With the current PUP, there’s been a good changes as well as buffs/nerfs, although, I found myself confused with the direction the dev team is taking to approach Spain, one of the best pikemen civs out there, with a strong and upgradeable archaic units.
To which, I’m more than happy to receive some +10% resistances to their most exposed unit, the pikemen. But what’s the point of having 2 routes to get a strong anti-cav unit that are barely different one from the other. You can only invest in one of them, leaving the Tercio (converts all pikemen to rods) card quite unusable. You either stick to one and just one type of unit for the rest of the game, or dispose units all time since quick games don’t allow you to fully upgrade many units. Considering Spain tempo and eco strengths.
I never know which route to take as Spain knowing the enemy has cavalry, I mostly go for dragoons, but if I needed it to be infantry, I could go for Musket, Pikemen, or Rodeleros.
Musket is for obvious versatility, but for the remaining 2, in the end, seems to be the map that determines it (As for all the wood you would need to make pikemen).
Spain originally had the Rodelero and Spanish lancer as real units. In the DE with the intent to support the civilization due to its lousy win rate, the pikeman of Tercios and the papal politician were added, the infantry combat improvements were extended to the crossbowman and changes were made to the missionary, So the main grace of that, is to go to fourth with the papal politician to improve the cheap third pikeman and thus send the letter of 24 third pikemen, already improved at age 4, But in His output was a bit strong and the politician was nerfed hard in his price and instant investigation of veterans of the ###### as well as his pass to the elderly with 9 crossbowmen
So I think that this letter is to revive the FI of Thirds pikemen.
Well, regarding the “third party tactics” card, it’s bad competitively. The truth is, I think it’s okay that it’s that bad, not all cards are made to be competitively useful.
To be fair, even from Vanilla days I was confused as to why Spain got both Tercios and Rodeleros fullfilling the exact same role. They kinda really don’t have much of a difference in the niche they fulfill.
The Spanish pikeman could have an arquebus with some card like the Mexican insurgents or when they upgrade to tercios they become like the Azap but with an arquebus, little firing range but powerful.
@HumaneTree81562 Some time ago I proposed exactly that idea of a shooting attack like the Mex Insurgents for the Tercio Tactics card.
The Spanish pikes would be even more original and different from the rods, and the lack of Spanish arquebuses would be made up for, we killed two birds with one shot