Mamluk Gunners

[Lehesu]

I would like to know people's opinions on the Mamluk Gunner. Hey A cheap gunpowder unit Must be at least as good as Ashigaru Muskets However, from what I've experienced, these men are morale time bombs, perfect for lighting the fuse for a chain rout. However, in the hopes that MTW has made every unit usable in some fashion, I endeavor for other players to attempt to salvage my Mamluk opinion.

[LadyAnn]

Perhaps this thread is better be in the Jousting Fields ('cause it is MP related, I believe). My answer is MP oriented.

Can we find a substitution for the Mam.Cowboys? Let's compare the regular cowboys and the Mam. cowboys:

Mam.guns is cheaper (100/60 vs. 175/60), same speed, same gun, very bad combat (1/0/-2 vs 1/1/3), worst armor (1 vs 4) and worst morale (2 vs 4). Question is: does it worth the cheaper price?

To have the same combat stat, the mam.gun must be upgraded to +1 weapon and +3 armor (say, +1 valeur and +2 armour). Then they would have exactly same stat. Since things max out at +4 valeur and +3 weapon, +3 armour, and the cowboys are already so cheap, in a lot of cases (such as the prevalent 99999 florin games) there is no reason to chose the Mam.cowboys. A maxed out regular gun would be much better and still be quite cheap.

Unless you play one of those 5000 florin game. Then it may be good to try the Scantly Clad Secret Army.

Annie

EDIT:

The SP answer is still along the same conclusion. If you could field regular handguns, there is no need to field Mameluke Guns. Given the lower maintenance cost and such, I still believe it doesn't worth the lower combat stats.

[A.Saturnus]

If I remember correctly, they have the same maintenance. I thought mam. guns could be usefull while I played Egypt but found otherwise. That was prepatch. Now, since they can`t be build sooner, simple forget them...

[Kraxis]

They have an advantage that their guns don't blow up in battle...

But I have never even seen a Handgunner blow up, so that advantage is close to negliable.

[Leet Eriksson]

the text that explains about them sounds more convincing than the one with the ordinary gunners http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif also it said they were more disciplined.but as annie said forget about them(unless you wanna mod it).

[LadyAnn]

The guns have trouble blow up the enemy, so forget about blow up in your face.

I tried the handguns against Byz.Inf., they only got 1 shot at Byz (kills about 3, not too different than archers' kill rate).

I tried Jan.Inf. against Byz.Inf. and found they got like 4 shots before skirmish or contact, killed about 15. The other 85 barneys beat the crap out of Jan.Inf. It was not so bad, the kill rate is even on both side, losing about 40 Jan.Inf. and killing about same. But Jan.Inf. starts to waver and run at 20, so its all Byz kills after that. Final kills: 53 vs 46 in favor of the Byz.Inf. Both side spend about the same amount of money. The Byz still has 47 guys to go around with.

Annie

[Leet Eriksson]

The JI are pretty crapy compared to byz infatry first they don't have a shield(wich really would give em a better chance at inflicting more casualites) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif and second they ain't really good in melee against other MAA(maybe against spearmen and other archers).