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Musketeers are good for defense not offense. They can beat earlier tech units like Longbowmen, and that's it. A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats

Musketeers are good for defense not offense. They can beat earlier tech units like Longbowmen, and that's it. A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats a stack of musketeers, subject to levels, bonuses, HP and tile bonuses. And I disagree, the strategy does not really revolve around death stacks. You can win a game without a conflict if you are good at diplomacy and you do not share borders with aggressive civs. You can turn aggressive civs against each other by asking them to declare war in exchange for things. In fact one of the hardest AIs to bear is Gandhi, a leader that is rather peaceful, because the India civ has 2x speed workers, which given them a massive advantage in the beginning. Civ 4 is a 2005 game and the graphics are very good for its time. In fact the graphics still look OK today.

dragontamer 6y ago
> Musketeers are good for defense not offense Offense / Defense scores stopped being a thing after Civ3. > A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats a stack of musketeers, subject to levels, bonuses, HP and tile bonuses. Trebs and Macemen only have 1-movement. This means that they cannot force combat with the Musketeer. Even if they could, the Musketmen have 9-strength against the Trebs 6 or Macemen's 8. (And I don't believe that Macemen get melee bonus against Musketmen: Musketmen aren't considered melee units, they're gunpowder units). The only time you can use Trebs is when the death-stack arrives at your city's doorstep. You smack the stack with collateral damage... but the death-stack player could simply not attack your city, and instead aim for map control. (Pillage and siege strategy). Knights are a legitimate response, but require Iron and Horses. I'm not convinced its better for death-stack operations, because defensive boosts are an important part of keeping a death-stack healthy (ie: the Death Stack regenerates its HP in the field by sitting in a forest for +50% defense, until its HP comes back). Knights don't get defensive bonuses. A Musketeer death-stack waiting in a forest (ie: Regenerating) will have 14.5 strength vs a Knight's 10 strength. I'm not liking the odds, even if Knights have a movement advantage.
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off. Grenadiers are a different story.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    > Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off. But Trebuchets only have 1 movement. You're not attacking a group of Musketeers in the open field unless your opponent is letting you do so. So now the question is: how do you get your Trebs close enough to the opponent's death stack such that you can effectively attack them with collateral damage? Hint: it involves a death stack of your own Musketeers. ---------- Lets game this out really quick. Lets have a simple field with 3 locations: * T . M Where "T" is the Treb-stack, and "M" is the Musketeer stack. Both units have 1 movement. Lets game what happens if the Trebs approach. * . T M Okay, that's the Treb's turn: 1-movement per turn. The Musketeers now murder the entire stack of Trebs, because 9-attack Musketers wreak 4-attack Trebs. All the Trebs die, the Musketeers spend maybe 2 or 3 turns healing up from combat. Musketeers don't even need collateral damage, they just kill the Trebs in straight combat. You might think things are symmetrical, but they're really not. The Musketeer stack does NOT have to stay as a stack. If the Trebs defend, the Musketeer turn happens as follows: * T m M Where "m" is just 1-Musketeer. Now what do the Trebs do? If you attack the "m" singular Musketeer, your Treb almost certainly dies without inflicting collateral damage (4 vs 9 strength is basically a guaranteed win for the Musketeer. Even with a 20% Retreat upgrade, we're looking at a near 80% chance of losing your Treb). You can attack the lone musketeer with multiple units (1st Treb dies, but maybe the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins). If you dedicate a 2nd or 3rd treb to the combat, you're left with the following situation: * T t M After the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins combat, they enter the tile, damaged from combat. And now its the Musketeer turn. They kill the Treb (9 vs 4 again, taking very little damage), and we're back to... * T m M A match that your Treb stack is almost certainly losing. ---------- The answer: The Trebs retreat to the nearest city, and hope that the Musketeers are stupid enough to chase. At a higher tactical level, the Musketeer owner will not be so dumb, but will instead invoke map control at this point. (Pillage and deny resources, find soft targets, etc. etc.). Attacking cities is very hard in all Civ games, so map-control is usually what you're aiming for. Answer #2: Have a death-stack of your own Musketeers, allowing your Trebs to approach the opponent stack. This only really works if you have more Musketeers than your opponent. Thereby: leading to the "Death-stack" game where both sides simply build bigger and bigger balls of Musketeers in order to do anything relevant in combat. ---------- > knights It has been a long time since I played Civ4, but I don't recall knights having collateral damage. I've checked the game manual (https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/3900/manuals/manual.pdf?t=1526496862 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/3900/manuals/manu...) as well as the Civ4 Wiki, no mention of collateral damage. What Knights have are Flank attacks (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Flank_attack_(Civ4) https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Flank_attack_(Civ4)), which allow them to wipe out Treb-stacks with ease. But this does NOT apply to Musketeers.
- opportune 6y ago
  I can’t believe I’m willingly entering an argument about a video game but: Musketeers and musketmen are different units. Only France gets the musketeers with 2 movement. Every civ has a special unit which gives them a temporary power spike, that is part of the game. Also re offense and defense you even mention in your own post the defensive bonuses not being available to Knights...city defenses (from culture and building), fortify, terrain bonuses, etc all make musketmen way better at defense than offense. As long as you pick a balanced (not tectonics or something) map type, getting iron and horses by the mid game should not really even be much of a problem. Even if you fail at that, longbowmen are stronger at defending cities than musketmen are at attacking them, while being cheaper and requiring lower tech. This is just such a trivial part of the game I am not sure why you are acting like it is a major flaw. Getting musketmen is not a game-ending powerspike.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    I'm not talking about Musketmen. I'm talking about stacks, with Musketmen as a specific midgame example. The death-ball stack is the premier tactic in Civ4. I just chose Musketmen since its the mid-game. But it could very well be Swordmen, Knights, Infantry, or Tanks. Collateral damage units were too weak in Civ4 with not enough movement to really be useful outside of defending cities (at least before Bombers). If you entered combat on the open battlefield, the side with the bigger deathstack won. ---------- The entirety of Civ4 tactics in my experience, was won and lost on the size of the deathstack of your primary military unit.

dragontamer 6y ago

> Musketeers are good for defense not offense Offense / Defense scores stopped being a thing after Civ3. > A stack of trebuchets and knights or macemen beats a stack of musketeers, subject to levels, bonuses, HP and tile bonuses. Trebs and Macemen only have 1-movement. This means that they cannot force combat with the Musketeer. Even if they could, the Musketmen have 9-strength against the Trebs 6 or Macemen's 8. (And I don't believe that Macemen get melee bonus against Musketmen: Musketmen aren't considered melee units, they're gunpowder units). The only time you can use Trebs is when the death-stack arrives at your city's doorstep. You smack the stack with collateral damage... but the death-stack player could simply not attack your city, and instead aim for map control. (Pillage and siege strategy). Knights are a legitimate response, but require Iron and Horses. I'm not convinced its better for death-stack operations, because defensive boosts are an important part of keeping a death-stack healthy (ie: the Death Stack regenerates its HP in the field by sitting in a forest for +50% defense, until its HP comes back). Knights don't get defensive bonuses. A Musketeer death-stack waiting in a forest (ie: Regenerating) will have 14.5 strength vs a Knight's 10 strength. I'm not liking the odds, even if Knights have a movement advantage.

29athrowaway 6y ago
Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off. Grenadiers are a different story.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  > Trebuchets cause collateral damage, and so do knights. Individual trebuchets will lose to musketmen but as a group they will cause enough collateral damage to allow a stack of other units to finish them off. But Trebuchets only have 1 movement. You're not attacking a group of Musketeers in the open field unless your opponent is letting you do so. So now the question is: how do you get your Trebs close enough to the opponent's death stack such that you can effectively attack them with collateral damage? Hint: it involves a death stack of your own Musketeers. ---------- Lets game this out really quick. Lets have a simple field with 3 locations: * T . M Where "T" is the Treb-stack, and "M" is the Musketeer stack. Both units have 1 movement. Lets game what happens if the Trebs approach. * . T M Okay, that's the Treb's turn: 1-movement per turn. The Musketeers now murder the entire stack of Trebs, because 9-attack Musketers wreak 4-attack Trebs. All the Trebs die, the Musketeers spend maybe 2 or 3 turns healing up from combat. Musketeers don't even need collateral damage, they just kill the Trebs in straight combat. You might think things are symmetrical, but they're really not. The Musketeer stack does NOT have to stay as a stack. If the Trebs defend, the Musketeer turn happens as follows: * T m M Where "m" is just 1-Musketeer. Now what do the Trebs do? If you attack the "m" singular Musketeer, your Treb almost certainly dies without inflicting collateral damage (4 vs 9 strength is basically a guaranteed win for the Musketeer. Even with a 20% Retreat upgrade, we're looking at a near 80% chance of losing your Treb). You can attack the lone musketeer with multiple units (1st Treb dies, but maybe the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins). If you dedicate a 2nd or 3rd treb to the combat, you're left with the following situation: * T t M After the 2nd or 3rd Treb wins combat, they enter the tile, damaged from combat. And now its the Musketeer turn. They kill the Treb (9 vs 4 again, taking very little damage), and we're back to... * T m M A match that your Treb stack is almost certainly losing. ---------- The answer: The Trebs retreat to the nearest city, and hope that the Musketeers are stupid enough to chase. At a higher tactical level, the Musketeer owner will not be so dumb, but will instead invoke map control at this point. (Pillage and deny resources, find soft targets, etc. etc.). Attacking cities is very hard in all Civ games, so map-control is usually what you're aiming for. Answer #2: Have a death-stack of your own Musketeers, allowing your Trebs to approach the opponent stack. This only really works if you have more Musketeers than your opponent. Thereby: leading to the "Death-stack" game where both sides simply build bigger and bigger balls of Musketeers in order to do anything relevant in combat. ---------- > knights It has been a long time since I played Civ4, but I don't recall knights having collateral damage. I've checked the game manual (https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/3900/manuals/manual.pdf?t=1526496862 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/3900/manuals/manu...) as well as the Civ4 Wiki, no mention of collateral damage. What Knights have are Flank attacks (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Flank_attack_(Civ4) https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Flank_attack_(Civ4)), which allow them to wipe out Treb-stacks with ease. But this does NOT apply to Musketeers.
opportune 6y ago
I can’t believe I’m willingly entering an argument about a video game but: Musketeers and musketmen are different units. Only France gets the musketeers with 2 movement. Every civ has a special unit which gives them a temporary power spike, that is part of the game. Also re offense and defense you even mention in your own post the defensive bonuses not being available to Knights...city defenses (from culture and building), fortify, terrain bonuses, etc all make musketmen way better at defense than offense. As long as you pick a balanced (not tectonics or something) map type, getting iron and horses by the mid game should not really even be much of a problem. Even if you fail at that, longbowmen are stronger at defending cities than musketmen are at attacking them, while being cheaper and requiring lower tech. This is just such a trivial part of the game I am not sure why you are acting like it is a major flaw. Getting musketmen is not a game-ending powerspike.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  I'm not talking about Musketmen. I'm talking about stacks, with Musketmen as a specific midgame example. The death-ball stack is the premier tactic in Civ4. I just chose Musketmen since its the mid-game. But it could very well be Swordmen, Knights, Infantry, or Tanks. Collateral damage units were too weak in Civ4 with not enough movement to really be useful outside of defending cities (at least before Bombers). If you entered combat on the open battlefield, the side with the bigger deathstack won. ---------- The entirety of Civ4 tactics in my experience, was won and lost on the size of the deathstack of your primary military unit.