In my opinion, both of these units need a buff. Despite costing only 80 resources (40f and 40w), they are still very underwhelming. And now that almost all European civs can upgrade them to guard and imperial level, I think they need a buff to justify upgrading them past veteran level. It would be very situational but I think it would be great for civs that rely on them in the early game.
I think for crossbows it’s pretty simple: improve their range with every upgrade you give them like it already says on their description!
They are rarely used. This would give an incentive to upgrade them because as it stands their upgrades are completely useless. And in my opinion, there shouldn’t be things in the game that are useless. Their utility in a battle does not justify their cost (unlike strelets) and that’s why people only use them when absolutely necessary.
They’re used plenty often. They’re the easiest to produce rush unit for most civs, and also the least upgradable simply because they are archaic units in the age of gunpowder. It’s not that their stats are inadequate, it’s just that wood is such a slow gathering resource compared to others, that musks end up costing almost the same as pike while roughly covering both roles.
I think a small buff to veteran crossbows would be ok but in colonial these units are definitely fine.
Yeah, they are archaic units but now everyone can upgrade them to imperial with the Papal Guard politician. I think it would be interesting to see them get a slight buff. 8 attack for pikes just seems too pitiful to me.
In the AOE series these units are known as trash units. They require no gold. They are not supposed to be good. They are either used as a filler, for emergencies, or for rushes. But beyond that, stick to gold units!
Visually I would say pikeman should have better melee resistance since he has armor and musketeer has none. Maybe 15 or 20% should be pikeman armor and bit more health than currently.
I think they could use a melee resistance and flat damage buff to stand up to horses in the late game.
+2 flat damage and +15% melee armor would put them behind the puma spearman in terms of everything (speed, hp, damage, seige) but would make them slightly more durable against late game cav which would allow them to be more usable. Not to mention it would look a bit more realistic when one guy who has a pike is able to at least come close to beating one guy with a bayonete in close quarters. Right now it’s not even a contest, pikes still lose in melee combat to a musket even if the musket doesn’t use his gun.
