Best faction for gunpowder?

[Excalibur Bane]

I kinda lost track of time, my other thread got buried I believe. Anyhow, I did manage to finish a game on E/E, sort of anyway. I just landed some troops in the Carribean. I haven't had much of a chance to play, and there is just something about this game that rubs me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but it just isn't as enjoyable as the original. They fixed too many things that simply weren't broken to begin with, perhaps.

Anyway, I'm getting kinda tried of running down my enemy or stabbing them to death and thought I'd explore the shooting them to death angle. France didn't really have much in the way of units that are terribly effective, or they just don't behave properly. I tested out much of the other gunpowder infantry in custom battles with identical conditions each time, the results were rather mixed. Identical units, using the same tactics during each battle, had a very different outcome each time. A few quirks on top of that. Infantry with the "long range" attribute managed to somehow back out of the engagement and sit there getting shot to pieces by inferior infantry that did not have the attribute. Very odd.

So my question is this: Which faction has good gunpowder infantry and artillery and is in a generally good defensive position?

The series has matured enough to render some very nice looking line infantry supported by cannons sorta stuff. It would be nice if we could move forward in time for the next game, instead of backward. I'm beginning to grow tired of swordsman, cavalry and archers. Give me firearms and cannons, or give me death!

[pevergreen]

Sicily is the only faction ive seen with Monster Ribault...mmm many barrel death..it even has Barrage ability (36 at once!)
Turks etc have Monster Bombard...HUGE!
Anyone with Musketeers are good...HRE has pistol mounted (plate armour) cavalry...they snap.

[PaulTa]

You can't beat the Turks for gunpowder infantry. Janisary Musketeers will whipe the floor with ANY other infantry unit you pit against them if they get a chance to shoot before engaging in melee. They routinely kill about half of the group before engaging, and are also decent in melee.

For best cannon selection, I'd have to go with germany. You get serpentine, culverin, cannon, etc. You also get Reiters, which have the highest ranged attack, are armored, and can charge home too.

[Burakius]

I'd go with Turks or Russia. Those Jannisaries and Cossack Musketeers can whipe out a platoon easily

[Musashi]

Sicily is the only faction ive seen with Monster Ribault...mmm many barrel death..it even has Barrage ability (36 at once!)
Turks etc have Monster Bombard...HUGE!
Anyone with Musketeers are good...HRE has pistol mounted (plate armour) cavalry...they snap.

Actually all the Italian factions have the Monster Ribault... Venice and Milan both... and Venice and Milan have Musketeers too... plus pikemen.

Russia has halberds to go with their Cossack Musketeers... dunno if they have pikes...

[Excalibur Bane]

Russia it is then. I was thinking about them. They have good units. Their Cossacks did well in my tests. Every gunpowder unit has a nasty habit of backing out of an engagement ever so slowly as they go about firing, until they are out range and just stand there. Something to be fixed.

Thanks guys

[Quillan]

Haven't gotten to gunpowder in my Spanish game yet, but the Spanish have musketeers, Basilisks, and Tercio Pikemen as well as Sword & Buckler men. Sounds like a good mix on paper, not sure how it'll play in the game.

[Musashi]

Russia it is then. I was thinking about them. They have good units. Their Cossacks did well in my tests. Every gunpowder unit has a nasty habit of backing out of an engagement ever so slowly as they go about firing, until they are out range and just stand there. Something to be fixed.

Thanks guys

Turn off skirmish, and set them to guard mode.

I haven't had this problem personally.

[Excalibur Bane]

Turn off skirmish, and set them to guard mode.

I haven't had this problem personally.

When I was testing the various gunpowder infantry against each other in custom battle, they would backup slowly as one rank would fire, and the others would shift and go to the back. Something about the formation not working entirely right. The Cossacks were literally outranged in one engagement against regular Handgunners, which is definately a problem. They simply stop shooting, even though they were in range. Once I gave the order to attack again, they resumed firing.

Skirmish mode is off by default, I don't recall if I tried Guard mode. In any case, it shouldn't be needed for the unit to function properly. I've done a great deal of testing with various configurations using identical 60 men units on each side, on the grassy field custom battle. The variations from battle to battle are not consistant and can vary wildly. There is most definately something wrong with the way they behave when firing and in the formations. CA should probably have a look at it. Granted the historical period and the general primitive nature of firearms at this point may be designed to be this erratic, but something tells me this is a bug, rather then a design feature.

Has anyone else had any other problems with the gunpowder infantry?

[Musashi]

When I was testing the various gunpowder infantry against each other in custom battle, they would backup slowly as one rank would fire, and the others would shift and go to the back. Something about the formation not working entirely right. The Cossacks were literally outranged in one engagement against regular Handgunners, which is definately a problem. They simply stop shooting, even though they were in range. Once I gave the order to attack again, they resumed firing.

Skirmish mode is off by default, I don't recall if I tried Guard mode. In any case, it shouldn't be needed for the unit to function properly. I've done a great deal of testing with various configurations using identical 60 men units on each side, on the grassy field custom battle. The variations from battle to battle are not consistant and can vary wildly. There is most definately something wrong with the way they behave when firing and in the formations. CA should probably have a look at it. Granted the historical period and the general primitive nature of firearms at this point may be designed to be this erratic, but something tells me this is a bug, rather then a design feature.

Has anyone else had any other problems with the gunpowder infantry?

I've heard people talk about a "reform" bug... How many ranks do you deploy them in?

[Beren Son Of Barahi]

I don't have any problems, i have mine in rows of 2 or 3 at the most and in loose formations so they lots of room to move around, works great. they take up alot of room this way, but it maxes out fire power, and really does a good job of dropping a lot of units in the 3 or so volleys. i use very heavy missle based armies, 4 crossbows, 3 archers, 4 muskets. 2 cannons, 1 monster, 3 heavy horse(inc general) 3 heavy inf.

at the moment i am venice atm, gun powered factions? can't complete with the tumids... muskets and cannons on elephants... dear god. of the play able factions i think the turks are the strongest.

[Excalibur Bane]

I've heard people talk about a "reform" bug... How many ranks do you deploy them in?

I've tried 3, 4, 5 and 1 rank. They all tend to get screwed up when a man gets taken down by enemy missile fire. The volley is reset and it switches to "reorganizing". Loose formation does seem to help, as noted above, but they still seem to have a problem keeping up a decent rate of fire because of the constant shifting going on.

I just finished an interesting battle actually, with the Aztecs. First battle in my French campaign. My general, the rest evenly split between Basklisks and Arbies, and a unit of Voulgiers that I sailed over as well. The Aztecs had two full stacks of various missile, spear and infantry units. Around 800 or so against the just over 2,000 horde. The top of the line cannon still isn't terribly accurate, even at point blank range. It does a good bit of damage though with explosive shot, when it hits.

I setup the defence on a generally flat area with virtually no vegetation, so my Basks would have a decent line of sight and set them up as far back as I could, so they would have a chance to get a number of volleys in before the enemy could close. Likewise for my Arbies, I put them on both sides of the cannons in equal numbers, about 3 ranks deep I think. Quite the sight actually, 8 units of Basks, 2 cannons per unit. I set it to explosive shot, fire at will. Enabled Guard mode for the Arbies and observed. The cannons alone would have been enough to put the fear of god in to the poor buggers. Despite the size and slow reload, if you have enough of them, and your facing a suitable large enemy army with alot of infantry they can really saturate an area.

The Aztecs units started quite a distance, both the main army and the reinforcement stack. The cannons immediately opened fire on the main army. A few shots found home to devastating effect, most missed wildly. The cannons didn't seem to have much effect on the morale of the main Aztec army as they continued to advance slowly toward me, despite the fact that the entire area was getting hit with massive, constant explosions. The Aztec archers got well into range of my Arbies, formed up and started raining fire arrows down on them. Every time a formation lost a unit, it would keep interrupting the firing and it would be delayed until they reformed. The cannons continued to shell them, but their choices for targets when set to fire at will wasn't very sensible. This continued for some time, archers going at my Arbies, my Arbies going at their archers, and my Basks enjoying shelling open ground instead of the massive clusters of Aztec spearmen. I purposely just wanted to see what would happen if I left everything to the AI. On average, the Aztec archers were getting about six volleys of arrows off for every volley my Arbies made. Several of them fell out of formation, backing up behind the main line even with Defensive mode on and Skirmish mode off.

Meanwhile, the AI was for the most part enjoying standing there and getting shredded very, very slowly. I'm guessing that bug with missile fire and the AI applies to gunpowder units as well. They'd feint, fall back, feint, fall back and so on. If it weren't for that, I would have been butchered instantly by the massive horde. They weren't being broken either, they were just running back and forth. Entire formations of Arbies rotated on their own to face a threat better, which usually resulted in the very end of either side being behind another formation, which would then try to shoot the enemy through that formation with less then desirable results

Finally, towards the end of the battle, once my Basks had been long out of ammo, and the enemy had been thinned out considerably, they did get up the courage for a last charge. The unit of Voulgiers I had, were more or less decimated as I had moved them out well in front of my cannons to draw enemy missile fire. They got mowed down in short order, and it was strictly hand to hand from there. I charged my General in to stop them from slaughtering my entire cannon crews. The Arbies did fairly well, all things considered, and they all eventually routed. I reformed my Arbies to make sure none of the fleeing Aztecs would get a chance to come back later.

All in all, a very interesting experiment. In the end, the Basks accounted for very few kills, most of it was done by my horde of Arbies. Though my General got the most kills of any unit. Heh. I lost just over 200 men, and they lost 1900 or so as I recall. In the confusion, I managed to miss a chance to kill one of their Generals. And this is on Easy. Good God, I'd hate to see how that would have turned out on Very Hard. Though on a sidenote, it was some very impressive eyecandy with all the explosions going off left and right, bullets and arrows flying. Very nice.

[Musashi]

Do you have this problem with Musketeers too? Because I don't bother with Arquebusiers (I generally would prefer to field a good crossbow unit) but Musketeers have never given me this bug.

[Excalibur Bane]

Playing as France, I don't have access to Musketeers unfortunately. The problem may be less pronounced with them since they have a faster reload I believe, and the "long range" attribute. I've only done one test with them, just to see how much more range and how faster they fire compared to Arbies. They did pretty well, but the range increase over the Arbies isn't that large. More testing is required really. Custom battles using the grassy field map is really the best place to test any gunpowder unit. The finest example of what the graphics engine in MTW2 is capable of and how well done the battles are can be seen by using a mixture of cannons and gunpowder infantry on both sides. It really makes for some very nice eye candy

[Sir SillyDuck]

This is odd beyond words. France and NO musketeers?

[Daveybaby]

I've tried 3, 4, 5 and 1 rank.

Ironically, i'm sure i saw a post somewhere that related to musketeers only working effectively in 2 ranks deep formation.

[Excalibur Bane]

Hmm. Well, the problem maybe better when using a single rank, but that raises another issue, every time a man falls the firing is interrupted and resets to "reforming", this leads to them rarely getting a shot off when facing any other missile unit. I quickly changed to other ranks after that. I need to do some more testing with them in loose formation. One of the posters above said they work well that way, and I tend to agree from the few times I've used that. One would think they would fire faster in ranks, but with the problems, loose is probably best at the moment.

Edit: I was just doing a test of Spanish Musketeers against a unit of Russian Cossack Musketeers and the weirdest thing happened. For no apparent reason, my flag bearer breaks off from the rest of my Spanish gunners and starts making a beeline across the field towards the Russians. My entire unit froze at Reforming while this fellow barrelled across the field towards them. Oddly, the Russians seemed to freeze as well. He made it all the way across the field and he was about five feet from them, the Russians just then decided to open fire with a volley against this poor bastard. He took about 20 bullets and fell over, quite dead. Not a clue what in hell that was about but that is right up there with the funniest thing I've ever seen!

[You_will_perish]

I'm currently playing with the Turks and I have yet suffer a defeat since I started recruiting Janissary Musketeers. I find that 3 rows works quite wonderfully at times. The first row fires, switches with the second and then with the third and reload. At the same time the former second row (now 1st) fire and switch with the second, and the third and reload etc. There are some oddities sometimes but nothing major. I have more problems with two rows than with three.

And the Monster Bombard. Wow. It's a bit over the top since you can do the same job with a few cannons, but when that thing fires everything that it hits goes down (it's very inaccurate against troops though).

[Excalibur Bane]

I did some more tests with just Musketeer units vs Musketeers. Results are pretty much the same. Unit cohesion is problematic. I've kept the tests to identical units to observe how the AI handles their unit and how my own unit functions. Standard 60 units, one on each side.

I've set them all to Guard mode (Skirmish is off by default, so no change is needed), two ranks deep, loose formation. They move backwards regardless of how you set them, until it manages to get totally messed up and the front rank gets confused and stops firing because the rank in the back is out of range, but the one in the front is not. You have to manually issue the order before they will resume firing. Some knee to reload, others don't. Some try to sidestep into each other, etc, etc. CA will have to take a look at what's going on here.

I'm not sure if the replay system is working very well, I've never used it, but I saved a replay of a typical battle which you can find here. I'm not sure if MTW2 still suffers from the problem of replays not working properly, but there it is for anyone interested.

[Somebody Else]

Medium/Heavy cavalry with pistols? HRE for me, when I get there, in about 300 turns. Reiters sound like too much fun.

[Beren Son Of Barahi]

I'v gone off and testing. the test was as follow:

Grass Plain, Very Hard, huge unit size.
venice muskets vs Janisary Musketeers

i ran it 3 times as each side.
i was testing formations and fire power.

i found the following:
the ities muskets have less problems with the formations. i had huge problems with jan musketeers trying to keep them firing once they were getting hit back. so did the AI. the normal muskets did a much better job of it for both the AI and myself.

longer formation maximises your fire power, and loose formations seems to make the formations faster to speed up the ROF. itie muskets were dropping 20-25 a volley.

the itie muskets won every battle by at least 50% sometimes by as much as 90%

i would say the most effective way to use gunpowder units is to have a screen of palivise crossbows in front or to the flank to take the incoming missile fire as to not disrupt their firing.

[Excalibur Bane]

Regardless, it kinda defeats the point of having gunpowder units if you need to protect them against missile fire. The formation problems and behavior needs some adjusting by CA before they units will function as designed. Losing a man and stalling the whole volley isn't exactly working properly.

[lars573]

This is odd beyond words. France and NO musketeers?

The kind of musketeers your thinking of are from the 17th century. By Louis XIII in 1622 specifically, and technically were dragoons.