musketeers underrated?

[civplay]

Why is the French musketeer the most underrated uu in the game?
It only takes one tech after steel, is stronger then the longsword. plus you save the iron for where really matters trebuchet. An army of musketeers combo trebuchets a couple of archers mixed in conquer.

 

[Tabarnak]

Rifles are only 2 techs away. It's easy to have 2 gs at that time. But gunpowder's UUs are decent enough to wait and build some of them before upgrading to riflemen.

 

[elprofesor]

Are musketmen actually more expensive than longswordmen since the last patch or not? I can't remember.

But yeah, not only riflemen can be bulbed easily if you've more or less planned it, you can also get steel rushed much earlier than you can get gunpowder rushed. And you don't need lots of iron to rush your neighbour, 4 should be enough. If it isn't, you can always buy a couple more (it is rare that the only source of iron is holded by your direct neighbour, you just have to scout a bit to find more). And once you've got your 4-5 longswordmen, and maybe a catapult or two if you feel you really need them, you can take the iron directly from your enemies, long before the same could be done with musketmen.

You can rush gunpowder for musketeers if you want, but unless there is really no iron anywhere near you, you won't get better results (you'll faced walled, or even castled cities, you may face medieval units, which aren't notably weaker than musketeers, while classical era units are notably weaker than longswordmen).
My 2 cents, anyway.

 

[Poomermon]

Problem with musketeers and every other musketman unit is that you cannot upgrade previous units to them. If you wait until you can build up a sizeable army of musketeers they are almost obsolete by that time unless you deliberately avoid rifling. If you could upgrade warriors to musketeers they would become much more powerful. Still I think France can utilize musketeers well by just researching chemisty for cannons and leaving rifling for later. You have to plan for it though using your iron for siege units and saving enough cash to rush buy musketeers and upgrade your siege units.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Are musketmen actually more expensive than longswordmen since the last patch or not? I can't remember

They are. 120 vs 150 . Really silly. There is no reason whatsoever to build them. If I'm preparing for rifles rush and have some serious difficulties with iron I prefer to spam crossbows and upgrade after bulb. In less stretched cases upgrading promoted swords is easier and cheaper than making from scratch new muskets army. So LS's are actually ready for action much earlier than muskets. That said, I agree gunpowder UU's are pretty decent and can save some money. Regular ones I wouldn't bother to build ever.

 

[elprofesor]

The horror! I don't know what the devs where thinking when they did that! I hope they didn't think that making them as expensive as longswordmen would overpower them, because longswordmen require iron too. Longswordmen have already lots of arguments standing for them: they come way earlier, they are upgraded from existing units, and thus have already promotions and don't require much money to get either.
Guess musketmen will get fixed again in another patch. Musketmen, ironclads and lancers are the three units that are struggling to get a place in this game since release...

 

[Fluffball]

My use of musketeers tends to fall in line with what Poomeron mentioned about them being so close to a vastly superior unit, even on marathon speeds, and the fact you can't upgrade into them so the only reason you ever have/use them is if you really need more front line units in that short period of time you can build them before you hit rifles.

I tend to play France quite a lot as i like the culture bonus and the only time i built a musketeer was in my last game where i got 3 DoW on the same turn and i bought a couple with my gold reserve i had saved incase i needed to build more units before i reached rifles.
Foreign legion by comparison i will tend to build them even when i have mech inf and upgrade them to get the bonus in foreign lands as the minor gold cost of doing so is worth doing so, especially if you have professional army and the pentagon.

 

[Bamboocha]

I think the people that claim the musketeer is inferior are making a mistake: they assume that your entire army has to consist of them. If you're crawling out of the renaissance you'll probably have four or so swordsmen, perhaps with some trebuchets, which means you're probably out of iron. Adding some musketmen (equal to longswordsmen) or musketeers (superior in strength) beefs up your existing army without sacrificing strategic resources you don't have.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I think the people that claim the musketeer is inferior are making a mistake: they assume that your entire army has to consist of them. If you're crawling out of the renaissance you'll probably have four or so swordsmen, perhaps with some trebuchets, which means you're probably out of iron. Adding some musketmen (equal to longswordsmen) or musketeers (superior in strength) beefs up your existing army without sacrificing strategic resources you don't have.

They could have been an ok cannon fodder if they weren't so pricey. But still, AI's inability to fight makes even this unnecessary.

 

[civplay]

didn't realize musketeers were made more expensive in the update.

 

[Fluffball]

I think the people that claim the musketeer is inferior are making a mistake: they assume that your entire army has to consist of them. If you're crawling out of the renaissance you'll probably have four or so swordsmen, perhaps with some trebuchets, which means you're probably out of iron. Adding some musketmen (equal to longswordsmen) or musketeers (superior in strength) beefs up your existing army without sacrificing strategic resources you don't have.

It's not that they are inferior, it's simply that they have such a little timespan to be of any use in most games.

I only play on marathon games so not sure about the timescales or numbers on shorter games but i would guess the problem would be amplified more on shorter speeds but talking marathon, if i have musketeers i am 2 techs away from riflemen which i will go straight for as they are such an advantage.
It will take me 40-50 turns generally to aquire those 2 techs and 20-30 turns to build a musketeer.
So there is a maximum of 20-30 turns of usefulness from a musketeer before it gets upgraded. This can be extended to 40-50 turns if they are bought rather than produced which in inneficient.

 

[NotSure]

Would it be a good idea to let you upgrade pikes to musket units (and take away the bonus vs mounted on upgrade)? It would actually give the four civs with musket UUs an upgrade strategy to use them. I guess it would also make Persia that much more powerful. I would love to get some leverage out of the Janissary or Minutemen above Emperor.

 

[binhthuy71]

The only two Musketman units I ever consider building are Janissaries and Minutemen. They both have nice promos that carry forward when you promote to Rifleman. Note that I used the word "consider." If I have an immediate need to put some strong units in the field and I'm Iron-starved (Something that seems to happen to me in two out of three starts) then I'll build them. Otherwise, it's spam Archers until I can build Riflemen.

 

[budweiser]

I always play France, and I use them maybe 1 game in 3 at most. Many times they just get skipped over, like others have said. However, at 540g ea, its not too hard to rush buy 3-5 real fast and then go take a few border towns. Thats what they are for, protecting and expanding the borders of France.

 

[binhthuy71]

I always play France, and I use them maybe 1 game in 3 at most. Many times they just get skipped over, like others have said. However, at 540g ea, its not too hard to rush buy 3-5 real fast and then go take a few border towns. Thats what they are for, protecting and expanding the borders of France.

I miss the 2 moves per turn Musketeers of CiIV.

 

[Poomermon]

Would it be a good idea to let you upgrade pikes to musket units (and take away the bonus vs mounted on upgrade)? It would actually give the four civs with musket UUs an upgrade strategy to use them. I guess it would also make Persia that much more powerful. I would love to get some leverage out of the Janissary or Minutemen above Emperor.

I like this idea a lot. It would make spears/pikes and musketmen much more powerful. Maybe even too powerful in some cases but as it is for now they could get a little buff imo.

 

[NotSure]

I like this idea a lot. It would make spears/pikes and musketmen much more powerful. Maybe even too powerful in some cases but as it is for now they could get a little buff imo.

Ya, I could see some problems with runaway Darius and runaway Bismarck. But, considering how scarce iron can be on some maps, and that most of the civs we're talking about (US, Ottoman, Germany) are generally considered weaker, I think this option would level the field more than it would cause problems. All the AI's spam pikes now anyway.

 

[elprofesor]

Per se, the "pikemen upgrade into musketmen" is a good idea, which would help all of the units involved (spearmen, pikemen, musketmen) become less underrated, and would still be somewhat fitting (they are all supposed to be the cheap infantry of their eras).

The problem is it might overpower Ottomans in particular, but any other civ with unique spearmen/pikemen/musketmen in general too. Thinking about an army of pikes suddenly upgrading into an army of janissaries is something that may from now on wake me up in fear in the middle of the night...

 

[vexing]

Why is the French musketeer the most underrated uu in the game?

source?
i haven't seen it underrated anywhere... it's generally rated right about where it should be near the bottom of the list.

the trouble with most muskets is you're two techs from rifling, and if you go through the top of the tech tree you can pretty easily get three bulbs to get directly to rifling after finishing steel & physics (hagia sophia -> porcelain tower + liberty finisher + a university produced GS).

ottoman and american muskets both have pretty powerful promotions that can get passed on, so they're in a different position than the french where you may actually want to delay rifling to build the uus.

if anyone is really interested in the pikes -> muskets, that'd be a really easy change to mod in. just open the unit class upgrades xml and in the pike & landsknechts replace unitclass_rifleman with unitclass_musketman

 

[Martin Alvito]

The problem is it might overpower Ottomans in particular, but any other civ with unique spearmen/pikemen/musketmen in general too. Thinking about an army of pikes suddenly upgrading into an army of janissaries is something that may from now on wake me up in fear in the middle of the night...

You'd have to nerf Janissaries to having a special ability more similar to the Jaguar. A unit that heals on kill and can be reached via upgrade would be right behind the Keshik in terms of raw power. The game doesn't need another broken UU.