Controversial Opinion: Caracole Should Not Give +2 Range to LCs (Originally: Decrease LC Range to 10)

[Kingfisher1787]

@YolkyPage166

@FourCloud176402

But is this not problematic from a game design perspective? Portuguese Musketeer is a Royal Guard unit buffed by at 3 Home City cards. Yet, few Portuguese player would make Musketeer once in Age 3. I think this says something about the utility of Dragoons.

The reason Portuguese never make Musks past early Age III has little to do with the quality of their Goons (which is admittedly high) but more with the fact that they can’t effectively pair their Musks with a good Heavy Cav unit (+15/+15 Hussars just doesn’t cut it). Also this is only a reality in 1v1, since, from what I’ve seen, Ports make Musks in treaty, since Goons are weaker in that game mode, probably due to their high requirement for heavy microing.

If I could add here, Cassadors are probably part of the reason for this too.

You might logically ask: “Ports and British have musketeers of similar strength. Why doesn’t Portuguese use theirs?”

Longbowman are great at standing and shooting. They have low hp but very high dps. This makes musketeers a good unit to pair with LBs because standing and fighting works for them both. Of course LB + Goons works too, but probably not as well as Cassa + Goon because cassa hit and run better than LB.

Cassadors are made of paper. An age 2 pikeman will beat a Vet cassador in melee (at least cost wise before CIR). Point is cassa trade durability for speed, making them great at hit and run and generally less good at standing and fighting. Cassadors outrun musks, meaning pairing them almost defeats the point of cassadors. The logical result of this is Portugal must use dragoons instead (outside of treaty where things flip in favor of musketeers). It also helps a lot that Portugal has great Dragoons, but in my opinion (and I’m a port main so perhaps I’m biased) Portugal’s dragoons are fine at this point (when in the context of the civ as a whole). They are great, but with DE/EP they went 30%rr to 20%rr (universal nerf to goons that hurt ports the more than most), 20 max range to 18 max range, and more recently Dragoon Combat no longer helps Hussars (all of which is fine btw, they were too good).

Musketeer + Hussar is a great unit combination. Even if Skirmisher + Dragoon is better, it’s okay, good even, if a composition that requires better/hard micro is superior to one that is more forgiving. and with Skirmisher type units now doing less against HC it’s even more true.