Musketeers

[FenrysWulf]

Musketeers (or musketmen, I'm not sure exactly what they're called) don't seem very useful. Whenever I attack a city defended by them, the longbowmen in the city usually defend first, which tells me that musketeers are worse than longbowmen. I assume this is because musketeers get no special bonuses. So why build these?

 

[Entrinzikyl]

I think they're basically musketmen with a movement of 2. Since I rarely build musketmen, when I play as the French, I don't end up with musketeers either. Agree they aren't so great.

 

[Shillen]

Musketmen are better than longbows unless they're in a city on a hill. I'm betting your longbow probably had better promotions or the AI was attacking with a unit that had anti-gunpowder abilities.

 

[dar]

Musketeers work extremely well when teamed up with cavalry. The french are the only civ who have a defensive unit capable of keeping up with the fast attackers until mechanised infantry come onto the scene.

 

[Luhh]

musketeers are kind of crappy. They become obsolete fast unless you unbalance your research, but even so, they won't last. Also, they're only 1 point stronger than macemen, but without a specialty. The only advantage they have is that no older unit type has a bonus against them, but even so they are kind of useless.

 

[yoshi74]

The musketman isn't so great on defence compared to the longbow, but way better when you use him offensive (e.g attack the attacker outside of your city).

Overall he is an improvement over the longbow, but not so significant in every aspect. Musketmen represent the first form of firearms, who also in reality were not always superior over the older troops (and be thankfull that cIV knows no raining days ).

The only problem with muskets i have is that in many of my games rifles come very fast after them, so in some games i build often none or only very few before mass producing rifles.

 

[FenrysWulf]

So maybe they are more of an offensive unit than a defensive one? It's hard to get used to the notion that units like spearmen and pikemen seem to be intended as offensive units, judging by the promotions available for them. I always thought musketmen were just for city defense, but maybe they should be used to attack.

 

[MRM]

Musketmen are better than longbows unless they're in a city on a hill. I'm betting your longbow probably had better promotions or the AI was attacking with a unit that had anti-gunpowder abilities.

IMO they are even better for attacking cities, they are the first unit that ignores the city wall - I use them a lot combined with catapults to assault enemy cities ..

 

[yoshi74]

So maybe they are more of an offensive unit than a defensive one? It's hard to get used to the notion that units like spearmen and pikemen seem to be intended as offensive units, judging by the promotions available for them. I always thought musketmen were just for city defense, but maybe they should be used to attack.

In fact they are more a mix between both types. They have great city defense capabilites, since they can get the promotions for it, but their high strengh makes them also good attackers against units like macemen, who don't get their bonus against meele units when fighting muskets. When taking on cities however they lack the ability to get city raider. On the other side they benefit much more from combat promotion (because combat increases their strenght by 10% = 0,9, while a city raider reduces the defense bonus of the defender by 20% = 1.2 in case of longbow).
So they have some use for various tasks in theory, if only they wouldn't obsolete so fast.

 

[Heroes]

IMO they are even better for attacking cities, they are the first unit that ignores the city wall - I use them a lot combined with catapults to assault enemy cities ..

Can't catapults reduce city wall effect to zero?

 

[Reprisal]

No, catapults reduce the defense bonus granted to a city's defenders by its culture.

 

[Heroes]

No, catapults reduce the defense bonus granted to a city's defenders by its culture.

So the 50% effect of walls is always there unless fighting gunpowder units? How about armored units?

 

[snepp]

No, catapults reduce the defense bonus granted to a city's defenders by its culture.

Not true, they reduce a city's defensive bonus, regardless if it comes from culture or walls/castle.

 

[Rirse]

Musketeers are pretty good if you know how to use them right. In my first win on Warlord, I went toward Gunpowder rather early in the game, and I had musketeers in use for probably 200 turns before they finally got obselete. Things that made them good in my game were the fact I didn't trade gunpowder, so the enemy couldn't get their own rifle unit, and I had them working with macemen and catapults, taking out all of Japan and nearly killing both Greece and Aztecs. I had musteteers with level five promotion when it got upgraded...which that same unit was in use to the end of the game, where it was a level six mech infantry.

 

[cleverhandle]

Agree that musketmen are of limited use - I rarely bother building them and instead stick with longbows at least until rifles, sometimes until infantry if I'm feeling safe. It's a nice idea that they ignore city walls, but in practice I'd always use catapults to negate them anyway.

The role I do think they play well is covering stacks or positions outside of cities, something like machine guns will later in the game. Without their built-in city defense bonus longbows don't do so well and knights don't receive terrain bonuses and are expensive to boot.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think one other thing Muskets are good for is a low resource situation, if you have no metals, then they are very good (since you only get Warriors and Archers until then)

 

[rabottens]

Definately stack musketeers and cavalry and you have a nice mobile group that can deal out a good amount of damage. They are even better if you have a sizable tech lead and by being the first to gunpowder and cavalry you can really do some serious damage. If you are behind musketeers aren't that bad at defending.

 

[MikeH]

The problem with this thread is that people are confusing musketmen and musketeers. Musketmen aren't of too much value IMO as Grenadiers and Riflemen come so quickly after them that most times they are not worth building. Musketeers, the French UU, are a different kettle of poissons though, as dar says their movement factor of 2 turns them into good back-up for cavalry and they are useful offensive units in their own right.

 

[ChiefMatt]

I think they're pretty good when used in combination with catapaults, they're one of the few early units with the anti-archery promotion which are used to defend most early cities.

 

[FenrysWulf]

The problem with this thread is that people are confusing musketmen and musketeers. Musketmen aren't of too much value IMO as Grenadiers and Riflemen come so quickly after them that most times they are not worth building. Musketeers, the French UU, are a different kettle of poissons though, as dar says their movement factor of 2 turns them into good back-up for cavalry and they are useful offensive units in their own right.

This is a good point. When I posed the question, I meant not the French unit but the one open to everyone.