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geniemalin
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Pikemen: Cost 30, defence 3
Musketmen: Cost 60, defence 4
Riflemen: Cost 80, defence 6
in terms of cost/defence ratio they are the worst defensive unit in the game.
The attack strength of 2 is fairly useless against anything of the appropriate era other than longbowmen.
As noted in other threads, Cavalry can often be a gamebreaker - maybe that's not because Cav are too strong but that Musketmen are too weak.
I noticed the improvement to Musketeers - maybe if the basic Musketman were 2/5/1 (even without bombard) it would make it worth the cost.
In fact, as Riflemen aren't usually around for that long before being supplanted by Infantry, maybe they could go up to 4/7/1 as well?
Given the prevalence of trebuchet/artillery it's not going to make cities invulnerable, but it might make the MM a useful defender even at the start of the Cavalry age ... any thoughts?
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Vince278
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Those first firearms were difficult to make and maintain.
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Vince278
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A good pike is harder to produce than a gladius. They are also harder to use properly. The role they play are different. A good swordsman can take out a pikeman anytime (just get inside the reach of the pike) but a phalanx of pikemen will give anyone a hard time (foot or mounted).
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CerberusIV
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If you want to talk real world the game isn't that far out. The early firearms were able to stop a charge by knights but the initiative did then swing back to cavalry for a while. Up to quite late in the English civil war and the 30 Years war cavalry could rout anything less than good infantry if the charge was properly prepared and supported. It was only from the mid 18th C that disciplined infantry with flintlock muskets really got the upper hand.
Cavalry are a bit strong in the game from a historical perspective but if the attackers couldn't overcome the defenders fairly regularly there would be a large stretch of most games where offensive wars were only possible at an enormous cost in casualties. It really has to be as it is for the purposes of the game.
Having said that I do think musketmen are overpriced and edited my PTW games to have them only cost 50 shields, which seemed to work OK and was more reasonable.
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swat-spas2
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In terms of gameplay they are overpriced. This is the main flaw, you easily build the necessary cavalry to take out a musket held town (especially when they retreat too). Their historical effectiveness is fairly accurate though. First firearms took armored knights out of business. But once employed on horseback, they only added to a mounted unit's firepower and effectiveness. Once you get to rifles the range and accuracy factors began to outclass the horse mounted charge, thus why rifleman should be what you'd need against cav. That said, I modded the cost down on muskets (and rifles for that matter), considerably. This makes it a bit easier on the computer since I play sp mostly... they actually have a number of (inexpensive) defensive units to my assault force to contend with. I suppose it mostly just saves me some gold.
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Bleyn
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Actually, the real power of the Musket-era Cavalry is morale related, more than firepower related. Military Historians have done studies of post-battle medical reports and soldiers diaries and such. These studies have shown that the sword or lance armed cavalrymen did very little real damage to foot soldiers.
What they were able to do however, especially in the charges, was break the morale of poor quality foot soldiers and rout them. And in that day and age, an enemy routed was an enemy defeated. The emphasis for a good couple hundred years was on commanding the battlefield at the end of the day, and not so much on actually destroying the enemy completely.
I'll edit this or add another post to explain more later, but gotta run for a bus now...
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mimi
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Where Moose are Meat
Feb 2002
time: 01:32
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Because they need a spanking... that's why. Give 'em a spanking I say!
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Vince278
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I'm an optimist who believes the game was designed the way it was after much thought and making changes could unbalance things instead of the other way around. Also, the AI isn't smart enough to catch and understand the changes to take advantage of them so the balance gets tipped to the human player, at least in this case.
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geniemalin
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I'm not so sure there - the computer uses a lot more Musketmen than I do at the moment (I don't generally bother to upgrade Pikes until Rifles unless critical and/or I'm very rich) so strengthening Muskets would only help the AI (in my games, anyway.)
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CerberusIV
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quote:
Originally posted by Mad Bomber
Cerberus:
the age of cavalry ended when the infanrty decided to stick a bayonett on the end of a musket, giving them both the firepower of the musket and the protection of the pike. (mid 17th century) Although cav were still used its effectiveness as a shock troop had ebbed by the start of the eighteenth century. |
Not the forum to debate military history but there are plenty of examples in the two conflicts I mentioned of cavalry breaking infantry. Gustavus Adolphus's reform of cavalry units back into shock troops was widely copied because it worked (at least on some occasions).
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Bleyn
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quote:
Originally posted by spy14
I saw a musket fired a few years back, its takes over a minute to load even by a professional. A fast unit, especially cavalry with their rifles, will have a good chance against musketmen. |
That's not exactly accurate. It is well documented that a typical British infantryman of the late 18th or early 19th century using the Brown Bess musket, could on a dry day, fire on an average of three rounds per minute. The elites like the men of Black Bob Crauford's Light Division might manage four rounds per minute, on a dry day.
However, this was mainly because the British actually drilled their troops with their muskets more consistently and more properly than any other army around them. Most European armies of the 17th-19th centuries bothered to allow their men to live fire their muskets maybe once a year outside of battle. And even then, they might only get to fire a couple of rounds. I would not be surprised if most of these armies would have been challenged to get off more than one or maybe two shots a minute.
Another factor that also slowed down most soldiers was forced adherence to overly complex and cumbersome loading procedures. To my understanding, the faster firing armies also tended to have more streamlined and effecient loading drill.
Further, talking of rifle armed cavalry against musket armed infantry is somewhat inaccurate. The first rifle armed cavalry probably didn't appear any earlier than the time of the Crimean War, by which time the infantry would have been starting to be armed with rifles also. And the first effective rifile armed cavalry would have been the US Army cavalry that began receiving breech loading and repeating rifles such as the Spencer during the Civil War. In fact, before the advent of the breech-loading cartridge gun, firearms were not the standard weapon of any cavalrymen. Even the so-called Carbineers that existed in many armies for several centuries did not regularly use their carbines because reloading any muzzle loading weapon on horseback was extremely ackward. And the early carbines would not have been rifles. They were just smaller muskets with somewhat shorter than normal barrels that would have been less ackward for a mounted man to wield. Such that while a Carbineer may have been armed with a carbine, in battle he might fire it once, maybe twice. Otherwise, he would have relied on a sword just like most other cavalry.
So, while, yes, I will agree that a rifle armed cavalryman of the US Civil War era would have made dogmeat of Wellington's army, this is true for the same reason that Hitler's panzers made dogmeat of the Polish lance-armed horse cavalry at the start of WW2. That being the disparity in the level of technology employed in their arms, much more than anything related to their speed. Indeed, if you took a well-led unit of US Civil War era infantrymen, and faced them off against a somewhat superior number of Wellington's infantrymen, the mere fact of the longer range and more accurate fire of the newer rifled gun would have been telling, and this between two units of foot soldiers using muzzle-loading weapons of similar rates of fire.
And lacking the long range, ease of loading, and higher rate of fire of a breech-loading rifle, the speed of lesser armed cavalry units would not a solely decisive factor against any infantry. The level of training and discipline of the infantry and the quality of the leadership they were given were very important factors. And most situations where cavalry were sucessful against infantry, that sucess could be directly attributed to matters of training, discipline, leadership, or just plain luck. Speed honestly had relatively little to do with it.
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CybellesReverie
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The problem with high defense values is stacking multipliers in well placed cities. Hill+Walls+river makes that 4 look much higher. Although most of the time a city defender will only have the option of one or two of these attritubes, a higher value would make attacking in certain situations almost impossible. Infact, this is why defense is always lower than offensive values during any age; and i would suspect the fact that the highest attackers' value of 6 and defenders of 4 is correlated to the ancient values of 3 and 2 respectively. This is why the Hoplite is such a powerful defensive unit. (Actually, though, with this logic the French UU should have a defense value of 6 imo, rather than an attack of 3, making it a kind of French Hoplite.)
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gunkulator
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It's true that all fast moving units have significant advantages over foot soldiers outside of A/D strength simply due to their retreat ability. Cav and Inf cost about the same, both have att=6, however I need fewer Cavs for attacking simply because more of them will survive the battle. Combine this with no use of roads/rails in AI land, and their simply isn't any reason to attack with foot soldiers outside of the ancient era (archers, swords).
OTOH, noone wants to defend cities with Knights or Cavalry, so they'll always be a need for foot soldiers in Civ3, just not an offensive need.
Last edited by gunkulator on 11-12-2003 at 22:59
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04-12-2003 09:01
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