Flame Thrower good or bad?

[slay3r19]

So the other day I started using china, been doing that fast fortress that everyone does with china. One match I made a castle to secure some hunts, and I decided to make some flamethrowers, needless to say i lost the game, idk if it was because I made them or not, but whatever. My question is, is it good or bad? What does everyone think?
[div][/div]

[_H2O]

Bad


[ul type="disc"][li]Come out of castle (300 wood, 100 gold building that builds slowly and has no purpose when you have villages)[/li][li]Then the unit just sucks in general, its slow and is a melee skirm, similar to a urumi with bad stats. Melee units that counter skirms are not inherently strong.[/li][/ul]

[Good ol Ivan]

It's expensive and has a low range.
Works pretty cool against low range skirms such as strelets and HI - pretty high RR.
It's fun, but if you are playing seriously I wouldn't advice it.

[cowhax]

yes they're too expensive for how vulnerable they are. they're slightly more useful than grenadiers or mantlets. But if any good player sees you building them, they just won't engage with their infantry and tech switch to cav. They know that the flamethrower is a big investment, so all the resources you put into them, you did not put into units that could counter cav.

I do like the flamethrower because microing them is fun, but they're probably the most practical if you train black flag army out of the castle. and then add in anti-cav shipments, or train some territoral army. I don't think there are any real China build orders that depend on flamethrowers.