Musketeer

The Musketeer is a standard infantry unit of many European civilizations in Age of Empires III. It is available for the British, Spanish, French, Russians, and Portuguese.

Overview
Musketeers are infantry units armed with a smoothbore musket to fight other infantry, and a bayonet to fight cavalry in close-quarter combat. They fire short-ranged attacks at a slower rate compared to archer units such as the Longbowman. Musketeers are vulnerable against massed artillery and light infantry.

The Dutch cannot train Musketeers, but can ship 30 Stadhouders (Guard Musketeers) from their Church with the Religious Freedom card. Russian Musketeers are automatically trained in a block of five units from Blockhouses.

In The WarChiefs, Spanish Musketeers becomes the most damaging, population-effective of all Musketeers thanks to the Unction effect.

Outlaw Musketeer
The Outlaw Musketeer is a Treasure Guardian variant of the Musketeer which is usually featured in abundant treasures, but rarely. It is one of the few Treasure Guardians with a damage multiplier against specific unit types. Overall, the Outlaw Musketeer is better than the normal Musketeers and should be considered for taming.

Home City cards
As the Musketeer is exclusive to nearly all European civilizations, only other civilizations' TEAM cards that affects them are listed here. {| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;" ! sab="1148" | Click for a list of related Home City cards
 * - sab="1147"
 * - sab="1149"
 * sab="1150" |

Russians

 * }

History
"Musketeers were infantry soldiers who stood in ranks two and three men deep, taking turns firing while other ranks reloaded. Musketeers were drilled and disciplined to stand as close as 80 yards away from an enemy firing at them. Musket balls ranged from about a half inch in diameter to three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Until long guns with rifled barrels that could be fired more than once every two minutes were developed, muskets were the ranged weapon of choice for infantry. Muskets had a relatively short range and were wildly inaccurate. Musketeers fought a lot like longbowmen, firing volley after volley in the direction of the enemy with no specific target. The barrage of lead was bound to hit something. A competent musketeer could fire three shots in a minute - four times slower than a longbow and twice as fast as an early rifle."

Trivia

 * The Musketeer has 4 visual upgrades in total, the first upgrade is unused in the game.
 * The Germans and Dutch originally had the musketeer in the beta version of the game. Their unused game file voices for the Dutch and Germans still exist in the scenario editor and game files.
 * The Russians were originally not able to build musketeers in the beta game.
 * John Black's Mercenaries, Spanish, and United States are the only civilizations that can create the musketeer but do not have home city upgrade cards for them besides from advanced arsenal.
 * British Royal Guard Musketeers are named after the Redcoat soldiers.
 * Portuguese Royal Guard Musketeers' name actually means "Warrior" in Portuguese.
 * Dutch Musketeers are named after the Stadtholders.