the introduction of major new technology to the battlefield is generally inferior to its predecessor. The Me262 was faster then most allied aircraft in a straight line, but it was hopeless in a dogfight, they died horribly. It was hideously technically flawed, but it was the way forward. The arquebus was hideously flawed against the longbow, but it was the way forward. Cannon had a really annoying habit of killing they're crew, but they were still used.

Unit size varies throughout history, according to politics, economics, tactics and logistics, ancient armies in particular tended to match up against each other and even then they rarely broke down into units, there never was or is an ideal unit size depending a particular weapon type (unless its a nuke or the Holy Hand grenade of Antioch - the magic number there is always one)

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Actualy it is not. It is only the isue of a single XML tag.

 

[Tacgnol]

If you had given every Frenchmen at Agincourt a 15th century arquebus and told the English what was happening the result would still have been a massacre of the French.

Actually, seeing as the French massively outnumbered the English and only managed to lose because their tactic was to ignore the archers massacring them and charge the infantry through the range of the archers, things might have ended up a bit differently.

 

[Dumanios]

I've always wondered how come the Doviello of all people are the only civ that can build a tank.

 

[Hawkwood]

Actually, seeing as the French massively outnumbered the English and only managed to lose because their tactic was to ignore the archers massacring them and charge the infantry through the range of the archers, things might have ended up a bit differently.

The archers weren't actually massacring them, the French lost because of the terrain. Heavy cavalry have a history of losing battles against "underdog" foes when either fighting in bad terrain, or against an entrenched foe. The English victories of Crecy and Agincourt were neither the first nor last time that happened.

 

[VSPavlov]

I've always wondered how come the Doviello of all people are the only civ that can build a tank.

Erebus - the World of Contrasts

 

[megamanx06]

Its a Boomstick.

No, silly... boomsticks are gravity hammers.

edit: holy crap, how did this get into a debate about technology?

anyway, my 2 cents: all of my history teachers have always told me that the English won the battle of Agincourt solely because they had longbows, which were in fact new technology. Because they were longer, the string had more tension and shot the arrow with more force, allowing it to pierce armor more effectively.

but crossbowmen were also easily trained, something that is now well represented in FfH. My guess is that the only thing that would make them not the main long range force during their time is that it would be somewhat more difficult to produce.

 

[Dora190]

The archers weren't actually massacring them, the French lost because of the terrain. Heavy cavalry have a history of losing battles against "underdog" foes when either fighting in bad terrain, or against an entrenched foe. The English victories of Crecy and Agincourt were neither the first nor last time that happened.

How true, and oddly enough I discovered whilst doing some research into early firearms discovered that there were Arquebus used at Agincourt. I haven't found out on what side, but I suspect it didn't impress.

You also forgot poor discipline, which has been responsible for the vast majority of victories/defeats in history.

anyway, my 2 cents: all of my history teachers have always told me that the English won the battle of Agincourt solely because they had longbows, which were in fact new technology. Because they were longer, the string had more tension and shot the arrow with more force, allowing it to pierce armor more effectively.

but crossbowmen were also easily trained, something that is now well represented in FfH. My guess is that the only thing that would make them not the main long range force during their time is that it would be somewhat more difficult to produce.

Common misconception, based on post battle English propaganda. The battle was fought in poor conditions and one explanation given for the poor performance of the Genoese crossbowmen was the weather. A crossbow, unlike a longbow, can't be unstrung to protect it from the elements very easily. Longbows weren't a new technology, the bodkins may have been, but doubt that too. The bows were powerful - samples recovered from the Mary Rose (past the heyday of the big longbow) pulled at 75lb draw. Contemporary records indicate 120-150lb bows weren't so far off the mark, it was a big heavy arrow and it would have hurt.

 

[Hawkwood]

my 2 cents: all of my history teachers have always told me that the English won the battle of Agincourt solely because they had longbows, which were in fact new technology. Because they were longer, the string had more tension and shot the arrow with more force, allowing it to pierce armor more effectively.

One battle I love to bring up whenever someone claims that the longbow was such a deadly weapon against knights is the Battle of Patay. 5000 English longbowmen and men-at-arms against 1500 French heavy cavalry resulting in a decisive French victory because the English didn't have time to set up stakes.

 

[megamanx06]

normally I just throw out ideas that i've learned from my teachers. notice that this time I specifically added that my teachers told me, and didn't claim it as my own. there's a reason for that.