gun powder

[Quintus.JC]

If you are Milan, why do you want gunpowder? For that matter are any gunpowder units but Cammel Gunners any good? (I have never used or fought against them, but everyone says they are sooo good; and the majority is always right. Right?)

Reiters are cool, so are Dragoons in the expansions.

Camel Gunners are brilliant btw

[Lancome]

Well, it depends your situation. I Usually only build Musketteers when I fight the Mongols and timurids... you know Since they are range based. I think Musketteers also out range them. But it has to be in open fields. But hey! who Am I? Some like blondes and some like red heads.

[khaos83_2000]

Musketteers are great range troops but they come from Huge Cities and are quite expensive.
But once you have them, you will never leave home without one or more unit of it.

[PBI]

Musketeers are nice but need very expensive, high-level barracks to get.

Hand gunners are pretty handy as siege assault infantry, where their armour and melee stats make them more durable under tower fire and their short range matters less than in the field.

Cannons, though, are the most useful gunpowder weapons; the basic gunsmith building can be bui;t almost anywhere for very little money, cannons make any siege assault a breeze, and they are pretty useful in the field too, where they can inflict a barrage on the enemy from any range which, while relatively bloodless, will have a devastating effect on enemy morale.

TBF though I should point out I play Stainless Steel, where (I think) cannons are more accurate than in vanilla (though not quite as devastating against walls) and muskets have "fire_by_rank" disabled (making them much more effective.)

The key with gunpowder is to remember that they are first and foremost for damaging morale, not killing men; archers will kill enemies faster, but being shot at with guns will take their morale down a lot quicker than arrows. If I have a high-dread general I often find a few volleys from a unit of arquebusiers is enough to rout whole enemy units before melee is joined.

[oz_wwjd]

I must disagree with that. I'm using 8 units of cossack musketeers in my field army currently,and they do quite nice damage to any calvary unit that dares to try and charge them,usually routing it well before it gets within melee range.

[fireblade]

True, cossack musketeers are an exception. Great for killing those 10-star mongol generals.

[oz_wwjd]

yeah, already killed 2 of them,although it was a close-run fight,normal spearmen don't stand up to Mongol Heavy Lancer charges,if they get through the wall of musket and merc rocket launcher fire.