those techs used to be designed for the vanilla civs, european civs which have mainly units of skirms/musks, considering how far in terms of civs the game has increased, it would be wise to change those old techs.
Also, back in nilla, there weren’t any musk-like native units other than the tomahawk.
of course. thats why flint lock buffs gunpowder units, such as skirms and muskets and native rifle units as well. its not like it buffed archers back then either. never buffed carib, or tupi, seminole, longbows. that’s intended design, and should be really obvious
javalins dont use gunpowder, they throw it with their arms and the impulse of body, months ago i though like you, but well this game is confusing
besides, the other ranged heavy inf units that arent gunpowder all belong to civs without access to flint lock and paper cartridge anyway. As a minor native unit they get upgraded 25% in fortress age and 40% in industrial age- thats 15% more than a usual guard unit, putting them basically on par with Advanced Arsenal units anyway. literally zero reason to make an abstract change for literally one unit which is legitimately just a euro buff and a nerf (again) to civs that dont have arsenals (such as aztec).
From the fitzbro video on italians, I think they finally did it, they added a tag for light infantry tag
To make a skirm unit that counters other skirms, so there will be a new unit class
So about this new light infantry tag, I think my suspicions are kinda confirmed on this.
They introduced it to make a new kind of interaction, “skirms” that counter other “skirms” but not themselves
Which kinda means that the whole Asian cav multi system is still here to stay since to cover these units as well, they cant use the light infantry tag.
Things are about to get a bit more complicated