This guy can beat any pikeman in melee 1vs1. I think it’s a big mistake that skirmishers have melee multipliers. I suggest removing them for all skirmisher-type units that were not designed for this. Strelets and Gurkha are invited to the melee celebration, but everyone else is not.
Crossbowmen should slightly increase their melee damage.
2 Likes
is there any unit pikemen can beat in melee?
8 Likes
I believe that skirmishers should not be able to engage in melee at all. Because this applies not only to pikeman, but to all other melee units, which first receive 3x of a burst or two and then finish them off with rifle butts. It turns out that the skirmisher has no weaknesses in fighting vs musketeer melee rush. That just stupid. We have a unit that has a special button for such an action (Nizam Fusilier), but no one uses it because of this, which I think is a bug.
As you can see, they counter heavy infantry even against buildings.
And yes, I believe that if the melee infantry reached the skirmishers, it should cut them down even if they were pikemen.
lets put this aside and first let us have minimum fire range for artillery 
2 Likes
Only if we get shrapnell and grape shot. And i mean actually effective grapeshot.
2 Likes
As rar, neither the melee cavalry nor the melee infantry have any problems with artillery.
Horse cannon already have.
yes, as we all know a Portuguese skirmisher called Cassadores, is apparently loosing to pikes in melee 
Kappa
4 Likes
This is actually not such a bad idea.
Why would you train pikes against skirmishers in the first place? The bonus damage is there to give them an advantage against such units that get too close.
3 Likes
Correct, even un-upgraded villagers beat pikes in melee
I mean, cavalry? right? right guys?
Shhh… we only use heavy infantry to kill skirms, didn’t you see the memo? No cav, only musk/falc. Any unit that forces someone not to mindlessly musk spam must be nerfed (ie skirms and light cav),
I’m being kinda sarcastic, but it kinda feels like the Musk/Skirm balance is pretty good atm. At one point, Skirm/Goon was all there was. Now both Musk/Falc and Skirm/Goon feel decent overall. At the same time, I feel like there’s a stronger lobby against Skirm/Goon or in favor of Musk/Falc than the other way around. I’m not suggesting any buffs to Skirm/goon, just don’t feel like nerfing them is a good move.
2 Likes
In all seriousness, the buff to add a melee bonus on skirms vs heavy infantry was actually added in a patch back in TWC era in 2006. It was added because units like rodeleros and puma spearmen were popular, especially since in that era the spanish ff was dominating the meta. Its a necessary buff, otherwise there’s literally zero options to counter heavy infantry in melee. Its not a huge amount of damage but its not ok to just have units like dopps or jpk be completely unchallenged in melee by… anything.
4 Likes
checkmate 
Retrospectively, wouldn’t a better solution be adding a negative multiplier to Rodelero attack against Light Infantry? Most heavy Infantry are already quite slow. Losing, or barely winning, against Skirmishers when you catch them in favorable melee just feels off.
If any unit should challenge Doppels and JPK in melee, shouldn’t that be Halberdiers? (Granted, Halberdiers should still lose.) Maybe if the melee bonus against Heavy Infantry is removed from Skirmishers, Halberdiers can find a niche in the game?
In any case, Counter-Infantry Rifle should not buff melee bonus against heavy infantry. It does not really make sense in real-life or in game.
Unfortunately, gameplay has to be king here. I take issue with the only melee counter to heavy infantry just being other, better heavy infantry. Then you get issues with civs that don’t have access to those unit types, etc. As it currently stands, strong musketeers are still the best answer to holding off melee infantry charges, skirms deal some damage back but are squidgy enough and have no armour to melee attacks that they do still lose.
11 Likes
for full realism melee units would beat all ranged units in melee… but they would never have a chance to get close to massed ranged soldiers. What sort of soldier would continue marching with a pike towards a line of rifle-armed troops after waves of their comrades had already been blasted away? What sort of nation would have the resources and willing population needed to arm waves after waves of men with plate armour and pikes against to march into lines of musketeers?
I was always interested in the idea that they had early in aoe3’s development of age 1 combat and the swordsman class. It always felt a little off that the musketeer comes around at the same time as the pike and crossbow units, considering the musketeer should make them pretty obsolete pretty quickly. I would have liked to have age 1 be archaic combat with pikes and bows and swords, and then the musketeer arriving later and making the archaic units obsolete before age 3. Maybe even full on replacing them in age 4 ala the newer cards that replace crossbows with cheap skirms.
I would have loved something like this (euros):
Age 1: archaic infantry; pike, sword, and crossbow men, and men-at-arms (hussar line) cav. Coin income is severely nerfed
Age 2: a couple of civs get unique upgrades to their archaic units (rodelero for spain, halberdier maybe for dutch, arbalest for malta), otherwise no upgrades for archaic units, musketeer available but not very powerful yet (terrible melee damage and slow rate of fire)
Age 3: non-unique archaic units disabled, musketeer gets bayonet for good melee damage and fires faster, crossbow replaced entirely by skirms (and unique national cheap skirm units). Coin income is boosted to normal levels so that muskets can now be comfortably massed
Age 4: all archaic units disabled
etc.
it would obliterate the careful balance now and would incentivise rushing to age 3 asap bu# it would be fun from a historial perspective to have some early modern warfare with swords and pikes before musketeers take over 
2 Likes
I think skirms are supposed to counter pikes, so whether ranged or melee they should be a hard counter.
What is the difference between a skirmisher and a musketeer?
1 Like
One is line infantry that made cavalry and melee infantry obsolete, the other is the counter to them especially technically against officers which would be required to make them work propperly.
Basically skirmishers are there for artrition reasons, to skirmish and harrass the other should be the backbone of an army.
1 Like