How to efectively use MG?

[Alpedar]

Machinegunner is considered siege, but it cannot attack. Does it have some splash damage when defending?

Or it is only purely defensive unit and it should be used only before i can have infantry with higer stats than MG?

Btw, is it considered gunpowder unit?

 

[Kerrang]

MG is a purely defensive unit, and it has no collateral damage. Once you have infantry, you can get rid of your MGs. While they are purely defensive, that does not mean you have to keep them in your cities. They make great escorts for Catapults and Cannons. When you are laying seige to a city, take a couple of MGs with each stack of Catapults or Cannons, and any time you are bombarding a city with them, set your MGs to fortify. This will keep your valuable siege weapons in a less vulerable postion.

 

[Innawerkz]

They are classified as Siege, AFAIK, which amplifies their effectiveness when facing the +x% vs. Gunpowder units. I traditionally have 1 in each border city for the first strikes alone.

Never considered coupling them with my Siege force. I like that idea a lot! Thanks, Kerrang!

 

[emills]

I often upgrade my "defensive", i.e. city defense promoted, grenadiers/archers to machine gunners and have one or two in all my cities. This is the only way the machine gunners can get this particular promotion. Since they cannot attack, I can't use them to 'tag" invading forces as they come in, so I always have at least one fresh defender for my cities. As the game progresses, I can upgrade the machine gunners to SAM infantry as needed.

 

[punchandpie]

MGs are also good to defend resources. I am starting to use a stack of 2 and plop them on top of my resources i.e. oil, coal, urnanium and so forth. Also I have found that if you build forts at strategic points along hostile borders and place stacks of them in the forts the AI for whatever reason feels compeled to try and eliminate them before moving onto my cities.

 

[BrutalusMaximus]

Yep. Just because they cannot attack does not mean they should not be broght on the offensive. They are a nice unit to park in enemy land and they are nice to have as the top of your stack. They also make good medics since they remain at high str after you have burned through your other troops launching an assault.

 

[Artanis]

Being Siege also gives an advantage in that Charge (the anti-siege promotion) is both deeper in the promotion tree than Pinch and a lot less useful anyways. So while you might see units with Pinch trying to take down your Gunpowder-based guards, it's CR/Combat or nothing when fighting Machine Guns

 

[azzkicar]

Marines chew up machine guns, fyi. That's why I love bringing marines for offensive wars sometimes. Amphibious is nice, but the +50% to machine guns is really valuable.