Why the rush to gunpowder?

[dopp]

Early handguns and arquebuses were believed to have been invented in China around the same time as well (12-13th century), according to some recent archeological finds. The armies of the late Ming Dynasty include war wagons (against the nomads), heavy siege artillery, and pike-and-shot formations. Make of it what you will. Unfortunately, nobody takes Chinese historians seriously, so you end up getting those stupid fire lances and rocket launchers every time you play a game with Far Easterners involved. Or those ridiculous repeating crossbows. Or archers with exploding ammo. Or rocket-assisted catapult stones. Or pretty fireworks.

Anyway, I've discovered that putting musketeers on skirmish orders bypasses the load in ranks thing and the individual men actually fire quite fast, about 8-10 shots a minute. The problem with load in ranks is that the lines keep bumping into each other so they never get to fire.

Musketeers are built from the highest level barracks (royal barracks), so don't bother with the archery ranges if you're teching to them. Teching fast, but still with attention to other stuff like churches and trade buildings, you can get your first royal barracks several turns before turn 81 rolls around and brings gunpowder with it. After that you can basically shoot any army to death except longbowmen (and maybe, once the formation problems are fixed, even them).

Cannon of all descriptions can destroy virtually any structure with one or two hits. Grand Bombards do the most damage, I think, but are a little more inaccurate than basilisks.