Is USA "skirm-goon" play really that bad?

[Garja]

I had the chance to play the strat I was testing and it seemed to work atleast fine vs Dutch classic huss semi. Those sharpshooters are not too bad once upgraded and there are always gatlings to support the skirm war. USA goons are meh but I guess vs cav heavy civs maybe can add musks to have a more bulletproof combo. What do you think?

[Mitoe]

I agree, it's probably not bad. (though I haven't tried it yet)

[uberjz]

1. I like that people are experimenting with skipping bank. bank does feel quite slow. you shipped capitalism, but i think 4v is a decent choice too.

2. I really dislike the colonial part of the build. you are clicking up at 6:45 (without virginia for fast age, too), and you hit the fortress age at 8:40 ish. It feels like there's a 3 minute-ish window (from 6:00 to 9:00) where you're just kinda sitting in your base, waiting to hit age 3. Consider that 700w doesn't arrive until 8:00 - until then, you don't even have a military building, so all you have to defend are 5 sharpshooter/5 goon/mm. Could be weak to a inf/cav kind of timing. (also, you had pretty good treas age 1 and managed an idleless 15v age up which isn't always possible. would be even slower without this)

3. The age 3 skirm/goon looks decent because the units are shadow teched; having to upgrade age 2 units always feels kinda bad and annoying. Also, the 21 range on the sharpshooters looks nice, although their other stats don't look so great.

overall I think skirm/goon age 3 with usa looks very viable. However, IMO the path you took to reach that age 3 skirm/goon is almost certainly suboptimal.