in age 2 arguably you only want 2-3 at best, their siege potential is more important in age 2 where you can add more dps to your xbow mass while allowing them to siege forwards better.
age 2 pikes are good at siegeing but their low hp makes them vulnerable to just an infantry mass.
2-3 flamethrowers in a classic xbow pike mass is pretty dangerous.
its even easier to mass now that the russian blockhouse can train them
you are right, i thought they were a 3 pop unit. its a 4 pop unit so going to 2 pop would just be insane.
maybe 3 pop is more reasonable
flamethrowers behave roughly like this:
the unit has a damage cap of 4x its listed damage (this means it starts at 20). The actual flame is more like a cannonball or musket volley in terms of coded behaviour. it strikes its target and then deals damage in an aoe of 1 around it. units between the target and the flamethrower will not be affected unless in the aoe of the targeted unit.
the result is that because the aoe is so small they tend to be fairly average against ranged units and extremely effective against bunched-up infantry. against something like a tercio spam they are unparalleled. this is quite handy since chinas units are all fairly squishy and dont like being in contact with units like dopps or halbs. changdao do NOT enjoy that at all. If you can actually get all the damage cap being used a flamethrower will dish out to infantry:
20 x 6 dmg every 0.5s
that is 120 dmg, multiply by 8 to match the equivalent rof of falconets (4s)
120 x 8 = 960
comparatively a falconet does 100 dmg, 3x vs infantry, damage cap of 200, for a net 600dmg maximum
so a single Age 2 flamethrower is roughly 60% more potential dps vs infantry than a falconet. this ignores the overkill factor on falcs. an age 3 flame is 92% more potential dps (1152 dmg cap per 4 seconds).
unfortunately the range on flames is their primary limitation, as is the tiny aoe that often prevents the damage cap being very effective. the usual flame blast hits one or two units. base damage with no splash of 240 dmg to infantry per 4 seconds is definitely inferior to a falc.
tl;dr flames on paper are insane, but in reality often disappoint. use against spammed melee infantry
thanks for that write up!
I think it is also somewhat matchup dependendā¦
Ever try to deal with these as India? they are just crazy good.
Sowars make short work of them.
you can use howdah to snipe them if needed, or flail elephants, mahouts and sowars. i do really like using flames against india though, they are extremely effective against urumi-sepoy which is otherwise very hard to break as china