Increase longevity of musketmen

[DigitalBoy]

Of all the units in CivIV, the one I use the least is easily the musketman. Not that I don't like the musketman or that the musketman is (in itself) weak; it's just that the guy goes obsolete so quickly that he's replaced by grenadiers before I have the chance to train so much as a half dozen of them, let alone actually use them in a war. Assuming that you have Engineering (which, being the important technology it is, you should already have), Chemistry is just one tech down the road from Gunpowder, making any potential usefulness the musketman might have all too short-lived. In my opinion, this makes medieval war a lot less fun, as it removes most of the incentive to want to build musketmen. On a strictly historical note, it also underscores the revolutionary impact of early firearms on warfare. It's also grossly unfair to those civs that have unique units replacing musketmen.

Musketmen have a perfect niche in medieval warfare in CivIV. They assume the role of city defenders, taking the place of your aging longbowmen. And with a base strength only surpassed by knights (this weakness against knights being somewhat compensated by terrain defense), they make for good units on the field too. Despite these strengths, most of the other medieval units still retain their usefulness when musketmen are on the field. For example, macemen make for better city attackers with their city raider promotions.

Of course, that's all irrelevant when you're 5-10 turns away from gaining access to a 12 strength unit. It makes no sense to me that grenadiers become available as early in the game as they do when the unit they're designed to counter is considerably further down the tech tree (if you bee-line Chemistry, that is). Half the grenadier's usefulness is not in countering riflemen but rather in using their raw strength to overwhelm more dated units (musketmen being one of those "dated" units).

What I would like to see changed is to have the technology "Rifling" as an additional requirement for building grenadiers. Since grenadiers are specifically an anti-rifleman unit, I don't think it's so illogical to require the knowledge to build riflemen before you start getting access to the unit that counters them. And most importantly, it'll give more of a reason to build musketmen.

 

[jimbob27]

I agree completely.

Not only should rifling be a prerequisite for grenadiers, it should be needed to build cavalry as well. If you beeline to liberalism and use that to get nationalism for free. You can research military tradition, trade something for gunpowder, and start building cavalry when your opponents are just about making their first musketmen.

Its rediculous. Both cavalry and grenadiers are far too easy to beeline to, making musketmen pretty much pointless in most games.

 

[aszabo]

yea, i feel knights/musketmen get skipped over in a lot of games

 

[Cereal Box]

I often wind up using knights, depending on the conditions of the game. Unless I've just completely screwed up my economy somehow, I never use musketmen, but with warlords it seems as if they're not as useless as they were in vanilla civ. Perhaps I'm imagining that last part though.

 

[PMabey]

im afraid musketmen are just as useless in warlords as well. its a shame cos the ottomans have a potentially good uu (jannisary) but it is obselete so quickly

 

[Jaca]

I agree. There's something wrong, but I don't really have a good suggestion. At any rate, the musketman (and knights) deserve(s) better.

Jaca

 

[alpha wolf 64]

yea, i feel knights/musketmen get skipped over in a lot of games

There are knights and musketmen in civ4????

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I think Replacable Parts (rather than Rifling) might be better. (otherwise the Grenadier and the Cavalry may get obsoleted too quickly)

Also one could cut the cost of the Musket. So you can get more of them out. I think that would probably be the better solution. (also changing the costs of the techs)

 

[dh_epic]

The units obsolete as quickly as you research them. I've had many a game where muskets/knights have been my biggest surge in power.

 

[Jaca]

dh_epic, tell me more about it, if you want. Can you explain, in a nut shell, what your strategie was in those games?

Jaca

 

[dh_epic]

In those situations, I usually end up beelining up the metals side. I end up ignoring a lot of the techs in the "top" part of the tree... it just so happens that I got to bronzeworking early for the sake of chopping, with plans for my first war upon the discovery of guilds/gunpowder.

Once I hit knights (guilds), I pump them out in heaps. Give them the flanking promotion, so they are likely to survive a battle. ALL of my cities shift to pumping out knights. Once gunpowder comes along, I build the musketeers. I try to time it so they all arrive at the rally point around the same time.

Usually have a stack of twice as many knights as there are units in a typical enemy city. Sometimes I divide my stack in order to divide the enemy defences. The flanking means that you can afford to throw them at a slightly overpowered units with a decent chance for survival. The musketmen provide great backup in the field, and are useful when you need to deal with a pike, or an enemy behind walls / castles. And most of all, they do it with SPEED. So it means you can be done the war much more quickly than it would normally take.

 

[Hey Joni]

DigitalBoy, I agree musketmen should be given a better role and that it should be done in exactly the suggested way - grenadiers should not come so early after them.

As for knights - they're fine and I often have a few in my empire. The AI has sometimes caused trouble for me with knights on Monarch and given the fact that it is usually quite weak at warfare, I can't say knights are useless.

Having said that, it is possible to increase their lifespan because of their large historical importance. I guess making them available with Feudalism makes more sense but may become very unbalanced.

This would make Feudalism a key tech for it will provide both the best defensive and best offensive units of the era. On the other hand, feudal relations were a key factor in history not only in Western Europe but at least in Eastern Europe and Japan as well (though in a very different way) so that reasons making the Civ tech more important. Besides, there is another greatly overpowered tech in the game and everyone knows which one it is...

(BW, just for the record)

 

[FullyCompletely]

I agree with the gist of the main post. One thing people forget though is that musketmen don't suffer from wall defenses like macemen do. So when attacking a city with walls, it's like automatically having CR1 and CR2 and a little more.

I think musketmen would be more powerful if they qualified for the City Raider promotions.

 

[jimbob27]

One thing people forget though is that musketmen don't suffer from wall defenses like macemen do.

In reality this normally means absoultey nothing. Nobody attacks cities with macemen or musketmen without first bombarding the defences, so the walls don't do anything. Even if you were attacking with muskets without bombarding the defences, then chances are there will still be 40% cultural defence, so all their ability to ignore walls is ever going to save them, is 10%.

 

[FullyCompletely]

so the walls don't do anything

Wrong. -50% effectiveness for non-gunpowder units. Catapults and trebuchets don't bombard walls, only cultural defenses.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Wrong. -50% effectiveness for non-gunpowder units. Catapults and trebuchets don't bombard walls, only cultural defenses.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true, and that bombardment affects both structural defenses and cultural defenses.

Not that I haven't ever gotten some use out of the "ignores walls and castles" aspect.

 

[Hey Joni]

Wrong. -50% effectiveness for non-gunpowder units. Catapults and trebuchets don't bombard walls, only cultural defenses.

Wrong. They do.

And I think that the cultural defense bonus is too big, effectively limiting the use of walls and castles (and later - of musketmen, for the same reason).

 

[Jaca]

Wrong. They do.

And I think that the cultural defense bonus is too big, effectively limiting the use of walls and castles (and later - of musketmen, for the same reason).

Agreed. Perhaps they could change the cultural defensive city bonus into an attacking bonus for the owner of the land (simulating familiarity with the land and the possibilty to organize "resistance" to name two benefits). It would make an attack from the city towards the army in the field more likely. The higher the culture of a tile the higher the defensive penalty for the foreign force.

Jaca

 

[Prowlerfx]

I agree Musketman get phased out too quickly because of technology. I know I never use the Musketman either. I always skip Musketman and build Rifleman. I also agree that rifling should be a prerequisite for grenadiers.

 

[Titus]

Top again. Making rifling a prerequisite for grenadiers and cavalry is a great suggestion that the game would really benefit from.

Knights are also obsolete too quickly, they should appear earlier.