Is the Musketman(renaissance) a good successor as city defender, what would make a good alternative?

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Looking at some things I thought the idea of was good:

Pike and Shot: Upgrades from Pikeman(from Civ6), same anti-cavalry role
Man-at-Arms: Sword and musket user, upgrades from Heavy(Medieval) Swordsman, attacks cities.

What do people think?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I think that generally it makes no sense to have such combination units. If you want pike and shot in your armies build pikemen and musketeers.

 

[Leoreth]

Or give Formation to Musketman units.

Historically, Pike and Shot was literally just employing pikes and muskets (well really, arquebuses and other earlier firearms). And there wasn't really a historical example of soldiers using both swords and firearms. Generally, they tried to arm everyone with firearms and used pikes for defensive purposes against charges. Swords really had no advantage over any of these weapons.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

It's more complicated than that. The era of pike and shot lasted for centuries during which time a good, well disciplined and trained pike square could be and was a devastating offensive weapon. And this is the reason why for most of the period armies were quite pike heavy. It's only during the 17th century when muskets got much better and field artillery became a big thing that you start to see a gradual decline in melee weapons. And you don't really see them completely going away until the 1700's.

So really if CIV was to represent the era it should have pikemen as the primary unit with muskets being support/ranged damage units used to soften stacks up.

 

[MightyToad]

Arquebusier definitely. From my limited reading on them they were used from fixed positions like city walls. They were too heavy and clumsy to use in the field without a stand.
I'm not against the idea of a melee side arm like a sword. But in my experience so far when you have a ranged unit with melee attack it will exclusively use that against other melee units.
Carrying a pike and a musket into battle isn't really practical.

I think a new arquebusier unit would be best. I would set it up like a defensive only siege unit that upgrades to machinegun.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

It's not quite that bad. Like you had really huge wall guns that were defensive only. But for the most part matchlock muskets were just big and heavy but not overly so. Like basically think of them as being along the same line as medium weight crossbows. The sort of thing you might use with a pavise. Big, heavy, slow to reload and yet still quite useful for a field battle. Just not enough to stop a determined pike square. That's how you got the various formations like Tercios. Later as muskets became lighter and switched to being flintlocks things got better and you slowly started seeing a decline in pike numbers.

The thing to remember about musketry pretty much up until the 18th century is that they are high damage but really slow to fire. And they aren't really accurate at long range for most of the period either. So whilst they are good at delivering a lot of damage quickly once that first shot is off if the enemy is still intent on charging you with pikes the only thing to do is flee. You ain't getting a second shot off. This only really changed once range opened up much later in the period.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I like the idea of a defensive only Arquebusier. You can have the Pikeman, Medieval Swordsman and Maceman upgrade to Line Infantry, which in turn would upgrade to Rifleman. That is how I'd do it in my mod.I don't think I'd have the Arquebusier stick around until Machine Gunners though.

 

[Leoreth]

Musketmen in Civ4 with their current position in the tech tree are an anachronism anyway.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Honestly I haven't played the vanilla unmodded game for so long that I don't remember what their exact purpose is anyway as designed. But realistically it should be something like a support unit for pikemen that is useful in both attack and defense but like does not constitute more than say 1/3 of your army. If it was me I'd probably just make them weaker than pikemen strait up but give them a ranged bombard ability or something like archers have in FFH submods.

 

[Leoreth]

In unmodded vanilla BtS, Musketmen are enabled somewhat later than your other medieval combat units, but only slightly stronger (9 vs 8) than Macemen, and without the access to melee combat bonuses and city attack promotions. I think their design intent is that they instead have the following advantages: they have no clear counter (but also don't counter anything), which is useful because all other units before had a strong counter. They ignore city defense modifiers from buildings. And they do not require additional resources to be built.

In my experience, most people still stick to their existing Maceman army until Riflemen come around.

Unfortunately, the way Pikemen are designed in BtS, they also do not dominate the battlefield. They are meant as an early medieval cavalry counter, instead of the late medieval all purpose field combat unit they were historically.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The whole spearman line in general is really wrong in CIV games. I mean, historically the shield wall with spears was the primary combat unit for most civilizations. The Romans being a short lived exception.
Really the melee line should go something like spear->pike->flintlock/napoleonic musket -> infantry -> mech. inf. With other units such as swords, maces and muskets being support units for specific tasks such as dealing with cities.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

Mine is

Stone Spear---Spearman---Pikeman----Line Infantry(Flintlock Musketman)----Rifleman-----Trench Infantry---Infantry(ww2, cold war)----Modern Infantry-----Objective Force Warrior

The spearman part(first three) are anti-cavalry/anti-animal

The archery line(Slinger---Archer---Longbowman) are dedicated city defenders, but currently upgrade to Musketmen(Which in turn upgrade to Line Infantry.

Everything from Line Infantry after are basic attack/defenders, they aren't specialized. Things start moving to tanks around the Industrial Age, along with specialized units. Musketmen are in a weird place.

Feels like there should be(at least for me) a dedicated city defender to cover the Renaissance Era(Enlightenment Era would have this unit upgrade to Line Infantry, but also the Gatling Gun very late in the era almost at Industrial).

Would this be a "Pike and Shot" unit? Perhaps with newer looking Halberdiers?