I don’t buy it. Even if muskets had 4.5 speed AND 14 range at the same time, they should still have a very hard time against skirmishers and artillery, which are their counters. The only thing that would become better at is dealing with dragoons (and similar units). I think one of the advanced arsenal upgrades should give +2 range to musketeers.
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I actually think this is a good idea, if it is universally applied to all civs.
But I fear it’s not going to reverse the trend that skirm-goon is still favored after age 3.
What I mean by “difficult to balance” is that, if musketeers are buffed to the point that they can fight off skirm-goon composition (with the help of hussars or artillery), they would become too strong.
Musketeers alone cannot beat skirmishers dragoon unless they gain 20 range as well.
Having thought about it more, they are probably doing it on purpose, and it is unlikely to change. Their motivation is probably to avoid the emergence of a dominant combination like skirmisher-dragoon happened for the vanila euro civs. They also admitted they won’t do any sweeping changes to old civs due to established meta. So I think these new muskets are simply their vision on what a musket should be, and because they don’t want to hinder the old metas, they won’t update the old ones.
Maybe not. The entire Spanish meta was invented out of nowhere by DE.
If that is the case it would be pathetic. If every new civ ends up having a better version of the old mechanics, what is the point of using the old civs? I mentioned this a million times here about mercenaries, etc.
Well it’s not like the old civs are useless, most of the euro civs remain S or A tier civs.
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The new civs have clear weaknesses, so euro civs are still doing well.
That’s because they are simple and effective, and easier to master (in a competitive sense). New civs need more time to learn, and sometimes are actually overwhelmed with too many choices for some simple and effective meta to evolve (but the javelin rider or 9 mercs at age 2 is definitely op though. It’s not even a meta, just simply broken by the look).
Not saying the old civs are weak (in a competitive sense).
But now they look blend and uninteresting (and even aesthetically more backwards, while a lot of new civs have extended into late 19th century), if just for fun’s sake.
They are boring in comparison which isn’t surprising because they’re from the original game many years ago, if they changed them there’d be a lot of backlash from all the people that play those civs, the devs can’t win really in regards to making changes to the classic civs.
The original DE added a lot of new options for older civs and I do not see that as a problem.
They also give native Americans outlaws and late game howitzers and people seem to welcome that.
There are a lot of ways to update older civs without significantly altering the gameplay. For example the Spanish Gold card (which was useless) got a complete rework and evolve into a new meta, but still fits well with the overall design idea of Spain.
That’s why I think Napoleonic Era mod is a good model: a few new units and a few new techs to make some units and gameplay more viable, but the core of the older civs remain untouched.
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I wholeheartedly agree with you: old civs need to have some adjustments made. I think giving muskets +2 range in an advanced arsenal upgrade is the kind of minor thing that would help some civs (it would be very cool to see 14 range redcoats).
However, I don’t think the devs are gonna do it, and I exposed my reasoning why. What happened at the beginning of DE was bring some civs that were clearly balance outliners (spain, ports, dutch, american natives etc) in line and make them viable / not OP. Also the revolution system was quite a nice touch. But that was because half the original aoe3 game was simply not viable at higher levels of play. Now everyone is viable-ish, so I don’t think massive changes will be done.
I would very much like to be proven wrong.