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Marksman vs. Firearm training


barrydylan

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What are the opinions on the second star infantry perk? I was watching Aetius play and I saw he prefers to give all his 2 star rifles marksman training over firearms. I just finished Malvern Hill on MG and I was running a little experiment with my 2 stars. I made two brigades of equal strength armed with 1855s. I micro'd them to the best of my ability on my left flank, and the firearm-perk brigade dealt way more casualties than the marksman. In fact, the marksman unit now ceases to exist (RIP). In my experience, I find firearm training to be far more effective than marksman. Its all about getting more firepower faster than your opponent.. Same reason I give my smoothbores and howitzers gunnery training. I-1/3 rifles is the unit I'm talking about and as you can see below they have put in some work for me. (Including over 4k kills at Shiloh)

20170402100704_1.jpg

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Marksman is better because:

1. Supplies is capped at 25k/corps. Slower reloads = less ammunition spent.

2. Most of the time the player are on the defend side, so you get to fire the first volley. Getting a strong volley first reduce the retaliation power of the return volley. You can even have a first volley with such force to insta-rout the AI brigade, so it's completely "free" damage.

3. The best case scenario for firearms in an engagement is both sides facing each other and continuously pumping out lead should always be avoided by the player, in favor of short and overwhelming engages that shatter the AI in the shortest time possible.

 

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Jamesk2 hits all the points for why I favor Marksman. IME on defense the AI tends to just sit their brigades at max range or charge you. In the former case, accuracy is preferred, in the latter case you'd get stuck in melee and wouldn't get the second volley anyway unless using repeaters.

If you're really thinking ahead you could reserve a couple brigades in advance to take Firearms and dedicate them to using Henry rifles, you might maximize their uptime doing that.

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I use Marksman primarily because of my aversion to running out of ammunition. I had several bad experiences in my early Legendary campaigns where units were doing great, and then suddenly folded as they ran out.  I also found that a lot of the time, the Firearms Training units tended to drive enemy units back quickly with fewer casualties. This can be desirable, but not often, especially in Legendary where you want to maximize strong firepower deficit situations to do as much damage as possible. There's no better target than a damaged high-morale brigade - they won't fall back and they can't shoot back.

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4 minutes ago, Aetius said:

 I also found that a lot of the time, the Firearms Training units tended to drive enemy units back quickly with fewer casualties. This can be desirable, but not often, especially in Legendary where you want to maximize strong firepower deficit situations to do as much damage as possible. There's no better target than a damaged high-morale brigade - they won't fall back and they can't shoot back.

I hadn't thought of that, good point. As I get better at microing I am finding marksman to be the better perk. 

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Firearms training favors troops slugging it out at close range or assault with muskets where the feel of battle is more like that of Napoleonic wars, though openly classifying troops as cannon fodder would be inappropriate at the time. 

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I tend to favor firearm for frontlineish 2 stars and marksman for second row 2 stars and future 3 stars, the idea being that that one original volley from my second row elite unit is brutal enough to turn the tide of a melee blob instantly or shatter a flanked unit.

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