Grenadiers are good units, but I think they require an extra boost to make them a more viable battlefield option.
Below is a grenadier-related proposal from an idea I took from the game StarCraft-2.
In SC-2 there are units that can transmute becoming other units. The purpose of this is to make the base unit more useful throughout the game. There are many examples of this:
The brood lord was originally morphed from the corruptor.
Now, with these mechanics in mind, why not do something similar with grenades(?). They will be musketeers by default, but they could alternate to grenadiers.
We could do the following:
The Grenadier as a trainable unit is removed from the game.
It will now be replaced by a new type of musketeer that takes 2 population. (However the stats will not improve accordingly as a musketeer).
You can toggle between 2 modes (musketeer mode and grenadier mode).
In musketeer mode it will be like a normal musketeer (Tolerance to melee attacks, ranged attack and good melee attack with bonus against cavalry).
In grenadier mode you can throw grenades, but you lose the advantages as a musketeer (You will have projectile tolerance, good ranged attack, but a bad melee attack).
In addition to these modifications to the unit, I propose the following:
Now musketeers will be able to slowly convert into grenadiers (Basically they will become the unit proposed above). But quickly if they are near an arsenal or a fort. With an investment of XX in coins. (There will be a button on the musketeer interface).
This ability will only be active if you have built an arsenal. That is to say that it will not be something predetermined.
They will cost 2 population and you can only do it if you have population space.
While transitioning they will not be able to attack from a distance, and their melee attack is greatly reduced. To save the units while this happens you can cancel the transition.
Once the transition is achieved, he will now be a musketeer/grenadier, but the grenadier mode will be a skill that takes a while to recharge, (maybe a minute).
Going from grenadier to musketeer fast, but going from musketeer to grenadier will take a while. (This time is reduced if you are near an armory or a fort.)
Although musketeers will now be able to become this new unit, they will be able to be trained as usual in the artillery foundry and the fort.
In summary, it is basically 2 units in one, you will not necessarily have to build a foundry to obtain this unit and they will be more versatile on the battlefield.
Other suggestions:
Grenade Launchers
It will now be in the Advanced Arsenal as a researchable technology. (At age 3 for civs with default grenadiers, and at age 4 for civs without default grenadiers, since this implies having access to musketeers.)
Incendiary Grenades
In addition to its current benefits, it gives grenadiers a bonus against infantry in general.
This technology is activated with the advanced arsenal for civilizations that do not have this technology by default (for example Germans).
All they need is to be made light infantry, currently they’re heavy infantry that get countered by cav so making them light infantry that doesn’t counter dragoons would just boost their strength against infantry and prevent them getting countered so hard by skirms.
Maybe it would make the unit more useful, but maybe it wouldn’t make any historical sense. Perhaps that is why they have not put this label directly.
well it would be a bad design if you make grens light inf while they have grenade imo xD also it would be too good tbh, they have insane hp with insane resist so imagine if skirm don’t counter them a ittle bit ( which is not even the case due to their high resistance )
grens need to be grens so good against building and decent against unit, not good against everything
They suck currently though almost entirely due to the heavy infantry tag. Maltese fire throwers are somewhat similar to grens though they counter skirms and dragoons more specifically and they’re far better due to being light infantry.
Grens are already tagged incorrectly because a heavy infantry unit should counter cavalry and they’re in fact weak to it.
Perhaps an alternative without changing the tags and stuff would be to boost speed to 4.25 and/or range to 16 like that of the fire thrower so it has more chance of actually getting a shot off against skirms or archers. Currently all it can do is beat heavy infantry but with a speed of just 4 half the musk in the game can escape from grens.
Aren’t the Maltese firethrowers exactly that? Light infantry with a splash attack? They are a great unit, but they need cards to get them to that point and they cost wood, without those cards they’re good, but they’re nowhere near broken by any metric.
The animation is also a major issue, grenade launcher card should be made into an arsenal tech so they can be made more viable without needing an age 3 card. With the same range as a musk and a shitty animation they’re always going to remain useless vs light infantry.
but they not supposed to kill light inf, grens is a unit for kill building and musk, nothing else
I just don’t get why the unit should be good against every inf and again skirm need a lot of shot for kill them already, idk the unit is fine as they are for me
I also think they should stay heavy infantry, so that skirmishers can counter them, but my general idea is that musketeers can become grenadiers, and grenadiers have 2 roles depending on the mode.
If they are upgraded this way, I will reduce their tolerance from 0.50 to 0.30.
They don’t need to be good against skirms necessarily but that would encourage their use because they must be 1 of the least made unit types currently and that’s because they’re unviable most of the time.
An alternative would be to give them target lock and some more range to compensate for the poor animation, I don’t think cost or the need for a foundry is the reason they aren’t used because we see abus guns which are more expensive and require a foundry being used a lot. That would indicate that they just perform poorly, at least the ottoman grenadier while weaker against infantry performs it’s job in being specialized to deal with buildings and artillery.
Aight look. The underlying assumption here is that granadiers were soldados. This is not the case - at some point line infantry carried grenades, true, but for similar reasens ss to why modern soldeirs have sidearms.
Actual grenadiers were a very old branch of old armies that used primarily grenades and then had swords as side arms. This troop was older that actual muskets and was used in siege warfare, or anywhere else with ample cover that minimized the threat of cavalry charges.
They were pretty useful as dedicated siege units cuz the countered cover, which countered guns and horses but thats really hard to translate into the AOE series.
My two cents to the idea pool:
Id reccomend increasing theyre ranged attack rate to 1.5 s - since lobbing grenades is faster that loading a musket or xbow - reduce the ranged splash to 1, and change the resistance to vs 10 melee, 20 range and 20 siege.
Incendiary grenades doesnt increase splash but gives a bigger bonus vs buildings (especially defensive ones) and also #### + 0.5 vs artillery. New tech Shrapnel for all which grants + 0.5 vs infantry.
Grenade lancher reduces attack rate to 2.0 s, but adds +2 range, +2 splash area, and + 20% damage boost. Also enables cover mode.
Here’s a fully upgraded Fire Thrower (with Malta that means a full deck sent) and a fully upgraded generic Grenadier. The Firethrower just trades hp for attack and range and it also has a multipler against infantry and also causes lingering damage on top of the high damage it already does. Even if you tag the Grenadier as light infantry it won’t be as good as the fire thrower with rockets, simply because of range. I think we can try turning Grenadiers into light infantry, maybe with a slight hp nerf in that case, but why not look into it?
The problem is reconciling their historic role as heavy infantry with their in game role aligning with light infantry.
A new siege infantry tag that replaces the siege unit tag for all infantry units that currently have it could help Grenadiers and a lot more. Multipliers could be as follows:
buildings x0.5 vs siege infantry
light infantry x0.75 vs siege infantry
artillery x0.75 vs siege infantry
cavalry x1.33 vs siege infantry
This would offset some of the damage skirms are dishing out with CIR and let them still be vulnerable to cavalry even if they could dish out damage more in line with other heavy infantry.
Units like Huaracas and Arrow Knights would hold up better against artillery and skirmisher masses. Units like Flamethrowers, Mantlets, and Rams wouldn’t be so easily sniped by artillery.
The siege unit tag could maybe even be replaced entirely and tags like siege cavalry and siege ship could cover the other units.
If they are light infantry they are unkillable. Cavs not always can get close to them. With anti cav protection. Theybwill beat musk beat skirm beat buildings, for otto also cannons. Then civ without cannons won’t kill them . Civs with no cannons already dont kill skirms fast, but at least skirms dont beat skirms or buildings
I like grenadiers the way they are, I actually find them better than cannon because they can’t be sniped by culverines and they don’t need to redeploy and if they get attacked by cavalry theres a chance at rescuing at least half of them. Oh and the AOE is higher.
They’re also great to get early game and very useful as shipbound raiders. The only frustrating part about them is they need an artillery foundry to train and upgrade.
In an old mod I made I actually split the grenadier in 2 units: an expensive, 2 pop heavy infantry that gained a grenade charged attack through the incendiary grenade tech (the soldado turned to be very similar to my heavy grenadier), and I tweaked the original grenadier to be a type of anti-infantry light infantry.
For now lets just add some age 2 gren shipments to the civs that have them as regular units and go from there.
They have potential as is in age 2 since they can trade well vs all age 2 infantry, but the time it takes to get a good mass going is enough for the other player to prepare any counter they want - masses of cav + light infantry or even an easy ff into falcs.
The case is that you can make grens to counter a pure infantry all in but on the offensive, they’re so slow they just run into a bigger pop of they’re hard counters.
