I’m a casual player, so maybe this is all just a bad idea, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
Line Grenadiers
This card was a lazy try and didn’t really change the things. Grenadiers are still rare and unpopular. The essence of problem is that they are hard to use rather than they are hard to access. On the other hand, those useful grenadier units like the Fire Thrower and Humbaraci, people still use them even they cannot train at Hospitals and Barracks. Personally, I don’t like them trainable at Barracks also because I feel it confuses the their classification of unit.
Maybe:
Delivers 5 Grenadiers; enables Grenadiers to be trained and upgraded at Barracks.
→ Delivers 3 Grenadiers; upgrades Grenadiers to Veteran; gives Grenadiers a musket-firing mode.
I hope the musket-firing mode can be a nice try. Allowing Grenadiers to have lower (or at most the same) attack power as Musketeers when shooting with muskets should bring a bad price-performance ratio but making them easier to use and helpful to their survivability, like being able to hit-and-run when enemy are approaching. It should not make them more efficient to kill enemy without grenades.
It’s a mode, like the Melee, Cover, Trample modes, instead of making them like the Soldado. They can and have better switch back to the original grenade-throwing mode when they have enough distance from enemy. Requiring an Age III card can be a good cost for such a mode.
Grenade Launchers
Now becomes a technology in Advanced Arsenals in Age IV for all European civs instead of a card.
Meanwhile, the new Line Grenadiers card can be available for all European civs and can also enable Grenadiers at Artillery Foundries and Forts for the civs if not enable yet.
Edict of Nantes
To encourage the French to use Grenadiers, now they can train Grenadiers without Young Guard.
Young Guard now also gives Incendiary Grenades if not researched yet.
Middle Guard now gives the musket-firing mode if Line Grenadiers card hasn’t been shipped yet, rather than Incendiary Grenades.
Old Guard still gives Grenade Launchers (technology) if not researched yet.
Line Grenadiers is useful in team games i think especially as brits.
Reason being is that the moment you hit age 3 while doing your normal barracks play the card instantly allows you to mix grens into your comp or even replace it entirely without needing to invest in artillery foundry which slows down your switch.
Brits having an all-in-one upgrade card for grens also helps since its 2 cards and then your grenade launcher mass can just start eating units.
Giving grens musket fire is probably not great since it is essentially giving everyone soldados
For france the only thing I would change is maybe give the ability to train old guards from forts or something, I don’t want france to have the abilty to train guard consulate grens en mass the moment they hit age 4 so just training these monsters from a fort is probably enough
Also revolutionary grens that you unlock later lack a bit of stats compared to old guards so buff those as well
edit: maybe also add grens to the list of units affected by HP upgrade so they become tankier
Maybe I think all European civs line Grenadiers card is to Grenadier musket-firing mode and charged attack is throwing grenades rework opportunities for devs to redo
It only helps when British rush in an extreme order of build and already plan to use Grenadiers. I just feel the help is too niche, and it is only for British. Eventually, an Artillery Foundry would still be built for other artillery units, in most occasion even earlier than you possibly start to think of Grenadiers.
More importantly, for every civ, including British, the animation of throwing still make them hard to use, especially when they are pursued by enemy. Removing the animation even in a way that reduces they damage can help a lot. If they can become more easier to control, people would use them even though they have to wait for an Artillery Foundry. That’s why I say the problem is they are hard to use rather than hard to access and enabling them at Barrack is a lazy way.
Well, they are supposed to be different.
Soldados should be considered as a musketeer unit first. They always shoot enemy unit with muskets, and basically use grenades only to bombard buildings. Essentially they are powerful Musketeers that throw grenades rather than torches in visual when siege. They cannot switch the mode.
The Grenadiers with a musket mode should and have better still use grenades to attack any target, no matter units or buildings. Throwing grenades is their main damage approach. Using muskets is low damage and only when they have to hit-and-run such like struggling when the enemy hussars are coming. They can switch the mode.
You will have both normal Grenadiers and consulate Old Guards at Forts at the same time. Not a fan.
If I can make the Old Guards more accessible, maybe introduce some new Grenadier shipment cards for French and allow the Old Guard technology to also replace Grenadiers from home city shipments with Old Guards.
This will be a difference in game design view but like to me if you are putting such a card in your deck, you have a plan to do so already. its definitely not something you can just have in your deck “just in case” you want to go grens or something
The animation is annoying but to me that is not the problem of the unit at this point since there are also a bunch of other units that have wonky fire animation that you learn how to manage. and ofcourse if you have grenade launcher it all changes anyway.
The problem for me is i am either all-in on it from the beginning or I need a way to switch in to it easily as part of doing something else and line grenadiers helps with that.
Its the same with the other relatively more useful grens, otto all the upgrades either overlap with artillery or infantry and malta the general buff from civ bonus allows you to just pivot later.
But they also have the charged attack which means they also spam out grenades when able and murder everything insight, its not just about their siege visual.
Then we also have the example of the peruvian guard from revolt which has 2 different attacks depending on range and used to be completely busted until it was nerfed to the ground.
Unless you make that musket attack essentially useless, it will probably be pretty unbalanced and you will just end up back where you started. It may feel nicer but it wont be any better to use.
and when I say completely useless, I mean like maybe 10-15 damage for a 2 pop unit.
edit:
that already happens if you revolt into US and send the grenadiers cards since the washington grens are considered a separate unit
Compared with the ones of those other units like bowmen, the animation of Grenadiers is the top annoying. The formers do not stop people use the units popularly, but the latter do.
In theme, the Launcher is really suitable for being an equipment available at Arsenals. Enabling Grenadiers for the civs just by having the launchers is also strange to me in theme. The Line Grenadiers should be better since it means the army starts to adopt the grenadiers and the line formation.
It’s not a mode that you can switch to it actively but an automatically activated ability that even need a card to unlock instead of available by default. I still think they are pretty different.
The damage of the musket mode can be low, maybe useless as you said. Making the experience pretty better is really important, as the reason I think they are not used is not that they are considered weak but feel hard to control.
Additionally it can be considered useful to me if they can at least fire 3 or 2 round and cause a bit more damage rather than waiting to die when Hussars come.
I didn’t say that didn’t happen. Yeah there is a case already, but if that would make the normal Grenadiers no reason to be used any more, still I don’t really like it.
I don’t think Ulufeli are OP because of grenade launchers, they’re op because of their extra range and multipliers and the generally high hp composition of ottos.
I think the things are different.
The problem of those units you listed is that they are already strong when playing their main role.
Soldados, Giant Grenadiers and Samurai are already strong when they fight with muskets and swords, so granting them grenade launchers which is another strong move are overpowered.
On the other hand, I think the current normal Grenadiers even with grenade launchers are not considered that their main role of grenadier is strong enough to encourage people to use them more often. Granting them muskets won’t make them overpowered as the musket attack with low damage is not supposed to be a strong move too.
True.
Quite different. Grenadiers won’t have AoE range attack when using muskets.
I say that, since that is my suggestion in this topic.
I prefer for bring balanced and useful strategies to a unit than being very rare as if it did not exist in the game data. such a waste.
That should not be OP in my suggestion as it needs a card and just gives the unit a very low non-AoE damage for being able to struggle by hit-and-run when they are approached by enemy rather than just waiting to die. The units you listed above have already been good enough to struggle as their main role of musketeer or swordsman rather than waiting to die, so they may be OP when having grenadier launchers in addition. That’s quite different.