Exactly. Musketmen are okay at the time they're available... there's just too short a time before you can replace them with Riflemen (if you hurry to do so).
Upgrade to Musketmen?
- Thread starter Marshall Thomas
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Exactly. Musketmen are okay at the time they're available... there's just too short a time before you can replace them with Riflemen (if you hurry to do so).
I dunno, even on marathon I find myself not using them. I want to, believe me. That is the entire appeal of marathon to me. I get to USE every unit. However, I just think they are a little underpowered and are not in the upgrade chain. This causes them to be sub par in promotions compared to my existing units and not really worth wasting production time on. I may as well spend this time throwing up a building I have been putting off or throw up a wonder.
Since you're making Starcraft analogies, I'm going to assume you're familiar with Starcraft. There are plenty of units that are marginal in Starcraft because of the time and cost of their upgrade path. Why bother teching to a unit that will be obsolete extremely quickly? Or tech to a unit when a better one is available a few seconds later?
A unit's upgrade path and tech timing is a huge part of the unit. Completely disregarding that doesn't lead to a good analysis.
Exactly. Very good points. And I normally find my games using the same original army with just a few additions.
I'm not saying I never build Muskets it's just that I never use them in battle if I can help it. One of my new fav strategies (when using Honor and a from the start of the game military victory) is to mass produce the cheaper musketmen while shooting straight for riflemen and while the war is raging I move the muskets into position and POP! I upgrade them all to riflemen. I just don't like taking losses with cheaper units when I know a stronger one is right around the corner. Also, on higher difficulties my army is ever expanding (especially on open 1 continent maps) to try to keep up with the mass producing ai armies.
The problem with an all cannon approach is they are expensive, need to be positioned properly, are weak in rough terrain and I find they can slow down an offensive. I either go with a cavalry or infantry based army with just a few (if any) artillery type units. Not saying that a cannon based army can't be awesome as I'm sure it can be but I find other approaches to be more practical.
Ahriman:
To the contrary. Prince is the default difficulty that the game is meant to be played on for the majority of its users. Just because many of the busier users here can beat it easily doesn't mean that everyone can, or that strategies that work on higher settings necessarily will work on lower settings.
For instance, the tactic of selling your resources for money to snag City States won't work as well on Prince, because the AIs don't have as much money. Likewise, you probably won't be able to sign 7 different RAs at once.
It's arguable that the imbalances some players see on the higher settings are caused by the handicap bonuses on those settings, and aren't inherent to the game as it is played on the lower settings.
If it works on Prince, it's good enough. That doesn't mean that it will work on higher settings - just that it will win you the game on Normal settings - and nothing more.
I have been once been trapped on a small continent, all by myself, with one Militaristic City State for a neighbor, without any Iron whatsoever. Granted, I didn't need any military units at all beyond Barbarian busting, but it's not like it can't happen.
If you rush up the tree straight after Iron Working, it can be a challenge to acquire Iron if it's two Civs away and you don't have any CSs that have it. At the point where you're steamrolling your continent because you just conquered two Civs, it may be questionable whether you needed that Iron at all.
Not really. That was just a talking point, since this topic is about Musketmen. Clearly, how good Musketeers are has no direct bearing on how Musketmen are.
Generally speaking, in a high diff game, you would be forced to create a lot of units early on, and as already mentioned, fight hordes of units that create super-promoted units. This creates a situation where you would rather upgrade your units than make new ones.
This is not true on lower diff settings. Even when you win wars, you don't actually get enough XP to create units that are substantially better than you would get out of an Armory city, especially if the earlier units were rushed out without even the benefit of a Barracks.
This means that on lower diff settings, you can have a window where you might actually want to make new units at the Medieval-Renaissance period.
Apart from not requiring Iron, Musketmen are actually cheaper to both purchase and create with hammers. They are 120 hammers, while Longswordsmen are 150, and they have good strength at 16. If your enemies are mainly using Classical Era units plus Pikemen (because they don't have Iron, perhaps), the Musketmen are a cost-effective solution for quickly padding a smaller core military.
Because of their placement on the tech tree, cost, and strength, I perceive the non-unique Musketman to play mostly this supplementary secondary role, rather than a primary army unit.
So we are supposed to make them equally as strong as Longswordsmen? Make Longswordsmen rarer? I'm not sure I agree that this is necessary. What would be the balance point?
Ahriman said:
To the contrary. Prince is the default difficulty that the game is meant to be played on for the majority of its users. Just because many of the busier users here can beat it easily doesn't mean that everyone can, or that strategies that work on higher settings necessarily will work on lower settings.
For instance, the tactic of selling your resources for money to snag City States won't work as well on Prince, because the AIs don't have as much money. Likewise, you probably won't be able to sign 7 different RAs at once.
It's arguable that the imbalances some players see on the higher settings are caused by the handicap bonuses on those settings, and aren't inherent to the game as it is played on the lower settings.
If it works on Prince, it's good enough. That doesn't mean that it will work on higher settings - just that it will win you the game on Normal settings - and nothing more.
Ahriman said:
I have been once been trapped on a small continent, all by myself, with one Militaristic City State for a neighbor, without any Iron whatsoever. Granted, I didn't need any military units at all beyond Barbarian busting, but it's not like it can't happen.
If you rush up the tree straight after Iron Working, it can be a challenge to acquire Iron if it's two Civs away and you don't have any CSs that have it. At the point where you're steamrolling your continent because you just conquered two Civs, it may be questionable whether you needed that Iron at all.
Ahriman said:
Not really. That was just a talking point, since this topic is about Musketmen. Clearly, how good Musketeers are has no direct bearing on how Musketmen are.
Ahriman said:
Generally speaking, in a high diff game, you would be forced to create a lot of units early on, and as already mentioned, fight hordes of units that create super-promoted units. This creates a situation where you would rather upgrade your units than make new ones.
This is not true on lower diff settings. Even when you win wars, you don't actually get enough XP to create units that are substantially better than you would get out of an Armory city, especially if the earlier units were rushed out without even the benefit of a Barracks.
This means that on lower diff settings, you can have a window where you might actually want to make new units at the Medieval-Renaissance period.
Apart from not requiring Iron, Musketmen are actually cheaper to both purchase and create with hammers. They are 120 hammers, while Longswordsmen are 150, and they have good strength at 16. If your enemies are mainly using Classical Era units plus Pikemen (because they don't have Iron, perhaps), the Musketmen are a cost-effective solution for quickly padding a smaller core military.
Because of their placement on the tech tree, cost, and strength, I perceive the non-unique Musketman to play mostly this supplementary secondary role, rather than a primary army unit.
Ahriman said:
So we are supposed to make them equally as strong as Longswordsmen? Make Longswordsmen rarer? I'm not sure I agree that this is necessary. What would be the balance point?
Becephalus
King
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Everyone is aware that longswordsmen require iron?
I think once they fix ICS and the combat AI improve slightly always having bountiful supplies of iron will be much less of a certainty.
Even with the current settings I have occasionally lack iron (though I usually increase the number of civs by 50% over the default and don't rush with horsemen every single game. I have relied on musketmen more than once when I have 0 or 2 iron. Though admittedly they don't last long.
The relative value of musketmen is much less important than the poor combat AI or the balance of research and production. In fact it is mostly a symptom of those problems.
I think once they fix ICS and the combat AI improve slightly always having bountiful supplies of iron will be much less of a certainty.
Even with the current settings I have occasionally lack iron (though I usually increase the number of civs by 50% over the default and don't rush with horsemen every single game. I have relied on musketmen more than once when I have 0 or 2 iron. Though admittedly they don't last long.
The relative value of musketmen is much less important than the poor combat AI or the balance of research and production. In fact it is mostly a symptom of those problems.
The assumption is that once we tech to Gunpowder, that we immediately and absolutely must tech to Rifling. To my knowledge, no one has actually tested staying on Gunpowder for the cheap Musketman, and tech other paths for other benefits. It's always, "If I get Gunpowder, I must get Rifling."
Why bother getting Swordsmen, if you can get Longswordsmen two techs down?
rt12568 said:
Minutemen are actually pretty good. Granted, right now they only make sense when you rush-buy or build them right where you're going to use them, but since they're getting patched pretty fast I gather than their inability to use roads was a bug rather than an intentional disability.
They are cheaper units you can use in slightly greater numbers slightly faster than Longswordsmen. The way you seem to play, it might not matter if they were both stronger and cheaper than Longswordsmen, like strength 20, 80 hammers. They still wouldn't be well-promoted.
Ahriman
Tyrant
I don't see any changes in any of their lists that will make it harder for you to get iron.
The only significant way to do this will be by reducing the yield of iron resources, so you can't get all the iron you'd ever need from a single 6-iron tile.
I have never found the iron restriction to be binding for longswordsmen (for swordsmen/catapults, certainly).
We tried it, but its not as effective as beelining for rifling, which you can do easily with great scientists. And the tech alternatives to heading for rifling are not as valuable.
Because you probably won't have two great scientists by this point for instant beelining, and because you won't necessarily have the iron to support longswordsmen as soon as you hit iron working, because iron isn't revealed until you hit ironworking.
Whereas riflemen are resourceless.
Plus, just when you hit ironworking, there are other economic tech alternatives that are quite avaluable; making sure you have all the techs for your luxuries and civil service, for example.
Beelining longswordsmen is not as effective as beelining rifles.
Yes, but their performance now is not great.
The fact that the bug is being fixed is an indication that the designers agree that they are underpowered now.
Toka
Chieftain
Balls,
Im building a few musketeers in my current game.
Oops.
Im building a few musketeers in my current game.
Oops.
Supr49er
2011 Thunderfall Cup
Then the question becomes, "Are musketmen strong enough to justify teching for them if you're not ready to tech to rifling?" If you don't have iron, and that's one of your primary justifications for musketmen, its two prerequisite techs (which only grant longswordsmen and trebuchet) are useless as well. You might as well tech other paths for other benefits a whole 3 techs before you get musketmen (could be 4 since metal casting isn't so hot, either).
Swordsmen actually suffer the same problems as musketmen, but the jump in cost from swordsmen to longswordsmen is actually much higher than the jump in cost for musketmen versus riflemen.
Ahriman:
Define the parameters. Given your predilections, I would assume that you tried this on Immortal or Deity, where the higher AI tech rate and bonuses means that the higher power of the Riflemen over Longswordsmen actually meant something.
Also, "easily" is not how I would define intentionally going for and saving up two Great Scientists specifically to beeline Rifling for the wartime benefits.
Tech alternatives to Rifling depends on how far up the tech tree you are in the various paths. If you're more or less even, that could be Banking (for Forbidden Palace), Acoustics, and so on. It is possible to tech straight up to Gunpowder for the Renaissance Era change, then go on back and tech things like Civil Service and Currency.
You can get a GS early from a Library, and a free tech from the Great Library. That's two techs very quickly, going to a unit that's absolutely dominant for a long period of time. Even if reveal Iron afterwards, it would still make Swordsmen moot.
The tech alternatives depend on the tech situation at the time, as I mentioned. The tech situations in your games are such that you have these opinions, but these are not necessarily the definitive and only way to experience the game.
Ahriman said:
Define the parameters. Given your predilections, I would assume that you tried this on Immortal or Deity, where the higher AI tech rate and bonuses means that the higher power of the Riflemen over Longswordsmen actually meant something.
Also, "easily" is not how I would define intentionally going for and saving up two Great Scientists specifically to beeline Rifling for the wartime benefits.
Tech alternatives to Rifling depends on how far up the tech tree you are in the various paths. If you're more or less even, that could be Banking (for Forbidden Palace), Acoustics, and so on. It is possible to tech straight up to Gunpowder for the Renaissance Era change, then go on back and tech things like Civil Service and Currency.
Ahriman said:
You can get a GS early from a Library, and a free tech from the Great Library. That's two techs very quickly, going to a unit that's absolutely dominant for a long period of time. Even if reveal Iron afterwards, it would still make Swordsmen moot.
The tech alternatives depend on the tech situation at the time, as I mentioned. The tech situations in your games are such that you have these opinions, but these are not necessarily the definitive and only way to experience the game.
If you don't have Iron, your strongest units are Spearmen and Pikemen and horses. Granted, you can probably live on Knights and Pikemen alone, so that might be more a reason why players don't see the incentive of Musketmen.
There is one other benefit to Gunpowder which I think players don't perceive because they're beelining for Rifles so fast - Gunpowder actually opens the Renaissance. This means that you could go for Gunpowder instead of Acoustics, have your Renaissance CS upgrades, and then backfill techs.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Yes, I'm talking about Immortal or Deity. As I've said before, with anything else the AI will not pose any significant threat assuming you play any reasonable strategy.
How is it not easy? Build library in two cities. Allocate two specialists in each. Wait. Ta da! You have great scientists, which you can use to beeline rifling as soon as you have gunpowder.
Oooh, acoustics, what a mighty tech.
The only reason to beeline acoustics is because its an easily attainable renaissance tech, which unlocks rationalism and freedom. Otherwise it does nothing fancy for you.
Yes it is. But once you get gunpowder, then beeline rifling with great scientists, THEN go backfill economy techs.
Its not worth trying to get great library on the top tech levels, you have to give up too much military to attempt it, and you'll often fail, because the AI likes it.
Muskets? Except that its not, because it is *less* dominating than longswordsman.
There is very little point in beelining gunpowder over steel.
But its a more powerful way. Which argues for balance changes such that it is *not* unambiguously more powerful way.
You act like the tech situation isn't something you get to choose. But it is! Any tech situation you find yourself in (rare exception, early game research treaties) is of your own making.
My horsemen upgraded to knights are going to kick the ass of your musketmen.
Hence, again, muskets will be boosted if horses become rarer.
Its not that there is anything wrong with muskets, its just that at the moment it is too easy to access better options, with spammed horsemen->knights, spammed longswordsmen, or beeline->muskets.
Weaken these, by making iron and horses rarer, and nerfing Great scientist, and muskets will become more valuable.
[Or heck, beeline to longbowmen/CKN if you're the right civ.] Beelining muskets and then switching to economy just isn't worth it unless you're France.
Going from memory, I'm pretty sure crossbowmen don't require resources, either. Horsemen and knights together with crossbowmen is pretty potent.
Gunpowder opens up the Renaissance but so do Acoustics, Banking and Printing Press. If you can get Steel -> Gunpowder, you can get Machinery -> Printing Press just as easily. Machinery gives you crossbowmen and I believe an additional +1 production on lumber mills.
It depends on what you're going for. Going for Printing Press primarily gets you Taj Mahal, since the Theatre isn't going to a be a general boost to your overall economy. Then you're left teching Gunpowder manually.
Gunning for Gunpowder gets you Musketmen, and then you can tech Machinery manually, and that's more reasonable.
In fact, Crossbowmen alone is pretty potent, with or without Knights. It is possible to assemble a pretty good army on Crossbowmen and Pikemen, so both Longswordsmen and Musketmen are pretty out if your army comp can take on the AI without.
Machinery gives you Crossbowmen, which I love, but the front's a little fragile. Steam Power gets you +1 hammers on lumber mills.
Gunning for Gunpowder gets you Musketmen, and then you can tech Machinery manually, and that's more reasonable.
In fact, Crossbowmen alone is pretty potent, with or without Knights. It is possible to assemble a pretty good army on Crossbowmen and Pikemen, so both Longswordsmen and Musketmen are pretty out if your army comp can take on the AI without.
Machinery gives you Crossbowmen, which I love, but the front's a little fragile. Steam Power gets you +1 hammers on lumber mills.
Ahriman
Tyrant
???
How is that relevant to anything here. Steam power is massively later.
Crossbows suffer from the fact that their promotions are useless.
I would never build crossbows; I'd upgrade any archers I had, I'd build longbows and CKN, but otherwise there are better things to build than crossbows. I'd rather use trebuchets, which can keep upgrading.
That's in reply to me. I was arguing that if he wants to beeline to get Renaissance era social policies but doesn't want to go Rifling, Printing Press is a better option than Gunpowder if he doesn't have access to iron since crossbowmen would be more useful. I mentioned Machinery giving some other benefit, but forgot what exactly it was.
I'm basically arguing that if he doesn't have access to iron and isn't ready to beeline to riflemen, there's no reason to go that route at all. Might as well stop at iron working until he's ready to beeline to riflemen. If he wants to beeline for Renaissance social policies down that tree, Printing Press is better than Gunpowder. And if he does have iron, musketmen aren't cheap enough compared to longswordsmen to justify getting another tech and stopping there.
I'm basically arguing that if he doesn't have access to iron and isn't ready to beeline to riflemen, there's no reason to go that route at all. Might as well stop at iron working until he's ready to beeline to riflemen. If he wants to beeline for Renaissance social policies down that tree, Printing Press is better than Gunpowder. And if he does have iron, musketmen aren't cheap enough compared to longswordsmen to justify getting another tech and stopping there.
Ahriman:
It pays to watch for context.
andrewlt and I were talking about Machinery. He thought they boosted Lumbermills. I provided the correct information.
You're assuming that we have Physics.
In that case, there isn't anything all that wrong with Musketmen, since you can use them and it appears to count as a "reasonable strategy," since I can win with them on Prince.
Or did you mean that some other way?
You are assuming that anything that works on Immortal or Deity is the only thing that matters and that we ought to concentrate talk on that. I don't. I don't play Settler a lot, so I really don't know much of anything about how to play on Settler. Sure, I'd probably win a Settler game, but I'd just be using what I know from King games. It's not actually optimized for that game type.
This requires you to research Writing, then build Libraries, then be aware of specialists, then be aware of Great Scientists and what they do, and then schedule their appearance with timely Specialist allocation, while also making sure you have enough food or cities that you don't cripple yourself massively.
It is easy for you, and it is easy for me, but we are both Civ veterans, and we know much of how this is supposed to work.
I was referring to getting Gunpowder with the GSs.
That's a unique quirk of the higher difficulty settings. This is not universally true for Civ V.
I was referring to Longswordsmen here. Review the exchange.
Having used both, Longswordsmen are not more dominating than Musketmen when fighting a small army of Warriors, Spearmen, and Archers - the extra strength isn't that useful there. You would really rather have more units.
It's a more powerful way on Immortal and Deity. I don't believe you play enough on the lower diff levels to say that it's more powerful at those settings.
There are early game research treaties, freebies from ruins, that sort of thing. Got Calendar from a ruin several times. You don't need to backfill it if you already have it. Beelining to Gunpowder or Rifling, the tech situation can also be variable. Perhaps you needed to tech Calendar because those were your primary luxury sources. Maybe you were primarily Camp+Mining, so you don't have Calendar.
The tech situation depends on map and AI factors. Well, that really depends. I'm sure YOU can dictate the tech situation in all your games all the time, but we're not all you.
It pays to watch for context.
Ahriman said:
andrewlt and I were talking about Machinery. He thought they boosted Lumbermills. I provided the correct information.
Ahriman said:
You're assuming that we have Physics.
Ahriman said:
In that case, there isn't anything all that wrong with Musketmen, since you can use them and it appears to count as a "reasonable strategy," since I can win with them on Prince.
Or did you mean that some other way?
You are assuming that anything that works on Immortal or Deity is the only thing that matters and that we ought to concentrate talk on that. I don't. I don't play Settler a lot, so I really don't know much of anything about how to play on Settler. Sure, I'd probably win a Settler game, but I'd just be using what I know from King games. It's not actually optimized for that game type.
Ahriman said:
This requires you to research Writing, then build Libraries, then be aware of specialists, then be aware of Great Scientists and what they do, and then schedule their appearance with timely Specialist allocation, while also making sure you have enough food or cities that you don't cripple yourself massively.
It is easy for you, and it is easy for me, but we are both Civ veterans, and we know much of how this is supposed to work.
Ahriman said:
I was referring to getting Gunpowder with the GSs.
Ahriman said:
That's a unique quirk of the higher difficulty settings. This is not universally true for Civ V.
Ahriman said:
I was referring to Longswordsmen here. Review the exchange.
Having used both, Longswordsmen are not more dominating than Musketmen when fighting a small army of Warriors, Spearmen, and Archers - the extra strength isn't that useful there. You would really rather have more units.
Ahriman said:
It's a more powerful way on Immortal and Deity. I don't believe you play enough on the lower diff levels to say that it's more powerful at those settings.
Ahriman said:
There are early game research treaties, freebies from ruins, that sort of thing. Got Calendar from a ruin several times. You don't need to backfill it if you already have it. Beelining to Gunpowder or Rifling, the tech situation can also be variable. Perhaps you needed to tech Calendar because those were your primary luxury sources. Maybe you were primarily Camp+Mining, so you don't have Calendar.
The tech situation depends on map and AI factors. Well, that really depends. I'm sure YOU can dictate the tech situation in all your games all the time, but we're not all you.
Well, to be perfectly clear, I didn't say to stop teching. You can keep teching, but digging that deep into the tech tree with bulbs usually means that it's not a good option to tech Rifling manually, so you research Machinery for Crossbowmen, and wait for the GSs to get to Rifling. In the meantime, you make Musketmen for the eventual upgrade (cheaper upgrade than Pikemen).
