Inst wrote:than Pikemen vs Cavalry for cost? Like, this is absurd; pikemen are specialists at acav and building destruction, but muskets do a better job at anti-cavalry. By extension, Chinese Qiang Pikemen suck even more, despite having a better statline for cost than Pikemen.
how is that absurd? The word absurdity conjures ideas of historical realism. And on this point the devs were not too far off. In fact in the description they even call them "Archaic infantry" Why do you think that European armies stopped using pikemen even in the face of continuing hand cavalry charges? Because they simply were not as effective as musketeers! When you think about it this makes sense.
The main reason the pikemen were taken out of use is that they were not usually needed. Cavalry charges were not the mainstay of battle in this era. They happened in most battles, but you never knew where they would take place or when. Armies had to be able to return fire and every man without ability to do so was generally useless. And with line infantry was victory to be had 99 times out of 100. Even keeping a small corps of pikemen or halberdiers was not effective post 15-1600 when rifles became more than single shot and long reload time because they could no longer engage ranged infantry effectively. Even if you knew where a charge would strike how could you get your corps in position in time them being on foot? Lancers ended up being a more effective counter cavalry unit (funny enough in AOE they got this wrong and made them anti infantry)
Pikemen and halberdiers were actually questionably effective before that even in their heyday of 13-1500, and not widely used except by the swiss.
But the main practical reason why musketeers are more effective against a cavalry charge is their ability to fire on the charge before it actually impacts! What a revelation! And when volley tactics are used, one line dropping behind the next you could theoretically fire 4 or 5 volleys into a charge before it impacted! you can see why this might be better than depending on the seminal fortitfude of low paid foot soldiers like pikemen to hold the line. Heavily armored pikemen with large weapons were less needed to injure horsemen in a post armor world (armor came out of use when bullets rendered it irrelevant anyways)
This should not be a huge surprise since similar tactics were used effectively in the 100 years war with longbowmne against much more heavily armored french knights to hold off charges (though they did use terrain weather and stakes to their advantage) just imagine what actual bullets do to unarmored men and horse
I should add that even though the cost may be somewhat comparable in VS musketeers have a much better value as they can do so much more with no added weaknesses. And that is basically why the royalty of europe stopped making them as i said above