Worst UU - France's Musketeers

[bestsss]

They defend better than longbowman against about everything...

Except siege, they will be mauled into oblivion by trebuchets (or even catapults) and that baring the fact they are very expensive for defensive purposes and come too late.
It's more likely to have maces prior you can see that supreme unit.

You conveniently forgot:
a) Bigger hammer cost
b) No innate first strikes
c) No innate city defense
d) No CG promotions
e) No Drill promotions
f) EDIT: higher tech requirement

g:no innate hill defense

 

[TheLazyHase]

Except siege, they will be mauled into oblivion by trebuchets (or even catapults) and that baring the fact they are very expensive for defensive purposes and come too late.
It's more likely to have maces prior you can see that supreme unit.

They are not that much mauled by trebuchet and cat than regular longbow, and "very expensive" is somehow a little bit excessive. 20% is not really "a lot more expensive than regular longbow".

(especially against treb. Longbow only have 25% more city defense, and treb's strength of 4 make it 1 point. But in the long run, it will not matter, both with be mauled given enough treb, and then we are back to point I)

ANd then again, they are better than longbow for SoD attack. I don't think that a little advantage, since it's the only thing that save a city. All city defense, CR, and such only serve one single purpose : buying time so you can maul the attacker for more time and/or negociate peace.

 

[The Navy Seal]

It would definitely make top 10 worst UU's but not the number 1 for worst. Similar to the Fast Worker (Indian UU) only advantage is a movement bonus. Sometimes can get you another defender in your city to save you in time but most of the time has no use. Most of the UU's give a defensive bonus or a strength bonus in some way. The ones that don't get a strength bonus can be useful in some situations. So depending on your style of play Empires around you and other details like that makes the final decision on which is the most useless.

For example whats the point of having a UU when you don't have the resource required to build it. Say you don't have Iron in your territory, well playing as the Aztecs you can still build swordsman units thanks to your UU. So the mostly useless Jaguar Warrior suddenly becomes a life saver.

 

[Slvynn]

Agree with last poster. If we take for example Byzantine UU - which is really powerfull, but requires strict beeline, and 2 strategic resources, and surviving, having not-best start.
We should consider more factors when taking UU awesomness/awfulness debate.
With Nappy i think muskets quite powerfull unit. Its also depends on speed, but if epic/marathon and you beeline liberalism race, get natinalism and soon research gunpowder- its quite powerfull to have such draftee army early, and then you go and knock some heads at double speed. Using spies. Forget about siege. Speed with you can conquer it very important. On faster speeds it just give you faster advance before your victim upgrades no next level of defence unit.

 

[TheLazyHase]

its quite powerfull to have such draftee army early

What's better with drafting is that it help to build them quickly. Since they cannot be upgraded to, it's one of the problem of musket UU. The other one is that beelining liberalism is common and tend to make them appear later than they could.

 

[Silu]

They are not that much mauled by trebuchet and cat than regular longbow, and "very expensive" is somehow a little bit excessive. 20% is not really "a lot more expensive than regular longbow".

ANd then again, they are better than longbow for SoD attack. I don't think that a little advantage, since it's the only thing that save a city. All city defense, CR, and such only serve one single purpose : buying time so you can maul the attacker for more time and/or negociate peace.

Oh, you again forgot the main advantage of Longbows against Siege - innate first strike and better promotions. They're huge.

On attack Landsknechts totally suck - it's the same as attacking with Pikes in 99% of the cases (how the heck do you consider them good city attackers??). They get CR (but why you'd pick this for them is beyond me), but their base strength sucks, and they're totally foiled by crossbows. Moreover, if your advance is going to stall it's most likely due to crossbows, since that's the main enemy of Maces. I'd rather have Longbows on offense than Landsknechts.

I don't really understand why you're defending them so bad - over Pikes they only get an advantage against Maces and only when defending. And they still lose hard to promoted Maces.

But we're beating a dead horse. Sorry, I have a hard time at resisting to do that.

 

[mariogreymist]

IMO the Portuguese UU (Carrack, is it?) is somewhat poor...

That's map dependent. If you're on a water-dominated map, it means much earlier intercontinental settlement, which can translate in to large advantages later.

 

[Slvynn]

About Carrack - in some games Portugese able to make fast naval attacks while victim even cant reach to attacker. Carrack transport same amount as galley, but faster, cross any tile, and come very early if beelined. It can also sail in rival land w/o open borders. This is somewhat great advantage, but not every game though. Bit map dependant i'd say, but unit is great. If you go there fast you win circumnavigation ,and your assault ships early can transport tons of siege and defence units and conquer alot. I see Joao as one of most warmonger militaristic leaders, so he wshould played like that, using his sneak oversea attacks as well.

 

[LiquidSwords]

Yeah, the Musketeer isn't all that amazing, but that's because Musketmen in general aren't that great. Could you imagine how devastating a Rifleman with 2 movement would be? My vote goes to the Gallic Warrior. Guerrilla III sounds nice and all, but I think I'd take the CR line over it pretty much any day.

 

[kochman]

Worst UUs... I rank the following all worse than the Musketeer (I think the 2 movement is a big deal, though I don't understand why that is what they get as a bonus... historically speaking).

*Bowman
*Jauguar
*Janissary
*Fast Worker
*Navy Seal (should have paratrooper abilities, Sea-Air-Land)

 

[Silu]

*Janissary
*Fast Worker

Definitely in my top 10... Fast workers in top 5 probably.

 

[J-man]

Janissary and Fast worker worse then musketeer

Those are both great UU's! Especially the fast worker!

Edit: X-post with Silu

 

[Windsor]

So, if you research gunpowder late and then beeline for cuirassier quickly, there is no much time. I does agree.

You can also see that musketeer are one tech away from knight (IIRC), and seeing that the 3 more tech (nationalism, music, military tradition) are not exactly cheap material.

Do you often get gunpowder through guilds? Usually I find it to be a harder route, it gives less trade bait, will often not be any faster and is simply not the best techpath. Musketeers ain't hot enough to make any detours in the tech tree.

Musketeers shine when they move with knights ( at best ) against cities with little or no defense ( spy revolts to the win ) ... if you don't do that, they aren't better than regular muskets

Knights is one of the weaker mounted units, much thanks to the lack of inherited withdrawal chance. If knights where more attractive I would rate musketeers higher. Removing feudalism as a pre-req for guilds would make a difference! As it is the best use for musketeers is usually together with cannons, making little use of the unique ability.

 

[Badtz Maru]

Fast Workers are the weakest, I have never won a combat with them, even against barbarian warriors.

 

[Silu]

Fast Workers are the weakest, I have never won a combat with them, even against barbarian warriors.

You need to brush up on your war-related literature!

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.

As Fast Workers are the only ones that help subdue an enemy without fighting, they are actually the strongest UU in terms of warfare.

 

[binhthuy71]

The French are a civ that I play about one-third of the time. Despite that, I no longer bother to build Musketeers unless there's a pressing need for units. The best use I found for them was accompanying a stack of Cuirassiers and that only because they could keep up with the mounted. Why the designers went for Musketeers based on a unit that has neither offensive nor defensive bonuses rather than a Legionnaire based on the Rifleman is beyond me. It can't be because the Redcoat is based on Rifleman because there are plenty of other UU's that are based on the same unit.

 

[sherbz]

i think impi suck more than musketeers. Thats simply down to musketmen having no hard counter, whereas you have axes, maces and xbows to counter impi, making them the worst all round unit. Good job if you ask me for the blood thirsty shaka

 

[Badtz Maru]

i think impi suck more than musketeers. Thats simply down to musketmen having no hard counter, whereas you have axes, maces and xbows to counter impi, making them the worst all round unit. Good job if you ask me for the blood thirsty shaka

Impi would be a lot better if they didn't have that Copper/Iron requirement. They'd be awesome early rushers except for that.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Why the designers went for Musketeers based on a unit that has neither offensive nor defensive bonuses rather than a Legionnaire based on the Rifleman is beyond me.

Musketeer are a good "lore" choice, because they are widely know, at least among french people, and are not reviled as can be the Legion étrangére.

Still, I would have liked more a medieval unit. Or a unit based on revolutionary army or napolean army. Finding a punchname would be difficult, thought.

 

[Kbo]

It hurts to see the fast worker not getting tons of love. Being able to move into a jungle or forest and immediately begin cottaging/farming/etc saves tons of turns, creating CEs and SEs so much faster, along with mines for a quick swap to a wonder, just poofs up there and starts up, flying all over Gandhi's big empire. Definetly a top 5 UU IMHO.

As for musketeers, yeah theyre nothing special, the movement point is amazing in the right situation, or when coupled with a knight/spy revolt attack with CGII to keep those cities well defended with no counter, starts a war off well

Bowmen have saved me multiple times against an aggressive neighbor without having any copper nearby and IW being the dead end tech it is you dont have to beeline it for defense with them, feud comes and you upgrade, but you're set until then, plus they keep an HA stack in a city safe if Shaka comes calling with cats and impi.

My vote of the worst would have to go to the Impi, their extra movement point is nearly useless since at their time theyre basically the only unit that has more movement, i know some people are goin to go off about the tree that they have, but when you have them in a stack of swords and cats, its useless. Plus it has no synergy with HA's, the only 2 movement unit close to their time.....or maybe im wrong?