Are early gunpowder units misrepresented?

[Will9]

The first 4 gunpowder units in civ are Musketmen, Grenadiers, Riflemen, and Cannons (cavalry are getting fixed in BTS and will therfore be excluded from this thread). This thread is to focus on how they are misrepresented in civ.

I will begin with cannons. They are the last of the 4 units to appear in civ, but they were the first gunpowder weapons that date back to the 12th century and were the main seige weapons of Europe by 14th century. To fix this, early version of the cannon (str. 8?) should be available with gunpowder.

Muskets weren't really used greatly until the mid-1600s. When this happened they quickly replaced all other weapons for foot soldiers. Before this the primary firearm was the arquebus. To fix this Musketmen should be replaced by the Arquebus Soldiers (or whatever you want to call it such as Hand Cannoners or Early Musketmen) and Musketmen (str. 12?) should require Military Tradition or Military Science. Musketmen should be upgradable from the previous genaration (Pikemen, Macemen, Longbows, Crossbows, and whatever the current musket's replacment is). UUs currently replaing Musketmen should rplace the Mustetmen's replacement and Redcoats should replace Musket men. Also Grenadiers should be available earlier and given a bonus against Musketmen in addition to their bonus against Riflemen. The only problem with Riflemen is that they are directly upgradable from Mideval units so they can remain the same if the other changes are made.

[Jaybe]

I use unit characteristics from Hephmod. Cannons come earlier, with a strength of 8 (+50% strength vs. gunpowder units to compensate). Grenadiers also require rifling, but also get a small bonus vs. muskets.

[edit/] Pikes should definitely NOT upgrade to gunpowder units! Early muskets (arquebus?) had to be protected from horse by those pikes. This was before the bayonet was invented.

Instead of having arquebus units, the game was (obviously) designed to force you to build muskets from scratch rather than upgrade to them. This makes the transition slow (especially at marathon speed), without the need for an additional unit type to upgrade to/from. [/edit]

Earlier unit stats from Hephmod are also more elegantly balanced (and being a Mac user (except for civving), I LIKE elegance)!

The most blatant misrepresentation in the game is armor with the city raider promotion.
But that's all right, because I fixed it; gave the city raider promo to gunpowder units instead.

[Thedrin]

If you want to you can find with problems with all areas of the games combat system. As I understand it knights were made irrelevant in European warfare by the introduction of the crossbow yet in CivIV crossbows come far earlier and are most vulnerable to knights.

[jkp1187]

The most blatant misrepresentation in the game is armor with the city raider promotion.
But that's all right, because I fixed it; gave the city raider promo to gunpowder units instead.

I completely agree with this, but I suspect that this was a necessary misrepresentation for game balance purposes. Since defensive war fighting tends to be city/strongpoint-focused, instead of on a "forward edge of the battle" focus, the role of tanks to crack through enemy frontlines to attack those positions from behind wasn't represented very well.

[Zinegata]

The problem with gunpowder units (or any military units for that matter) is that they don't actually have a clear evolution from one state to the next.

For example, in Western armies, it was the Spanish who first equipped infantry with gunpowder weapons in substantial numbers. They were first armed with the Arquebus, and were supplemented by Pikemen. Use of the Arquebus was soon abandoned in favor of lighter Muskets. Eventually, the Pikemen would be deleted in favor of equipping Musketeers with bayonets.

However, in Japan we have a nation that adopted Arquebus-style weapons fairly early, before suddenly abandoning them in favor of a policy of isolationalism and a focus on swordsmanship. By the time the Japanese again wielded firearms in large numbers, they were using mainly breech-loaded rifles - skipping Muskets entirely.

In short, history isn't always about the best and newest technology always getting adopted into the main weapons system of the army. Devolutions happen quite often, as does sudden modernization.

And frankly, my head is spinning enough from all the unit types to want even more distinctions between the Arquebus and Muskets :P

Having cannons earlier is fine though - cannons came first before any man-portable gunpowder weapon.

[couerdelion]

It would be easy to find fault with many aspects of combat. The model itself is a very simple one and the units themselves merely represent a progression towards greater military effectiveness. It would be better first to improve the overall combat model than to tinker with individual units.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the tech progression can vary and cannon are by no means always the last to appear. This variation in tech means that what we see is not always a copy of what happened in the past.

[LDiCesare]

I think cannons should come earlier and require iron or copper. Many cannons were made of bronze, and early ones would shoot stone balls. I don't think we need much refinement between musketmen and arquebus, but find that grenadiers come so fast after muskets that musketmen are pretty much useless in their current implementation.
I think BtS changes the grenadier required techs, though, so this may change a lot of things.

[Wynner]

gunpowder units

"I think cannons should come earlier and require iron or copper. Many cannons were made of bronze, and early ones would shoot stone balls. I don't think we need much refinement between musketmen and arquebus, but find that grenadiers come so fast after muskets that musketmen are pretty much useless in their current implementation."

La, Very much agree. And as posted above, musketmen require a track/developement all by themselves. Plus, my experience (prince/monarch, normal speed & map size) has been they get their butts kicked quite easily by macemen, knights, & almost any experieinced units.

Why even bother building them? Especially since they can't be built with city raider promo. And as pointed out, game structure rather unrealistically devolves nearly all AI combat to city-centered rather than in the field, it makes much more sense to build a force of macemen with city raider I & II, get them promoted to city raider III & buy them up to rifle or gren gunpowder units.
Then while you wait to get cannons, soften cities with city raider trib's & finish off the weakened city defenders with your good city raiding gunpowder units.

Considering history, both eastern & western, definately hope they did something to help the muskets to much more accurately reflect their significant role in history, after of course speeding up bronze cannons.

Then again, if one is a religous/cultural warrior like I enjoy, all combat units are just necessary for "mop up" operations after you've shrunk the opposition's borders & maybe even turned a border city or 2.

[Gaius Octavius]

Re: Are early gunpowder units misrepresented?

Originally posted by Will9
I will begin with cannons. They are the last of the 4 units to appear in civ, but they were the first gunpowder weapons that date back to the 12th century and were the main seige weapons of Europe by 14th century. To fix this, early version of the cannon (str. 8?) should be available with gunpowder.

This is something I've wanted to see for ages. Having trebuchets around when you are fighting with Cavalry and Grenadiers makes no sense to me. If you know how to make guns, you ought to know enough to make a "really big" version, which is essentially what a cannon is. The technical aspects certainly did not require a delay until mass-produced steel became available.

What I'd prefer is an earlier version of the cannon--the bombard--similar to what you said. Since these were sometimes made of bronze we might even go so far as to negate the iron prereq, or give it the dual iron/copper option. The arquebus would follow similar lines.

The problem with adding all these units--and it's a common refrain, I admit--stems from "unit overload syndrome." Having more units doesn't always lead to a noticeable difference in game strategy unless you're playing on epic or marathon, as I often do. This is not a fault in your idea so much as it is in the current system. If you can manage it, why bother to start building lots of musketmen when you know cavalry/grenadiers/rifleman are just around the corner? This has been fixed (somewhat) in BtS but it's still a problem. Beyond promotions, there's no real incentive to build a unit that may go obsolete soon if you're not actively at war; and even promotions are basically moot in that case, as we're assuming the more advanced unit will get exactly the same experience level precisely because you're not at war.

One solution that I could envision would be to give all gunpowder units a bonus against non-gunpowder melee and archery ones. The particulars escape me at the moment, but I imagine this would be staggered so as to avoid imbalance, e.g. an arquebusier would not have that much more strength than a pikeman, but you would want to build it simply to avoid devastating losses should your enemy get musketmen first.

Of course, every time we add a unit we create more problems.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Thedrin
If you want to you can find with problems with all areas of the games combat system. As I understand it knights were made irrelevant in European warfare by the introduction of the crossbow yet in CivIV crossbows come far earlier and are most vulnerable to knights.

I think it was rather the emerge of disciplined formations armed with Pikes and halberds (first the swiss Reisläufer, then the Landsknechts) that put the deathblow to the knights although, of course, crossbows made the life of the ordinary knight much more dangerous.

As for the topic:
Yes, I agree that they could have put in more transitional units like the early cannons. I think they didn´t do it in favor of those that play at faster gamespeeds, because it forces people playing at faster speed to constantly upgrade their units.

But maybe a workaround would be to reserve the transitional units for slower gamespeeds (like epic and marathon). For those gamespeeds it might be useful to also include other transitional units, for example the early tanks.

[Kekkonen]

I don't know... the life span of pre-infantry gunpowder units isn't that long even in marathon.

[Kekkonen]

Re: Re: Are early gunpowder units misrepresented?

Originally posted by Gaius Octavius


This is something I've wanted to see for ages. Having trebuchets around when you are fighting with Cavalry and Grenadiers makes no sense to me. If you know how to make guns, you ought to know enough to make a "really big" version, which is essentially what a cannon is. The technical aspects certainly did not require a delay until mass-produced steel became available.

What I'd prefer is an earlier version of the cannon--the bombard--similar to what you said.

That was pretty much what I was thinking -- "Trebuchets? You should really have a mortar by now." They even have the str of 8 that someone suggested here, if you think of them as siege weapons that really suck on the field, as opposed to clunky catapults that excel in city/fortress siege.

[Slade Wilson]

I consider the whole military unit thing to be FUBAR-but i am not to worried about it, with the game system firaxis is using it would be almost impossible to make it realistic\historical.

[The_Reckoning]

Exactly, we have a game where bowmen can fight tanks and the French can chop down a forest to build the Pyramids, which will allow them to operate a police state. And you're complaining about realism?