Musketman need an update.

[Hunter XLR8]

I want to know if you guys fell the same way that I do about the musketman unit. For me the game does the Renaissance era's military the worst out of all of them. If you developed a large army in the classical or medieval eras, you have to either wait until you get riflemen or build musketmen from scratch.

With this the Musketman also has the same strength as the longswordsman which is utter tosh as this makes players unwilling to embrace firearms until riflemen can be made. Since nothing upgrades to musketmen, they fight alongside medieval era units which did occur when musketry was in its infancy but when wheelocks, flintlocks and the bayonet were made medieval units were obsolete. The game seems to entirely skip the 16th - early 18th century in terms of warfare. I want to be able to fell like I'm in the Napoleonic or Revolutionary Wars but can't as all the other Civs are still using 12th and 13th century units.

The Musketman needs a reform, my ideas for reform are as follows
1. Have all melee units of the Medieval era upgrade to Musketman rather than Rifleman
2. Give Musketman a higher strength than Medieval units, this may require preceding units to get a strength boost.
3. Maybe make a melee unit between Musketman and Rifleman, this could be called Line Infantry, in order to give the game that feel for 17th century and Napoleonic Warfare rather than skipping from 15th century warfare to the Crimean War and Civil War warfare.

If anyone else feels this way please post about it. If you have ideas for Musketman reform please post as well.

Advances in Musketry made Medieval warfare obsolete, NOT the Minie ball!

[zephyrtr]

Musketmen are great because it gives Civs that are iron-choked a chance to catch up. They can churn em out pretty easy and they stack up against longswordsmen just fine. If you've been pushing militaristically since the beginning of the game, as things are right now, the musketmen aren't DESIGNED for you, which is why you might find them sub-par. But for, say, when I play america, and I'm concentrating on infrastructure until the renaissance, teching my minutemen means its time to start crackin skulls, and I have the weight of several well-developed cities to crank em out with. I think perhaps your own playstyle is getting in the way of seeing the musketman's usefulness.

[SlickSlicer]

Gameplay wise, I think they are balanced well enough, but I agree completely that the leap from musketman to riflemen is a little bit absurd, skipping over centuries of gunpowder weaponry refinement and technological development. However, they'd have to change everything else about the pace of the game in order to add in some kind of interim unit between musketmen and riflemen. In the end, I don't think anything will change, and I'm not sure I'll mind too much, to be honest.

[mwallyn]

The upside of the Musketman, as mentioned by several others, is that it doesn't require iron. This is a huge advantage, as Longswordsmen require iron, which gets chewed up rather quickly by siege units and Frigates. Thus, a unit of equivalent power is incredibly useful. Plus, consider that some Civs have absurdly powerful musketman uniques (American Minuteman, Spanish Tercios, French Musketeers, etc.), making them all the more enticing.

Its all about strategy. I prefer developing a reasonably strong infrastructure before I go off killing people. Unless I have an early unique to upgrade over time such as Aztec Jaguars, I won't start building units until I'm ready. Others prefer to rush, in which case Musketmen are somewhat redundant. Still, don't overlook them. They're useful in a pinch and they can be incredibly powerful as uniques.

[Tahitian Moon]

Historically HunterXLR8 you are absolutely right, musketman-line infantry-rifleman would be good, but
gameplay-wise I think current system is balanced I think.

Also Sweden werent that fond of lots of firing before bayonets, and used pikemen a lot in the early 1700s while other European
powers had switched to bayonets.

What REALLY bugs me is to see crossbowmen along riflemen and cannons, thankfully we get the gatling guns. Yeeeah!

[Tahitian Moon]

Inspired by this thread, if you take the current (and G&K) musket and rifle units, on which years would you put them?

Original musketman(looks like spanish conquerors a bit?) - year ?
Tercio - 1500s ?
French Musketeer -
Minuteman - 1700 middle
Norwegian Ski infantry -
Original Rifleman - 1850s (Crimea, US Civil war)
Janissary -
Swedish Carloean infantry -
Ethiopean Riflemen -

[Hunter XLR8]

Inspired by this thread, if you take the current (and G&K) musket and rifle units, on which years would you put them?

Original musketman(looks like spanish conquerors a bit?) - year ?
Tercio - 1500s ?
French Musketeer -
Minuteman - 1700 middle
Norwegian Ski infantry -
Original Rifleman - 1850s (Crimea, US Civil war)
Janissary -
Swedish Carloean infantry -
Ethiopean Riflemen -

Sorry to respond so late Tahitian Moon, looking at it now I agree the game would have to be redone to a confusing and frustrating point, I'm just personally mad that you can never get into a Napoleonic Wars style war in the game. To respond to your idea:

Original Musketman (most definitely Spanish) - 16th Century, can't remember when they adopted the iconic Morion helmet
Tercio - yeah 16th Century as well, weird how the Spanish don't even get the default unit even though it's based on them.
French Musketeer - 1622-1776. formed by Louis XIII, disbanded by Louis XVI on the account of his and his father's terrible handling of the finances of the country
Minuteman - American Revolution is what the one in the game appears to represent although historically I believe they were around back in the 17th Century.
Ski Infantry - This is where I get confused as to what the game considers a historical transition from Muskets to rifles. The Ski Infantry in the game has them in Napoleonic Wars uniform but rifling wasn't standard issue (especially for ski infantry) till Claude-Etienne Minie made the minie ball in 1848.
Original Rifleman - 1848-1881. Begins with the Minie ball, ends when the French Army adopts the Lebel Rifle, the first standard issue bolt action rifle.
Janissary - 1363 (I believe)- 1828.
Carloean - 1660-1718
Mehal Sefari - 1850-1881 (Rifleman gets replaced by WWI inf.) or 1936 (year the unit was disbanded)

[civdiss]

Musketmen are great...I think perhaps your own playstyle is getting in the way of seeing the musketman's usefulness.

I think that on higher difficulty levels musketmen become unplayable the way they are designed now. It is just too difficult to compete against the AI on Immortal/Deity if you go for a musketmen spam strategy (especially deity). By the time they are up and running they are already obsolete.