I’m making this new post because I don’t want to re-awaken any of the old threads surrounding grenadiers. I believe that the lack of popularity of grenadiers is because they don’t outright counter anything. So, to change this I am going to present 3 potential rework ideas I’ve come up with after reading through a few other grenadier posts.
Option 1 - “Super Musk”
This would redesign standard grenadiers to act similarly to “Giant Grenadiers” and “Soldados”. They would keep the same cost and pop space as they do now (120 food and 60 coins plus 2 pop) but their stats would be significantly altered. They will start with 300hp, have a range attack (using a musket) of 34 with a 2 area-of-effect, and a melee attack (using sword/sabre) of 34 with a x2 multiplier against cavalry and a x1.5 multiplier against shock infantry. They will have a range of 12 and a melee resist of 25%. Their siege attack (using grenades) will be 40 and from a range of 10. They will keep the unit tag of “Heavy Infantry” and so will be venerable to skirmishers and artillery but great against other heavy infantry and all cavalry. Their biggest nerf will be their train time which will be mush slower than normal musketeers, 50 seconds!!!
Option 2 - “Baby Culverin”
This would redesign standard grenadiers to act similarly to the Ottoman’s new “Humbaraci”. They would have increased cost 110 food and 80 coin and still take up two pop. Their primary role will be as an anti-artillery unit with high siege damage, so its stats will reflect that. They will start with 200hp, have a range attack (via throwing grenade so deals siege damage) of 16 with a 3 area-of-effect with x3 multiplier against artillery, and a melee attack of 22 with a 1 area-of-effect but the same multipliers. They will have a range of 14 (16 after the grenade launcher tech is research from the arsenal - yes I wanna change it from being a HC card) and have a 30% siege resist and a 20% range resist. They siege attack would be 60 at a range of 14 and will have a x1.25 multiplier against defensive buildings. Their base speed will be 4.5 (and yes they will be affected by “military drummers” arsenal tech). They will be venerable to skirmishers, trade averagely against hand cavalry, trade well against other heavy infantry, and be deadly to all artillery. Train time 40 seconds.
Option 3 - “Infantry Slayer”
This would redesign standard grenadiers to act like regular artillery - Falconet / Horse Artillery. They would keep the same exact same stats as they have now but have their tag changed to “Artillery” and have their multipliers changed. First of all, for ranged and melee attack they would get a x0.1 multiplier against all hand-cavalry and shock infantry but they’d keep the 0.5 multiplier against artillery and villagers. However, they will gain a x1.5 multiplier against ranged cavalry and a x2 multiplier against all infantry (e.g. xbows, pikes, musks, halberdiers and skirms etc.). In addition to this, each new upgrade will increase their range by 2 starting at 14 (vet gren 16, guard gren 18, imperial gren 20). Also the grenade launcher tech will be automatically applied with the guard upgrade. As stated before all other stats will be kept the same including their 3 area-of-effect from their range attack (1 with melee) and their 50% range resist. Therefore, they should be venerable to hand cavalry and artillery only (and American/Asian/African equivalents) but unstoppable to pretty much everything else. Train time 45 seconds.
Pick the option you think is best below or comment alternative grenadier rework suggestions.
- Option 1 - Super Musk
- Option 2 - Baby Culverin
- Option 3 - Infantry Slayer
3 Likes
Option 4: none of the above
Something similar to option 3 is how they’re supposed to work. But giving them the artillery tag is just wrong, and historically they were heavy infantry.
Instead of tagging them as “artillery”, they could create a “siege infantry” tag (or modify the siege unit tag) that partly cancels out the weaknesses of being heavy infantry.
It could have properties as follows:
- Light infantry and most artillery do x0.75 vs siege infantry
- Buildings do x0.5 vs siege infantry
- Cavalry does x1.25 vs siege infantry
- Culverins do x3 vs siege infantry
This tag could also be useful for other siege troops that aren’t quite proper artillery such as Battering Rams, Flamethrowers, and Arrow Knights.
4 Likes
Yeah, I like your idea of a new “Siege Infantry” tag. This would be a nice way to balance the grenadier whilst making them more usable in-game. It solves the problem of them being snipped by skirms before they can lay down any damage, too.
Does this mean you’d also want to introduce a “Siege Cavalry” tag too?? (for Mounted Granadero)
My three option should be take with a pinch of salt; basically each option gives you the choice if you what Grenadiers to counter…
- Option 1 = Cavalry
- Option 2 = Artillery
- Option 3 = Infantry
I just wanted to give more context of what the unit would become.
Siege Cavalry could also be a thing for stuff like Mounted Granadero, Gatling Camels, Siege Elephants, Oprichniki, Steppe Riders, etc.
Or maybe it would be enough to modify the existing siege unit tag to provide the desired balancing without splitting it. But that tag even includes ships, so some of the multipliers might not make sense in all cases.
2 Likes
The super musketeer could also be a good option, but it would be a unit that can be switched between grenadier mode and musketeer mode. Depending on the mode it is vulnerable or strong against certain units. Grenadiers (A possible new way to give them viability)
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what’s the point of tagging it heavy infantry if it doesn’t counter cavalry? why give skirms a penalty against it and leave them heavy inf, that’s redundant and counter-intuitive
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They could still have a decent melee attack vs cavalry just like other heavy infantry. But if they had another tag that made cavalry also extra good against them and made them a little more resilient against skirms, then they would be historically accurate but still perform well in the roles they are supposed to.
thats a lot of really overlapping redundant ways to make them into a skirm type
What if grenadiers were shock infantry?
If they were going to make them a skirm type, they would have done that long ago. For better or for worse, they want to keep them as heavy infantry to be true to their historical role.
And what I’m suggesting also doesn’t make them a skirm. I suggested all cav have a bonus against “siege infantry”, so instead of countering light cav like skirms do, they would get countered by or at least stalemate them at range. And grens have always been great against buildings unlike skirms.
A “siege infantry” tag could be more broadly applicable than just making grens more skirm-like. Arrow Knights getting extra resilience against skirms and cannons probably wouldn’t be a bad thing so it is not that unreasonable of an idea.
ranged shock infantry would need to behave like a ranged cavalry, being weak in melee to heavy inf and counter cavalry and artillery. A fine role to occupy, but a speedy siege unit age 2 would be a little icky.
@M00Z1LLA the trouble is that they need to act like one of the 2 primary ranged roles that all infantry units occupy- anticav or anti heavy infantry. Historically the grenades were used to break up cavalry ranks, so a sort of high siege unit with a moderate bonus vs cavalry is probably fine - - that being said, heavy infantry should generally have melee resistance. If I had my way, I’d prefer to see them buffed to about 235 hp, 240 hp but given very strong melee resistance, to act as meatshield units against melee inf charges and melee cav charges. This would in turn make them more vulnerable to building fire, and significantly more vulnerable to emergency units like minutemen, a fair compromise. I also strongly believe they need to deal ranged dmg or have proper penalties against skirm type and artillery units, to maintain the proper counters.
All that being said, it has some clear downsides I don’t like:
It would give dutch a very strong ranged heavy infantry age 2. While my inner dutch player loves the idea of early skirm-musk play, I’m not excited by the idea of making another unique part of dutch gameplay standardized.
It trains from the artillery foundry. By design, everything popping out of the foundry should be bad vs cav. Not thrilled with the idea of shuffling that around or the idea of a foundry anticav. not sure what compromise is correct.
I have more thoughts but i think I’ll leave it here for right now
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I don’t see why they’d need to conform to these roles. Lots of new units break this mold. Counter-Skirmishers, Huaracs, Somali Daroods, and Zouaves are just a few examples. Although admittedly a lot of these units aren’t executed well.
As long as a unit has a couple of types it counters and a couple of types it gets countered by, it’s generally not a bad design. In the case of Grenadiers, they are generally anti-infantry but get countered by all cavalry. They just don’t do this as well as intended, and a tag to adjust the multipliers of other units against them could be a way to fix that. I’d also be in favour of a few more changes like getting rid of the x0.25vs cav and AoE on their melee attack and maybe dropping their ranged resist to 40%.
I’m going to disagree, respectfully. I think any unit with a strong melee attack should be clearly defined into a heavy role, like muskets, halbs, hussars, etc. The reason I’m very strongly in favour of them maintaining a clearly defined role of either
heavy inf - counters cav, countered by skirms/art
or
skirm - counters anticav, countered by cav/art
is largely because theres a massive number of civs that have access to them. They should follow a clear role thats well established.
When it comes down to it, they either gotta be more like a mantlet or more like a musket, and not its current state of being a bit of both and good at neither.
Their stronger melee attack was a relatively recent change. It’s not a defining feature of Grenadiers and could certainly be toned down.
If anything, this is a reason against what you’re arguing. They would end up conflicting with the units that are already well established in those roles. They need a distinct role if people are actually going to want to use them alongside the rest of the unit roster. And being widely available means players would get a lot of exposure to the unit and quickly learn how they work, no matter how non-standard they are.
We can remake these things till were blue in the face, but in the end its gonna be hard to get anywhere with the negative multipliers. Looking at some stronger siege troopers (e.g fire thrower, humbaraci) they have bonuses vs heavy inf and light cav, and seige, respectively.
To start with lets see if what happens if some of those negative multipliers are reduced or dropped.
Say; for the melee attack of normal grens replace the splash with an anti inf multiplier and remove the negative vs cav. That should leave them strong vs inf, and alot less vulnerable vs cav. Skirms and cannon are counter enough.
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I’d buff their range and make their animation a lot faster/give it target lock.
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So, we have one problem. Remove the Grenadier’s Heavy Infantry tag and all should be fine. Let’s treat Grenadier as just ‘Infantry’, the same as Urumi, Zouave, and flamethrowers.
2 Likes
From this tread I’m still getting mixed signals. Should Grenadiers be countered by hand cavalry (siege unit tag) or should they be countered by skirms and artillery (heavey infantry tag)? At the moment they are counted by both which makes them weak. All units should have one type of unit they are strong against, one type of unit they trade evenly with, and one type of unit they are weak against. At the moment grenadiers are weak against two type of units (the hand cav class and the skirms + artillery class) and they perform only averagely against heavy infantry (the unit they are meant to counter).
So, either they need their range increased and heavy infantry tag removed and replaced by a “siege unit” tag so they start trading better wityh artilary and skirms
or
they need to keep their heavy infantry tag and have their hit points increased, range resist decreased, and negative multipliers against cav removed.
This is the problem with them, they are heavy infantry which should counter cav yet they counter infantry and buildings and get beat by cav but also lose to light infantry and artillery.
To make them useable they need to perform better vs light infantry, either by giving them more range and a better animation or by perhaps giving them more speed but removing the heavy infantry tag, just make them light infantry like the fire thrower as they’re already countered by artillery and hand cav like light infantry is.
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In my thoughts, the original devs just used the Heavy Infantry tag as damage adjustment only, so skirmishers and archers can ignore their high ranged damage resistance. From this point of view, the original purpose of Grenadiers is not for countering cavalry. This also explains the recent patch for the negative melee multiplier of Grenadiers.