I’m reading your comments
- No! God! No!
- Maybe
- I don’t care
- Yes, same as the Mexican “Soldado” (use grenades only against buildings)
- Yes, like the Mexican “Soldado” but retaining 50% resist vs. Ranged
- Yes, only attack buildings with grenades but also have the special ability to “throw grenades against units” with a 30-45 second cooldown.
- Yes, with a different alternative (please specify if possible)
Edit:
I had to improve the lexicon of one of the alternatives and apparently the vote was restarted.
Thanks for your understanding!
At a certain period in history, the Grenadiers stopped throwing grenades on a regular basis and became elite line infantry units. This could be represented with a card that makes the Grenadiers a unit more similar to the Mexican Soldados. This card could send some Grenadiers and allows them to be trained in the Barracks. Could be a rework to the recently added “Line Grenadiers” card.
7 Likes
Hello!
I had to modify one of the alternatives to avoid a misinterpretation, when I edited the text the voting restarted so please vote again (I promise not to change the text of the alternatives again 
)
Grenadiers are kinda strange atm.
They are Heavy Infantry that are bad against cavalry.
They get countered by Light Infantry and Heavy Cavalry as well as Artillery of course.
And what do they counter? Maybe Heavy Infantry, but only at range.
Pikeman do a better job against buildings and Skirmishers do a better job against Heavy Infantry.
Giving them a charged but strong grenade attack followed by them behaving like a strong Musketeer would probably be more interesting.
But there still has to be a reason for Musketeers to coexist with them.
They gotta have some unique differences that make both units useful.
If they have to keep their current grenade attack then they should be tagged differently, remove the Heavy Infantry tag and make some units counter the Grenadier tag.
I would suggest:
Heavy Infantry < Grenadier < Light Cavalry < Heavy Infantry
as a new rock paper scissor.
Currently Light Cavalry feels to much like Heavy Infantry without an Artillery weakness.
3 Likes
I think there are a few directions the unit could be taken:
Option 1, Grenadiers as a Skirm: rework them to be more like a fire thrower. They’d be good against Heavy infantry, okay vs light infantry due to siege damage and not terrible against light cavalry (horrible against heavy cav and artillery). They wouldn’t have the rocket launchers, but after the mortar attack card comes in they get to drop the animation and get extra range. This would seem like the easiest to implement option. This one is also, imo the least likely to break the game.
Option 2, Grenadiers as an Anti Artillery specialist: Cough, ottomans cough. They could be made into an anti artillery unit like the new Ottoman gren. I don’t particularly enjoy fighting those units, they might still be overpowered late game. I think they moved too fast. But it would be an option.
Option 3, Grenadiers as a Musket: They could be made to be similar to the Soldado, with a charged Grenade attack enabled by default, but at a higher cost. I think the problem here might be that either the Musketeer or the Grenadier will be better as @Skadidesu pointed out was a concern. I don’t see the same concern with Option 1 as Fire Throwers and Skirms are fairly different (siege damage at less range vs range damage at higher range). Musketeers and Soldados are overall basically similar.
Option 4, Grenadiers as a “Spell-caster”: The most interesting, but probably most difficult to implement option. They would have a standard musketeer’s attack at range despite being a 2 or 3 pop unit. In melee I’d probably leave their stats similar to how they are now. Where things get interesting is that they have special abilities (which I think are NOT charged attacks).
“Throw a Grenade” “Lob a grenade at a targeted patch of ground to deal major damage to any units or buildings still nearby” (it would have a fairly long animation).
”Medic” “All friendly units within range of this Grenadier regain 20hp immediately.”
”Marksmen” “Use a Rifle to deal high single target damage at long range.”
You’d probably need to put all three abilities on the same cooldown. Meaning it probably takes like 120 seconds to recharge. You might need to increase the cost and pop as well. They probably need to be pretty expensive and would be designed to be a support unit.
I’m still of the opinion that “Grenade Launchers” should be an Arsenal or Advanced Arsenal tech. It’s fine to have Euro civs who can’t train them until later, but they’re a niche unit and sending a card to enable them seems quite bad. It does also make them better, yes, but generally people still don’t use them.
2 Likes
This post made me realise how absurdly outclassed the Grenadier is in comparison to the Humbaraci. For only an extra 5 resources, all of your stats are better (except for ranged attack armor and ranged attack area) and you get a more well defined role for the unit in the case of the Humbaraci. From the way the unit was conceived, it seems that the Devs wanted it to be an early high siege unit that could counter infantry, yet 2 Pikeman are better for the first and 2 Crossbowman (and later on, 2 Skirms) are better for the latter.
I think the changes should start with:
- Turn the Grenade Launchers Card into an Age III tech researched at the Arsenal after you send the Advanced Arsenal Card: it just isn’t worth the Card slot it occupies;
- Buffing their stats and reducing/removing some of their negative multipliers: the stats that the unit has aren’t compatible with a 2 pop, 180 resource costing unit, adding something like 10 extra Hp, 0.25 extra speed, 3 extra LOS, 2 extra range, 6 extra siege (building) attack and removing the artillery negative multipliers would go a long way to improve the unit.
2 Likes
from the year 2006
Ulti’s word of wisdom :
since the start of aoe3, every unit that can move has been a direct counter to grenadiers, even villagers(since they have bonuses against siege troops)
I remember a guide on heavengames from 2005 for otto and one of the top players at the time said “if you ever think you should make grenadiers, you are wrong” but I can’t find the quote rn
6 Likes
It is interesting that so far approximately a third of voters do not consider the use of the musket as a weapon for grenadiers.
It would be interesting if someone explained their reasons for not considering the inclusion of grenadiers with muskets appropriate, for now my deduction is that they do not want the game mechanics to be modified too much with respect to the original 2005 version 
I didn’t vote, but a couple of reasons I’d consider making them more like a Fire Thrower than like a Soldado would be:
1: If you have the choice of Musk or Soldado one will almost definitely be superior, making the other useless, at least late game.
2: Making Grenadiers into a Musketeer type unit impacts different civs to different degrees, with Musketeer-less civs being advantaged (mostly the Dutch, now that I think about it).
2 Likes
I’ve tried discussing these very same options before but it does get quite messy after a while of debating back and forth.
1 Like
This is less about accuracy and more about gameplay. So no.
1 Like
I like the idea of them having a charged grenade attack against units, while using muskets during cooldown. They would still use grenades against buildings.
This is all for the sake of flavor, though. The Grenadier conundrum has gone unsolved for 18 years and I’m not sure this would be the solution.
2 Likes
that would basically just make them upgraded soldados tbh
1 Like
There is no point for a civ to have both units and we had enough with soldado or have you forgotten Mexico day 1 or Spanish ones??
2 Likes
Some ideas that just came up.
- French, German, Spanish, Portuguese can access Grenadiers by default so they no longer need Grenade Launchers to enable them.
- Line Grenadiers no longer enables Grenadiers in Barracks, but instead gives Grenadiers free Veteran upgrades and +20% HP.
- Grenade Launchers moved to age IV and also give Grenadiers -10% training time and cost.
1 Like
I think the rework grenadiers really need is to simply make them human artillery. Give them all the tags and perks of artillery, while maintaining counters.
This means they will be hard countered by HC and culverins, soft countered by LC. They will counter LI (starting with their vet upgrade although there’s the precedent of leather cannon in age2 countering both LI and HI so vet upgrade may not be needed) and HI (by default).
Problem solved.
4 Likes
eh does that mean they are still infantry though?
cause if they are not then with the current stat they will be busted as hell.
you will have to reduce their HP as well since culvs only do 160 dmg per shot so even if they have artillery tag at 200 base HP they will just tank culverin shots no problem
1 Like
Ofc stats will have to be reworked, but that’s hardly the issue here. The tags are the reason nobody uses grenadiers.
No, they will no longer have the infantry tag.
1 Like
I’d rather not have another leather cannon/ abus problem unit.
And i think that option should just not be discussed.
The humbaraci is a culverin but actually price effective.
The soldado is a unique unit.
I think there could be a basis for a Zouve type (decent range, high HP but no bonus) expensive siege infantry with a musket that wants neither enemy artillery targetting it nor cavalry.
1 Like
