Gun Powder Advice

[Ice]

I'm currently playing as the Spanish. I have taken quite a lot of land and some pretty advanced troops. I just aquired the abilty to produce gun powder units. I have some primative cannons now which absolutely annalitated the enemy's wall (I see why they say walls are pointless vs guns).

My question is, what advanage do the more advanced cannons have, and how do I produce infantry armed with guns (muskets, primative rifles, etc.)

[sapi]

iirc, more advanced gunpowder units are more accurate, and you can produce infantry at high level cities (town hall?). I play as the byz, so i woudn't know firsthand :D

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Gunpowder infantry come out of cities, and are trained from the Barracks buildings like militia units are. They require really high level barracks, though.

I haven't really used cannons that much. But I do know that the better the cannon, the more damage, the more accuracy, and the faster reload rate. Cannons like the Monster Bombard can one-shot any wall and actually reload very quickly, it does NOT take an "eternity" like the description says. Basilisks are better against walls than cannons, but more inaccurate against troops. Serpentines are terrible for walls, but are like laser cannons when dealing with units. Get a battery of them and target the enemy general, he usually goes down pretty quickly.

Some of the gunpowder infantry are fairly useless. Don't bother with handgunners, they are inaccurate and never kill anything. Arquebusiers aren't very good either, mostly because their guns explode randomly and kill the user, so it's not uncommon for you to end a battle with half the unit left alive despite them never being attacked. Musketeers are where it's at. They're accurate, powerful, and reload quickly. The best gunpowder infantry in the game are the Russian Cossack Musketeers and the Turkish Janissary Musketeers, with the Janissaries being the very best. These units are the only gunpowder infantry with long range missiles, and can rip apart any heavily armored unit very quickly from a huge distance.

[sapi]

*sapi makes a note to win the game before gunpowder becomes widely used

[Vlad Tzepes]

Nice piece of advice, Q&A, thanks.

I personally like mortars, as the one artillery piece that can finally shoot from inside cities without destroying your own walls (like catapults in RTW). (Anyhow, I always wondered why there's no possibility to place artillery on walls.)

[sapi]

^^ Probably because it'd make ballista/cannon towers meaningless, and stuff up the already dodgy pathfinding ;)

[Vlad Tzepes]

^^ You're right, Sapi, but its' somehow illogical.

I mean, if you were the Manager of Antioch, faced with Mongol invasion, would you spend 9600 fl and several years to build towers with cannons inside (that are crunched by any catapult in 10 shots) or would you think of a way to transport cannons on the walls, with the cost of some ropes, pulleys and a better lunch for some workers in one afternoon?

Nothing to do with pathfinding, though, that's AI, not common sense.