So, I'm struggling to find any info on how the troop trees are set up. There's a lot of units at higher tiers that seem totally useless for being in that tier (i.e: gunners, bombardier, ect.) - and the reason being, they all mostly just have a sword and flintlock pistol, but none of them have any decent crossbow skill for guns. Normal starter line infantry have like 100 skill and some of the tier 4-5 have like 45? Hell, playing on the French side, the Guards aren't any better than the Fusilier's, but get paid more? Not to mention pistols being less damage and range?

So what is the point of these troops? Do they function in some way that I'm unsure of? Does arty spawn in on open-map battles if you have a bunch of gunners or something? At least the grenadiers and shock troopers have a niche purpose, even if they only do it for like 10 seconds before running out of ammo. Armors are all the same defense for the most part, and most cultures and units seem to use with a basic flintlock, or a rifle on higher tiers sometimes, which means gear doesn't even play a factor.