Prot Muskets Vs Maceman at City Attacking

[kniteowl]

Ok I'm just trying out something different, to allow myself to leverage Protective as much as possible in BTS, I've tried the Feudalism with Oracle, Very Fun and Effective if done correctly.

I just wondered if a Protective Musket with 5XP would make a better City Attacker then a Maceman with 5XP against Longbows and I tested them on World builder, funny enough, a Protective Musket with combat 1 or Drill 2 and Cover had better odds against a Longbow then a City Raider 2 Macemen.

The Following is just theory.

If I were a Protective Civ and decided to make a Gunpowder beeline and use Muskets as my main attack force.

Pros

- Muskets don't have a counter except knights, which can easily be countered by a Protective Musket with Drill 2 and Formation Promotions.

- A Cover Promoted Protective Musket as slightly better odds then a City Raider 2 Maceman

- You Can Draft Muskets but only with Nationhood (Nationalism Tech)

- Protective Muskets make better city defenders of recently captured cities then Macemen, when the Opponent Does a Counter attack

- Muskets do not require a strategic resource to be produced

- CG3's Promotion Secondary bonus (+10- vs Melee, the Primary bonus being + 30 City Defense) does not affect muskets

- The Fee Drill Promotion with Protective 'helps' negates the free first strike from longbows.

- Muskets Ignore City walls and Castles, Now that Siege have been nerfed in BTS and take longer to knock them down. (edit)

Cons

- Gunpowder units cannot get the Shock Promotion (which I find a little odd) so the Musket will have worser odds when attacking a city defended by Maceman

- Gunpowder takes longer to tech then Civil Service and Machinery Most of the time

- Musketmen (80H) cost more hammers then Maceman (70H) (80 > 70)

- No unit can Upgrade to a Musket but You can Upgrade some Ancient and Classical Units to Maceman.

- level 4 Maceman > Level 4 Musket If promoted down the CR line (edit)

End

I can't think of anything else, but anyone here is welcome to add.

So basically I just want your opinion this, obviously most of the time Maceman make better city attackers but I'd just wanted to try something different and leverage the Protective trait even further.

 

[cabert]

CR2 is not the end of the CR line, while cover is the last of the anti archery specials.
so level 4 mace > level 4 protective musket

 

[kniteowl]

True if I had a stack of veterans and it's difficult to reach 10XP unless I've warred Previously.

I was talking more from building a fresh new army point of view where most of my unit would be level 3 units with only 2 Promotions.

Well at the very least I don't have to worry about defending Crossbows lol.

 

[mice]

Engineering's on the way too gunpowder isn't it? If so Charlemagne being protective could field Lanschnekts with protective muskets to sort out the knights, and they have the bonus vs melee.

I'm not a mathematical type so I don't know the odds for CR Landschnekts but it could be a good attack stack.

 

[lutzj]

level 4 mace: City Raider I, City Raider II, Combat I, Cover, (If Aggressive) City Raider III

level 4 musket: Combat I,Combat II, Cover, Drill I, (If Protective) Drill II, (If Aggressive) Drill III

This presents an interesting choice for Tokugawa: take the maceman (samurai) with Combat I and two first strikes or take the musketman that costs a little more tech- and production- wise, but has Drill I and City Guardian I as well as Combat I and can hold cities more easily. Or just use both.

Now that I think about it, I would just use a stack of maces, muskets, and trebuchets.

 

[Grimz101]

level 4 mace: City Raider I, City Raider II, Combat I, Cover, (If Aggressive) City Raider III

level 4 musket: Combat I,Combat II, Cover, Drill I, (If Protective) Drill II, (If Aggressive) Drill III

This presents an interesting choice for Tokugawa: take the maceman (samurai) with Combat I and two first strikes or take the musketman that costs a little more tech- and production- wise, but has Drill I and City Guardian I as well as Combat I and can hold cities more easily. Or just use both.

Now that I think about it, I would just use a stack of maces, muskets, and trebuchets.

Its was a hard choice, but then i pictured upgrading all my CR3 samurai to Riflemen, another thing is that my Samurai will already have strong units due to my axemen rush when i take out my nearest neighbour, and that AI tech so much slower on Monarch is just beautiful.. dont stop till im at 0% then spam courthouses

 

[InvisibleStalke]

You missed one huge advantage of muskets - they ignore city walls and castles. If a city only has a small number of defenders then its probably cheaper to suicide a couple of muskets and take it than to bring up the whole seige arsenal and try and take those walls down - which takes a long time now.

 

[Welnic]

^^Took too long to type!^^

A plus for the Muskets is they ignore walls and castles. So if you are attacking where those are common you don't have to worry about reducing the cities with siege as much. They also aren't an valuable source of CRIII riflemen, so you don't have to worry about keeping them alive.

I think the big plus for macemen is upgrading them to CRIII grenadiers or riflemen.

 

[DaveMcW]

City Raider and Cover do poorly against obsolete defenders, because the bonus is subtracted from the defender's base stats (6 for longbow).

Combat and Drill always apply to the owner's base stats (9 for musket).

 

[oyzar]

last time i checked .2*6>.1*9 though so city raider and cover are still better than the alternatives.

 

[Unconquered Sun]

Maces are draftable. Heck, most of the ancient units are draftable if you beeline the "right" way.

 

[kniteowl]

Maces are draftable. Heck, most of the ancient units are draftable if you beeline the "right" way.

True but I've never had a game where I beelined to Nationalism before Gunpowder and drafted Macemen.

 

[cabert]

True but I've never had a game where I beelined to Nationalism before Gunpowder and drafted Macemen.

playing Ragnar, you really should
Berserkers are really valuable

 

[kniteowl]

playing Ragnar, you really should
Berserkers are really valuable

Do you know the quickest way to pick up nationalism?

Is the liberalism beeline the quickest?

Or is there some method of light bulbing with a particular great Person that will allow me to pick it up before Liberalism?

I know if I can go through Divine Right , my Great Artist's will bulb Nationalism>

This will require some research lol!

 

[cabert]

Do you know the quickest way to pick up nationalism?

Is the liberalism beeline the quickest?

Or is there some method of light bulbing with a particular great Person that will allow me to pick it up before Liberalism?

I know if I can go through Divine Right , my Great Artist's will bulb Nationalism>

This will require some research lol!

the quickest way to nationalism is certainly through liberalism
The hardest part is having machinery and still go to liberalism (since it makes it impossible to lightbulb liberalism directly), but even that's not very difficult, just research liberalism straight.

 

[darrelljs]

True but I've never had a game where I beelined to Nationalism before Gunpowder and drafted Macemen.

I pulled an Oracle/Nationalism slingshot one time (Earth/18 civs map on Noble), purely as an exercise. You can draft Warriors.

Darrell

 

[DaveMcW]

You can draft Warriors.

Pop rushing would be a bit more efficient in terms of and though!

 

[gettingfat]

If I play Toku, and can build both sumurai and musketmen, I'll use combat I/CR2 sumurai to attack cities and combat I/CG1/Drill 3 musketmen for cleanup and protection from the cats, may be throwing a couple of pikes in if your opponents start to build knights. This way your army will move faster and basically see no counter.