Upgrade to Musketmen?

[Ahriman]

andrewlt and I were talking about Machinery. He thought they boosted Lumbermills. I provided the correct information.

Fair point. Apologies, I missed that.

You're assuming that we have Physics.

?
You can get physics as easily as you can get machinery.
I would get physics instead of machinery unless I were England or China or had little iron.

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?

Wha?
Being able to win with something doesn't mean its balanced, or that using it is a good strategy.
I'm saying that currently muskets are inferior, and so we need to tweak the game to make them better.
Able to win with != well-balanced.

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.

Basically anything that works on Immortal or Deity will work on lower difficulty. [only exception is strats that require AI players to have a lot of gold]
We should analyze balance discussions at the point where the game can actually be difficult. And try and make other changes (eg AI improvements) that will make the game difficult on difficulties below Immortal too.

Prince is the level where the AI has no advantages. It is nonsense to somehow assume that it is therefore somehow the level where most people will play, or where balancing needs to take place. The AI isn't good enough to make Prince a decent challenge.

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.

Uhh... you're suggesting the game should be balanced around people who can't figure out how to build a library or assign specialists? They can learn.

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 is nothing on lower difficulties which will make it less powerful. The AI getting lower bonuses doesn't somehow make my rifles weaker.

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.

If you're at gunpowder, you can afford the 2 turns it will take you to get calendar and trapping.
You're not going to have any advanced techs from ruins in any normal game.

There are a few fringe random sources, but in the vast majority of cases, you control the vast majority of your tech progress, so its foolish to treat it as if it were something outside your control.

 

[Frosty_AUT]

They're both anti-tank specialists.

That doesn't make it any less nonsensical IMO. These units have absolutely nothing in common except their role, and even that is questionable considering that AT guns are more defensive in nature (slow movement and hindered by terrain) while helicopters are fast offensive units that suck on defense.

 

[andrewlt]

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).

If you're that ahead of the AI in tech, using GS to get Knights should be better than musketmen, since you can upgrade horsemen to knights. The extra move should be extremely useful if you're going to be rolling over weaker units.

It seems to me that if you have no iron, stopping at iron working and using your GS on getting knights and teching the top part of the tree is way better. If you have iron, beelining for gunpowder to get Renaissance policies might be useful but you might as well build lots of swordsmen and upgrade them to longswordsmen rather than build musketmen. In the latter case, might as well manually research techs until gunpowder while building iron units then use the GS for riflemen.

 

[Roxlimn]

Ahriman

?
You can get physics as easily as you can get machinery.
I would get physics instead of machinery unless I were England or China or had little iron.

Depends on the focus. I don't believe Physics helps us in getting Printing Press. It depends on the situation.

Wha?
Being able to win with something doesn't mean its balanced, or that using it is a good strategy.
I'm saying that currently muskets are inferior, and so we need to tweak the game to make them better.
Able to win with != well-balanced.

Being able to win the setting means that the strategy employed was adequate for that setting. Anything more powerful than that is simply overkill, and unnecessary.

Basically anything that works on Immortal or Deity will work on lower difficulty. [only exception is strats that require AI players to have a lot of gold]
We should analyze balance discussions at the point where the game can actually be difficult. And try and make other changes (eg AI improvements) that will make the game difficult on difficulties below Immortal too.

Prince is the level where the AI has no advantages. It is nonsense to somehow assume that it is therefore somehow the level where most people will play, or where balancing needs to take place. The AI isn't good enough to make Prince a decent challenge.

For you.

The AI isn't good enough to make Prince a decent challenge for you.

As I said before, you are not everyone, and not everyone plays at your preferred settings. We get a skewed sample of players here at CivFanatics, and this leads to the impression that every Civ players in the world plays at Immortal or Deity. In fact, most players do not. Many players are older people who have work and do not have the time to play 100 hours of Civ V. They do not find Prince stupidly easy.

Anything that works on Immortal may or may not work as well on Prince. You do not know that it will, and how it might compare to other strategies because you do not play on Prince. Do not make assumptions about settings you do not play.

Getting Riflemen on Prince can be complete and unnecessary overkill, where Longswordsmen might be sufficient to win handily, or Musketmen if the player is "bad" enough not to have acquired a sufficient quantity of Iron. In this case, the unit helped out the player to make up for being a "bad player" in other aspects of the game.

Uhh... you're suggesting the game should be balanced around people who can't figure out how to build a library or assign specialists? They can learn.

Or, we can put in aspects of the game that will make it fun for them to play, and then they will eventually learn. We need new blood in this hobby, and in this game type, particularly the 4X genre, as it's kind of dying, if you haven't noticed.

Assuming everyone is super-hardcore is no way to design a game that supposed to represent a flagship title for a whole genre of play. Look at SC2. It still has many layers of complexity, but there appear to be several units and gameplay mechanics that are specifically geared to make the experience fun for newbies.

If you're at gunpowder, you can afford the 2 turns it will take you to get calendar and trapping.
You're not going to have any advanced techs from ruins in any normal game.

There are a few fringe random sources, but in the vast majority of cases, you control the vast majority of your tech progress, so its foolish to treat it as if it were something outside your control.

If I beelined Gunpowder by bulbing Steel and Gunpowder, then it will take me more than 1 turn each to research Calendar and Trapping. For that matter, that was just illustrative. It is possible to get techs from ruins in islands on Continents after you research Astronomy, and that can be pretty late indeed.

You play the game well enough to control your own tech progress until well up past Rifling, or maybe even every turn. I don't know. It's not that the tech situation is not something I don't choose. It's that I sometimes have to tech Horseback Riding for Circuses when I otherwise wouldn't want to.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't believe Physics helps us in getting Printing Press.

I think it does, not 100% certain.

Being able to win the setting means that the strategy employed was adequate for that setting.

But it doesn't mean that the strategy is well balanced, or well designed.

I could play a game where I built a settler, disbanded it, and still won. That doesn't make it a good strategy, or mean that we should design the game so that it is balanced if you disband the first settler you build.

Many players are older people who have work and do not have the time to play 100 hours of Civ V

You don't have to play 100 hours to beat Prince. Prince is a walkover for most players even on their first game of Civ5.

Anything that works on Immortal may or may not work as well on Prince. You do not know that it will, and how it might compare to other strategies because you do not play on Prince. Do not make assumptions about settings you do not play.

BS. What differences are there on Prince that make riflemen weaker?
Any strategy (that doesn't need the AI's gold) that works on Immortal will work at least as well on Prince. The only difference is that the AI is weaker on Prince, and that the human has more happiness. The core mechanics of the game don't somehow change.

Getting Riflemen on Prince can be complete and unnecessary overkill

There is no such thing as overkill, or a strategy that is Too Good.

Assuming everyone is super-hardcore

How on earth is assuming that people can figure out how to build a library and use a great scientist assuming they are super-hardcore?
This is a game designed for lots of replay. If they can't figure it out immediately, they'll figure it out. People are smart.

If you design the game for imbeciles who can't use even the basic mechanics, then its no fun for anyone else. Maybe we should make the player's cities instantly destroy any enemy unit, in case there are some people who can't figure out how to build a military unit?

What is so devastating for newbies about the mild balance changes I was proposing (nerfing great scientist ability to bulb, making horses and iron less common)?

It is possible to get techs from ruins in islands on Continents after you research Astronomy,

Yes, in part because the ruins are messed up (they should never give non-ancient-era techs) and the AI non-competitive (it won't hunt down ruins on islands).

 

[Roxlimn]

If you're that ahead of the AI in tech, using GS to get Knights should be better than musketmen, since you can upgrade horsemen to knights. The extra move should be extremely useful if you're going to be rolling over weaker units.

It seems to me that if you have no iron, stopping at iron working and using your GS on getting knights and teching the top part of the tree is way better. If you have iron, beelining for gunpowder to get Renaissance policies might be useful but you might as well build lots of swordsmen and upgrade them to longswordsmen rather than build musketmen. In the latter case, might as well manually research techs until gunpowder while building iron units then use the GS for riflemen.

Getting Chivalry for Knights from Horsemen might be better in some ways, and not better in other ways. Less able to tech to Printing Press, farther from Rifling, and that sort of thing.

I would broadly agree that without Iron and with Horses, going for Knights + Pikemen would make for a sound army, if a bit lacking in Ranged support.

With Iron, using the GSs to bulb out Gunpowder early for the early Renaissance sounds like an okay plan to me. Build Swordsmen and upgrade, sure, but once you have Gunpowder, the Musketmen really are more cost-effective for dealing with lower tech units.

You could manually research techs up to Gunpowder, but if we bulbed out Steel, this will take a while. In fact, getting to the position where you could bulb Physics-Gunpowder with a subsequent pair of GSs (or whatever) already takes a bit. Getting Riflemen out would be sensible on the higher diffs where the difference would mean something, but in the case of wanting the Era shift, Gunpowder isn't a bad idea, and it sets you up to bulb to Riflemen later on, if that turns out to be necessary.

 

[Roxlimn]

Ahriman:

I think it does, not 100% certain.

I checked. Printing Press requires Physics and Machinery, it looks like. I stand corrected.

But it doesn't mean that the strategy is well balanced, or well designed.

I could play a game where I built a settler, disbanded it, and still won. That doesn't make it a good strategy, or mean that we should design the game so that it is balanced if you disband the first settler you build.

I do not believe that building Musketmen is equivalent to disbanding your first Settler.

You don't have to play 100 hours to beat Prince. Prince is a walkover for most players even on their first game of Civ5.

You have numbers to back that up. I converse with less, er, obsessed, gamers on the 'net - people who play more than just Civ and various turn-based strategy games. By their accounts, Prince isn't a walkover. More than a few have actually lost games on Prince, if you can believe that.

Are they terminally stupid? Shall we shut them out from Civ, being the terminally stupid people that they are?

BS. What differences are there on Prince that make riflemen weaker?
Any strategy (that doesn't need the AI's gold) that works on Immortal will work at least as well on Prince. The only difference is that the AI is weaker on Prince, and that the human has more happiness. The core mechanics of the game don't somehow change.

They are two techs up. This means that it takes more time to get to them. This is an inherent weakness in all the latter game units - one of the reasons why mid-game units are rated better than latter game units.

The difference is that the AI on Prince is weaker, so you may not need Riflemen to beat their armies.

There is no such thing as overkill, or a strategy that is Too Good.

This is a bald statement without support, and may I say it, not a lot of experience playing on lower diff settings to back it up. I disagree. There is such a thing as overkill.

How on earth is assuming that people can figure out how to build a library and use a great scientist assuming they are super-hardcore?
This is a game designed for lots of replay. If they can't figure it out immediately, they'll figure it out. People are smart.

If you design the game for imbeciles who can't use even the basic mechanics, then its no fun for anyone else. Maybe we should make the player's cities instantly destroy any enemy unit, in case there are some people who can't figure out how to build a military unit?

What is so devastating for newbies about the mild balance changes I was proposing (nerfing great scientist ability to bulb, making horses and iron less common)?

To that point, nothing. I do not oppose those changes. In fact, I think you're right on the money. I didn't realize you needed my approval for your position.

This particular point goes to the statement that it is easy to double-bulb Rifling from Gunpowder. It is not. It is easy for us, but not for everyone. It takes a fair amount of familiarity with the game to even realize that this is possible.

 

[andrewlt]

Assuming everyone is super-hardcore is no way to design a game that supposed to represent a flagship title for a whole genre of play. Look at SC2. It still has many layers of complexity, but there appear to be several units and gameplay mechanics that are specifically geared to make the experience fun for newbies.

I think this is getting a bit off, though. What his argument boils down to, is that just because you can use an underpowered unit to defeat a weaker opponent (in this case, a computer AI on Prince setting) doesn't mean that it is any less underpowered. Or let's put it this way. Just because Fruitdealer won GSL1 using zerg doesn't mean the race wasn't underpowered and needing a buff then.

Let's turn the argument around. Rifleman is overkill for you and musketman is enough. But to a truly casual player whose skill level is Prince difficulty, will the musketman be enough? Or will it be underpowered enough in his hands than he would be better off going to a multitude of other, different, superior options instead?

 

[Roxlimn]

andrewlt:

Hard to say. His argument doesn't sound valid to me because he's assuming that the Musketman is underpowered, and then arguing that just because it can be used to win doesn't mean that it's not underpowered.

I mean, the fact that it can be used to win is a rather direct counter to his assertion that it is underpowered, instead of substantiating why, he just continues with the assumption.

If the unit is underpowered (and I'm not saying that it is), then reasoning why it's underpowered will lead us to a solution better than just saying "it's not good."

Right now there are two reasons for why people don't make Musketmen:

1. You can't upgrade units to it. Valid for when you built early units and they killed a gazillion enemies. Pretty much isolated to particular playstyles and very high diff setting play.

2. You can bulb to Rifling with just two Great Scientists. Kind of complicated, preassumes that we're bypassing Gunpowder to begin with, and also assumes that we even need Riflemen strength to beat our enemies.


Here is an example of how it's sounding like to me:

E: Building the Great Library is a bad idea.

N: Why?

E: Because the AIs will always beat you to it.

N: No, they don't.

E: They will on Immortal or Deity.

N: But not on Prince.

E: No, but then anything works on Prince.


The reasoning is all weird and strange. Building the GL is a perfectly fine strategic decision on Prince, and it not being viable on Deity doesn't make it any less valid on Prince. The game plays differently on the two settings. You can't just play Deity and assume that you know how the game is like on the lower settings.

 

[rt12568]

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.

Yeah, I'm sure that is on the to fix list, but even when it does get fixed. That UU seems underpowered. I would think making them more like skirmishers would be the route to go, 3 movement and movement after combat...but that's another discussion.

If they were a little more cheap and on par with long swordsmen strength then I could see a definite use for them. Especially in bad situations where iron is not available or if you are looking at certain war situations where you need a few more units immediately. Even so, its a situational use unit that brings nothing to the table. Right now the minimal cost reduction and slightly less strength combine to make them appear (at least to me) as an aesthetic choice rather than a useful unit.

I consider myself a pretty casual player. I don't crunch a lot of numbers and try to maximize everything. I started on Prince and have moved up since the mid level in this game seems to have taken a step down the ladder. But after building some in one of my first games, I question their usefulness. It might just be a convergence of several factors that have caused this, but either way...I'm missing the point of making them.

 

[kuukkeli]

The only reason they aren't dominant is because players don't want to use them.

True, if by dominant you mean...

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.

Beating under developed units says nothing about the quality of a unit type. Your example here only proves what others have already said to you: on prince any vaguely reasonable (and probably quite a few completely insane) strategy is enough.

Is there anything wrong with playing on Prince?

No, but basing arguments about game balance to situations where you're beating warriors with muskets is definitely wrong.

Being able to win the setting means that the strategy employed was adequate for that setting.

Yes, but adequate on low level doesn't necessarily mean good and definitely can't be used to argue about the game balance and strengths of different strategies.

 

[Roxlimn]

If it's a situational use unit, then it brings something to the table. If it brings nothing to the table, then it's not situational - it's useless.

The latest patch info has the skinny on Minutemen, so they are going to get definitely fixed, and I got good use out of them as America. Thing is, Minutemen actually get two promos because they're American units. They get +1 sight range, and they have no movement penalty for terrain (which includes crossing rivers, by the way), which makes them fabulous guerilla units - way better than Longswordsmen if you set it up right.

Musketmen are 20% cheaper than Longswordsmen, so this translates to about a 2 turn advantage when your Longswordsmen are building from 8-10 turns. The purchase cost is correspondingly cheaper. This means that when you're in a war and you're losing units, Musketmen are cheaper alternative reinforcements, when you need bulk rather than power.

Of course, better players would tell us just never to lose any unit, ever, but I don't find that advice too useful.

 

[Roxlimn]

True, if by dominant you mean...
Beating under developed units says nothing about the quality of a unit type. Your example here only proves what others have already said to you: on prince any vaguely reasonable (and probably quite a few completely insane) strategy is enough.

No, but basing arguments about game balance to situations where you're beating warriors with muskets is definitely wrong.

Yes, but adequate on low level doesn't necessarily mean good and definitely can't be used to argue about the game balance and strengths of different strategies.

1. Units are used in the game's conflict game, and they are useful according to what you want to use them for. If they fit the needs of the situation better, then they are the better unit for that situation. There is not magical, inherent "quality," that we can determine outside of the game.

2. Why is it wrong to judge the power of Muskets against Longswordsmen when arraying them against less advanced units? Isn't that the point of the Rifleman bulb? Is it wrong to assess the efficacy of Riflemen against Swordsmen, too?

3. There is no magical "good." It depends on the settings. Playing England is better on Continents than on Pangaea. Playing Greece is better on Pangaea than on Archipelago. Getting the GL is sound on Prince, unsound on Deity. A strategy that isn't workable on higher AI handicap settings isn't necessarily a bad strategy, and isn't automatically invalid, unless you only ever play on the higher diff settings.

 

[Bandit17]

If it's a situational use unit, then it brings something to the table. If it brings nothing to the table, then it's not situational - it's useless.

The latest patch info has the skinny on Minutemen, so they are going to get definitely fixed, and I got good use out of them as America. Thing is, Minutemen actually get two promos because they're American units. They get +1 sight range, and they have no movement penalty for terrain (which includes crossing rivers, by the way), which makes them fabulous guerilla units - way better than Longswordsmen if you set it up right.

Musketmen are 20% cheaper than Longswordsmen, so this translates to about a 2 turn advantage when your Longswordsmen are building from 8-10 turns. The purchase cost is correspondingly cheaper. This means that when you're in a war and you're losing units, Musketmen are cheaper alternative reinforcements, when you need bulk rather than power.

Of course, better players would tell us just never to lose any unit, ever, but I don't find that advice too useful.

Or you could just produce the musketmen, hold these weak units out of battle and about 8 turns later upgrade them to riflemen and away you go. pretty simple really. Unless your fighting spearmen than musketmen would be just fine for battle. I still haven't been in a situation yet where I thought "Oh God! Where are my musketmen?!!"

 

[Roxlimn]

Bandit17:

Musketmen aren't actually weak units. They're Strength 16 units! They can take out Pikemen and Swordsmen with no problems, and they do a good job defending against Knights when they're Fortified and on rough terrain.

I have been in a situation when all I had was a dinky little 2-iron mine and that forced me to only have 2 Longswordmen at a time. I found the Musketmen quite useful. Having some but not a lot of Iron preserves the value of Longswordsmen, but still allow Musketmen to be used.

 

[kuukkeli]

1. Units are used in the game's conflict game, and they are useful according to what you want to use them for. If they fit the needs of the situation better, then they are the better unit for that situation. There is not magical, inherent "quality," that we can determine outside of the game.

It's not magical but quality can still be determined. The fact that makes muskets pretty on low quality is that the situations when they're the optimal unit to go for are extremely rare and even in those few exact situations they're lifespan is very short.

2. Why is it wrong to judge the power of Muskets against Longswordsmen when arraying them against less advanced units? Isn't that the point of the Rifleman bulb? Is it wrong to assess the efficacy of Riflemen against Swordsmen, too?

The point I was trying to make was this: if you're in a situation where you actually have a chance to field muskets against warriors, archers and spearmen it makes no difference which exact units you have - you're so much more advanced that the technical superiority (if used, of course) already guarantees you a huge advantage.

On prince you will always have that advantage unless you're a) deliberately handicapping yourself or b) absolutely clueless about the game. The fact that you can choose to dominate with muskets doesn't make muskets good - like if pitting an UFC fighter and random adult against a kindergarten kid, you can't say they're equally good just because both defeated the 5-year old with ease.

3. There is no magical "good."

You're right about the magic part

It depends on the settings.

Some of it does but not all.

Playing England is better on Continents than on Pangaea. Playing Greece is better on Pangaea than on Archipelago.

These are probably true.

Getting the GL is sound on Prince, unsound on Deity.

Note, this is mostly because on deity you can't get the GL before AI. It's not because GL isn't good. With muskets it's almost never about not getting better alternatives - it would just be a sub-optimal choice.

A strategy that isn't workable on higher AI handicap settings isn't necessarily a bad strategy, and isn't automatically invalid, unless you only ever play on the higher diff settings.

True but just as truthfully a strategy that only works on lower levels isn't automatically good. Some things only work on lower levels because the opposition is so bad that almost everything works while other things don't work on high levels just because of massive AI handicaps - there's difference between the two.

 

[Liquidated]

Anti-tank gun --> Helicopter gunship

...

W. T. F.

Well said. For Truth. Testify, brothers and sisters. WTH indeed, but sadly, that's just the tip of the iceberg.



Cheers!
-Liq

 

[pi-r8]

Arg I told myself I wouldn't get sucked into this again but I can't help myself.

andrewlt:

Hard to say. His argument doesn't sound valid to me because he's assuming that the Musketman is underpowered, and then arguing that just because it can be used to win doesn't mean that it's not underpowered.

I mean, the fact that it can be used to win is a rather direct counter to his assertion that it is underpowered, instead of substantiating why, he just continues with the assumption.

If the unit is underpowered (and I'm not saying that it is), then reasoning why it's underpowered will lead us to a solution better than just saying "it's not good."

You seem to be missing the difference between a strategy that works, and a strategy that is optimal. No one is saying that you can't possibly win battles with musketmen. You could probably even win some battles with them on deity. What we're saying is that they are never an optimal strategy, because in any reasonable circumstances, there is always a better unit you can use.

First, if you have gunpowder, you have to have steel first. This gives you longswordsmen, which are stronger and otherwise identical. Slightly more expensive, yes, but the fact that they come first negates that. They do require iron, but iron is so common that it's not a problem to get it at all. You can always trade for it.

If for some reason you really can't get iron, no problem. You also have the option of building knights. Knights are an extremely powerful unit, which only require horses for some reason.

If you really don't have horses or knights, well, you can build musketmen for a little while, but you really should head towards riflemen then. It won't be long until you have them, and then you can forget all about musketmen.

So I argue that, although not completely useless, they are suboptimal because there's always a better choice- longswords, knights, rifles, maybe even trebuchets or crossbows, all would be a better choice. If a unit is always suboptimal, it's safe to say that it's a bad unit.

 

[gunter]

Another issue is the ( right ) mental and technical approach.

I mean, Musketmen are the first gunpowder unit but they have pretty much the same strenght of Pikemen, at least slightly more....... the gunpowder should allow a much greater power than a medieval pikeman instead , or similar ancient units.....

 

[Roxlimn]

gunter:

No offense, but it's posts like yours that make me think all the more than people who think Musketmen are useless just have never used them at all.

Musketmen are Strength 16 - nearly the same strength as Longswordsmen. Pikemen are Strength 10 - weaker than Swordsmen. Musketmen vs. Pikemen is no contest. Musketmen will slaughter them wholesale. I have actually had the benefit to experience this from both sides. It's very hard to take on Musketmen with just Pikemen, even with the horrible combat AI. You'd need a strong terrain or defensive advantage to win that.


pi-r8

You seem to be missing the difference between a strategy that works, and a strategy that is optimal. No one is saying that you can't possibly win battles with musketmen. You could probably even win some battles with them on deity. What we're saying is that they are never an optimal strategy, because in any reasonable circumstances, there is always a better unit you can use.

First, if you have gunpowder, you have to have steel first. This gives you longswordsmen, which are stronger and otherwise identical. Slightly more expensive, yes, but the fact that they come first negates that. They do require iron, but iron is so common that it's not a problem to get it at all. You can always trade for it.

If for some reason you really can't get iron, no problem. You also have the option of building knights. Knights are an extremely powerful unit, which only require horses for some reason.

If you really don't have horses or knights, well, you can build musketmen for a little while, but you really should head towards riflemen then. It won't be long until you have them, and then you can forget all about musketmen.

So I argue that, although not completely useless, they are suboptimal because there's always a better choice- longswords, knights, rifles, maybe even trebuchets or crossbows, all would be a better choice. If a unit is always suboptimal, it's safe to say that it's a bad unit.

Listen to yourself.

Most units in the game aren't what we would call "good" by this standard. For instance, why get Spearmen when the AI hardly ever uses Horsemen, and Swordsmen are better?

You're also misreading my counter, and you're making a poor case for not using Musketmen.

For instance, Longswordsmen are NOT identical to Musketmen. They require Iron and are fully 25% more expensive in comparison. This is not a small difference, and coming from an earlier tech doesn't make that better! You can finish off a building, and then make Musketmen, finish at the same time as Longswordsmen, and have a comparable strength when fighting Medieval era units.

You make an assumption that Iron will never be a problem, but that is not the case. Regardless of how common it is, there will be instances where you cannot get some. You can't, in fact, "always trade for it."

You do not have the option of building Knights when your tech is Steel, since Knights require Chivalry, and going down that route completely obviates going down the lower path for military advantages. I have talked about this prior in this very thread, and I agree that going for Knights instead of Musketmen is viable, but not the only option, and not necessarily superior.

In the instance where you went for Musketmen and are going for Riflemen, you will still have the opportunity to apply for war before Riflemen hit the scene, unless for some reason you deliberately delay the war for Riflemen because you don't want to use Musketmen (out of bias). Beelining Riflemen as an emergent option is not instant. In fact, it takes quite a while since teching that high up takes a significant amount of time whether by brute force or by waiting for the next pair of GSs.


Here is a situation that's not unheard-of:

I have Iron. It is only a 2-unit source, so I can only afford to have 2 units that have it. I can either have 2 Trebuchets, or 2 Longswordsmen, or one of each. I have chosen to prosecute my earlier wars with Catapults, so I have a pair that are decently promoted, and a bunch of Archers and Spearmen. Useless to go for Musketmen?

I have the Physics tech, I have Metal Casting (for Workshops, of course), and I now have 2 GSs. I can either go for Chivalry-Banking if I research some prerequisites, but I don't have Horsemen and Knights are kind of expensive. Or, I can go for Gunpowder now, have Musketmen, and immediately boost my CS output to the next Era.


Now, granted, I was not playing "optimally" when those situations occurred. This should be obvious since I don't have Horsemen. That said, I like not building Horsemen in every single game I play, so I don't always build them. Would I be glad if Musketmen were stronger? Sure. Are they useless now? Not at all.

Here is a question: At what strength and hammer cost would you even consider making Musketmen? Would you require them to be at least as broken as Horsemen, or is that too "optimal?"