Should the Machinegun be a support unit?

[UWHabs]

I upped pikemen to strength 44, their boost vs cavalry to 15 (swords get +12 vs anticav too), cut their cost to 150, and added policies that give +50% production to anticav. By comparison, knights have been curbed to 46 strength, are 25% more expensive, and have *double* maintenance cost.

The result is that pikemen make good fodder and can decimate knights, but are still at a strength (and cost) disadvantage against swords. So without iron/horse you can still defend yourself well, but it is difficult to go on the offensive with pikes without lots of crossbows and catapults to support them. Knights are too expensive to form your entire army, but a small number of them do a fine job of punching through the enemy.

That - in my books - is exactly how it should be. Your army composition depends on what resources you have and what your strategic aims are, but every unit has a broad range of applicability nonetheless.

I don't mind seeing pikes worse than knights, but they should be cheaper. If the pikeman cost, say, 120, then the fact that knights still beat them doesn't matter as much if I can basically field 1.5 or so pikes for every knight that you have. In that case, you either spend the resources to get the better, faster, stronger unit, or you just equip people with cheap pikes and use them as cannon fodder.