What does everyone think the most useless unit is? I vote for ironclad or musketeer.

stealth bomber

I play on Pangea maps, so anything that's naval or Airborne tends to lose its appeal...

Explorer, maybe?

I vote ironclad as the most useless unit. They are too slow. The only other
one that comes to mind is explorer, but I do use one with Medic I promotion
to follow my attack units as a healer. I use all the other industrial age or
earlier units to some extent.

I've never built an ironclad.

I built one explorer once.

I invaded a continent with musketeers once.

On that basis, I reckon the ironclad because it is so unimpressive that I have never even wanted to bother experimenting with it. For the others they have at least tempted me to experiment. Not sucessful experiments, but experiments nonethelss, thereby demonstrating that they have some veneer of usefulness which the ironclad is totally devoid of.

Settler. Why build cities when you can conquer them? :)

Any plane seems useless to me. I've never played a game where planes have even existed. I guess thats because I usually finish the game before the 1900s.

Ironclads are also very useless and musketeers seem to have a very very small window of usefullness and even then knights and macemen seem to perform better.

Scouts & Explorers make great medics. You can usually get at least one, maybe two level 1 medic promotions for your early Scouts from animals.

By mid-classical era, you might be able to produce level 2 medic promoted Explorers (barracks, civics, GGs, and the charismatic trait would definitely help).

These specialized medics allow you to promote the important combat promotions for your fighting units.

Anyhow, I think Fixaris did a great job with unit-balancing in Civ IV. All the units have their uses -- at least, I've used every single one of them. The only unit I can think of that has a really short lifespan is the Musketmen, but even they have their uses.

Whereas, Ironclads have their uses when the AIs frigates & galleons just dropped off their boarding party on your soil (which will all be crushed the following turn), and then decided to stick around your coastlines serving as naval blockades. You can really use a couple of Ironclads then.

I'm on board with the ironclads. Their lack of speed is horrific. Plus, they can't enter oceans. Even assuming that you've got a fleet of them, your enemy can amass sit there in the ocean amassing numerous frigates or transports and park them in the ocaean just taunting your ironclads. Finally, when they are ready, they can zoom by your ironclads and land troops. Even slow, I might like them a little better, but not being able to enter oceans is just a double whammy that'll never cause me to build them.

Ironclads have a purpose - a narrow one, but a purpose, and that is to take out enemy frigates, either galleon escorts or resource pillagers. It's good to have that option available even if I rarely make use of it. If you can manage to employ one offensively you can be really really mean with it, and your opponents can't do anything about it until they have their own ironclads or destroyers.

I think the most useless unit in the game is the carrier. It can't defend itself adequately against any other ship of the same era, and since planes can rebase anywhere in 1 turn it's not useful as a floating airbase. It can't carry enough planes to muster a significant offensive force against the kind of stacks that your opponents will have; it's not useful to defend your navies since navies aren't very useful to begin with, and its cost makes it prohibitive to use it for the purpose for which it was designed. To even be effective in its designed purpose it needs to be protected by battleships, which are themselves very expensive. It doesn't help you to gain naval superiority in any way during those times when you do need navies, and its land recon potential is minimal given that you'll have explored the whole map anyway by the time you can build them, and what you really need to see (coastal city defenses) can be seen just as well by any other ship. Sea recon is better done by destroyers and battleships which can be repurposed into bombard duty, and can actually put up a fight if attacked.

While the ironclad may be nearly useless, the carrier is worse than useless, it is a massive drain on your production for little gain should you choose to build one (or more).

The speed of the Ironclads isn't much of an issue for me.

By the time I can build Ironclads, I'd already have West Point and/or the Pentagon built, the Vassalage & Theocracy civics, and DryDocks.

Charismatic or not, each Ironclad that I pumped out would likely have 3 immediate promotions, to which I would use on Flanking I, Navigation I, Navigation II.

And more often than not, I would have already beaten the other Civs to circle the globe. So that's +3 movement points for all my ships.

Admittedly, the inability of Ironclads to enter the ocean is a drawback, but it is realistic. However, the enemy Civs don't really park their frigates and galleon in the ocean just out of reach.

The moment, I withdrew my Ironclads out of their ship's line-of-sight (for example, into the city), they start moving their ships from the ocean into my waters again... and next turn, my Ironclads sink me some wood.

Note: this is actually what's happening in my current game.

How can you people say airborne units? Late in the game, that's one of the most important units you can have. You need atleast 2-3 jet fighters in each city to make sure if you go to war, the opponents stealth bomber can't kill you.

And stealth bombers rock. Or bombers. BIG advantage if the AI doesn't have fighters. Build them, replace them with artil, and you save a couple turns. *Modern armor + mech. inf have 2 movement each, while artil has one. Just get them 2, with maybe gunships, and your set to go.* Set the bombers near the closet target city, bombard them, then do coll. damage, take over the city, and place the bombers in that city and go for the next closet target city. What I just did in my game. Had a horrible tech lead, which lead to the best. Only a permanent alliance couple are keeping up with me.

But yeah, I have never once built an ironclad in my Civ 4. life. It just zooms by, and then I have destroyers. Chariots once... I never build them. Could be useful very very early in the game. Took out Mao Zedong with only them against his archers. Finally had to use axemen and stuff, but I did a good deal of damage to him with chariots.

I'm torn between Ironclad and Explorer, just because I've never used them other than for curiosity purposes. :D But catchsomezzz's use of the Ironclads might make me rething this, especially when I move up in difficulty. Right now, on Prince, I'm usually the first to have Frigates, so I don't bother with Ironclads, but this might change on Monarch.

I vote for explorers! Useless, except for that medic promotion and I don't use them for that either... It's so late in the game that it can rarely be important.

Oh, yeah, about the Medic promotion. I usually have a Spearman early on that takes Medic, or, when I fight with Cavalry one of them also gets Medic since sometimes I'll use them to move deeper into enemy territory without support from other troops. And I'd rather have an extra unit that can fight then a Medic-only one, so that's why I never build Explorers.

As for Bombers, Fighters, Stealth Bombers and Jet Fighters they are excellent to replace your Artillery, as OceansEleven said. I also use them to scout an area before attacking if I don't have Open Borders or Spies. For this purpose the Stealth Bomber is just the best, as I can usually map nearly all of my enemy's territory with 4-5 of them in the same turn. Unit distribution, defenses, lines of attack, everything can be updated in an instant.

I did also find use for Carriers. In a three continent map I started a war with an AI who had two coastal cities on a small distant continent. Rather than shipping a lot of troops there I got a few destroyers, two battleships, just in case, no less then four carriers full of jet fighters and four transports full of marines. The sea counter was pitifull, so my ships bombarded the city defenses while the fighters reduced the life of the units inside. My marines stayed safely loaded in the transports until the city defenses were down to 0, and all troops were at half-life, then I took the cities easy as pie.

Anyway, I bet that on maps with a lot of water you'll find carriers very usefull for late wars, as most of the time you won't be able to base your fighters or bombers on a city on the island you want to attack. And sea attacks have the advantage of not allowing a counter-attack against the transported troops, so a destroyer-carrier-transport-marine combo can prove to be quite a force.

modern armour. i have never researched composites even when i win by space race. aircraft are very important if you reach the modern era. i tend to built a few ironclads for the reasons that catchsomezz mentioned. Musketmen are short lived but not entirely useless. jaguars and numidian cavalry are the worst uu's

I vote for explorers! Useless, except for that medic promotion and I don't use them for that either... It's so late in the game that it can rarely be important.

Actually, when playing Vikings or Carthagenians I'll usually get Compass early for the harbour anyway, so I'll get explorers fairly early. They're recon, so nobody gets any unit-specific bonuses against them, and with a barrack you can have them at Guerilly II or Woodsman II off the bat. Park it on a hill and it's effectively strength 7, regardless of the attacking unit. They're also move two, so you can even send one along with a raiding party of cavalry to soak up spear attacks -- at least for raiding mines; not too good for farms and huts.

Actually, when playing Vikings or Carthagenians I'll usually get Compass early for the harbour anyway, so I'll get explorers fairly early. They're recon, so nobody gets any unit-specific bonuses against them, and with a barrack you can have them at Guerilly II or Woodsman II off the bat. Park it on a hill and it's effectively strength 7, regardless of the attacking unit. They're also move two, so you can even send one along with a raiding party of cavalry to soak up spear attacks -- at least for raiding mines; not too good for farms and huts.

Good point! (but not enough to convince me that explorers are not the most useless unit - this strategy is very narrow. BTW, can explorers pillage improvements? If they did it would change things a lot, I never tried it.)

Good point! (but not enough to convince me that explorers are not the most useless unit - this strategy is very narrow. BTW, can explorers pillage improvements? If they did it would change things a lot, I never tried it.)

Sending one along with horse archer or chariot pillagers is a narrow strategy, but sending a couple of explorers along with your attack stack isn't. Sure, you could have sent with a couple of spears or axemen which you can use offensively -- but spears are vulnerable to axemen and axemen to chariots, whereas explorers are all round defenders with no particular counter.

I used to think explorers, musketmen and ironclads were useless units, but I've since changed my tune. I play on epic mode, so units with shorter life expectancies see more play, and can be useful for longer periods. Due to this, I've made extensive use of all three units.

Explorers: beyond being useful as medics, explorers are quite handy for... exploring! On maps like pangaea, they obviously aren't so handy, but in any map with separate continents (most specifically the Terra, Earth, and Continents maps, but just about any with separate continents will do) they are exquisite for running about and gathering info, expecially with guerilla II and woodsman II. With such a configuration, they do an excellent job even as barbarian killers (on Terra maps, mind you) when on a forested hill. Keeping them around your own continent has its advantages as well, just set them to explore and they'll constantly wander about, refreshing your info on enemy cities that you have open borders with. Drop them off on friendly AI continents to quickly pick up info without needing to wrangle map info out of them. Don't forget you can load them into caravels for an extra edge.

Ironclads: these really shine in the stage between frigates and destroyers. Think of them as defensive units and you've got it right. Their use should be based around water resources - either defending your own (fortify an ironclad on top of all your resources and watch your enemies struggle to even budge them), or going after a nearby enemy's (slow but effective and can easily brush aside lesser enemy defenders). Ironclads don't always have to be slow either. You can get their speed up to 5 with both navigation upgrades and being the first to circumnavigate the world (this is especially easy with the Vikings), which makes them reasonably quick vessels more capable of acting agressively, and quite proficient for their era at bombarding enemy towns.

Musketmen: with the introduction of trebuchets, musketmen have a better role to play. Now that you're not dependent on macemen for raiding cities (your trebs manage bombarding and city raiding in the early renaissance), the musetman emerges as the most capable treb defender with a solid strength of 9 and having no counters yet against him. The only other necessity is a pikeman unit or two to ensure the knights keep their distance, but with a strength of 9, musketmen can give knights some trouble as well. I used to swear them off, but now I'm quite fond of musketmen for my early renaissance armies.

What would I nominate as the most useless unit? I wouldn't nominate anything, really. They've all got their uses within their window of use, otherwise they wouldn't be there. Sometimes you play a map that makes them pretty pointless, but that doesn't mean they have no use whatsoever.

Sending one along with horse archer or chariot pillagers is a narrow strategy, but sending a couple of explorers along with your attack stack isn't. Sure, you could have sent with a couple of spears or axemen which you can use offensively -- but spears are vulnerable to axemen and axemen to chariots, whereas explorers are all round defenders with no particular counter.

By narrow I meant that usually you don't beeline for compass. And even more so, that it is only viable to protect horses with explorers because of the movement. Otherwise, it is best to defend your assault stack with diverse units that will counter whatever is sent against the stack.

In other words, for stack defence, it's better to have good counters instead of good all round units.

I hardly ever build stealth bombers. They just come too late in the game. At this stage the fighting is over and I'm going for space race.
Carriers...never erally needed them. If they could carry bombers the would be great...
Musketmen. Not a bad unit, but in most of my games they come about 10 turns before I get Grenadiers, so I don't even bother. But when playing the Otoomans I'll try to research Gunpowder early. Janissaries are awesome units, they are almost as strong as grenadiers against anything except siege and gunpowder units.
Ironclads: Sometimes. OK to sit on ressources.

Ironclads totally saved my ass in my last game. Other than that, I've never used them.

But the unit with no use whatsoever (unless playing a Terra map) is the Explorer. Never built one on a non-Terra map.

Submarines. The stealth just isn't very useful and recon duty is better done by planes.

They never accomplish much beyond feeding experience to enemy destroyers. I think I've managed to find useful roles for every other unit.

Submarines. The stealth just isn't very useful and recon duty is better done by planes.

They never accomplish much beyond feeding experience to enemy destroyers. I think I've managed to find useful roles for every other unit.

I've used submarines to deliver spies to hostile continents from time to time.

Okay - I'll be the smart-aleck, here. :-P

The most useless units are.... *drum rolls*... *ALL* the other Civ's UUs in the game.

I will never be able to build them in the game I'm currently playing, and they are usually stronger and better than the unit that I can build in the same class.

Damn those useless Praetorians, Keshiks, Panzers, etc... I say!

:-D

I don't think carriers are useless. They provide mobile air bases for your fighters when you are fighting an overseas war where your fighters can't reach enemy cities from land bases. Even if you are just using them for pillaging key enemy resources with your fighters, they still have their use in modern warfare.

I would have to say carriers.

First, I've never been in a situation where I would need one.

Secondly, even if I was, the most I would need it for is to 'hold off' the AI until I won since they come so late in the game.

Third, even if I did build them I would have to devote a strong naval force just to keep it safe since carriers by themselves are sitting ducks (if the AI is strong enough that I need to send a carrier of aircraft to take them out, they are strong enough to sink that carrier many times over).

So, a unit that comes too late to be really useful, isn't useful for much when it is, and requires devoting a lot of other resources to just to use properly? That gets my vote :)

For the record, I have built explorers and found them pretty unimpressive, but at least they can be put on caravels and sent overseas early to pick up those rare unused goody huts or harass barbarians :)

I love to read a thread like this... where there are still people defending the "most useless" - meaning that the ones making nominations as useless are either:

a) playing on a speed which closes their window of usefulness too quickly
b) playing on a kind of map that doesn't utilize them
c) playing a style that they're not suited to
or
d) haven't been creative enough to think of a use for them, despite all this. ;)

Got some neat ideas on the less useful ones here. Thanks!

Well for the record I play Marathon speed on random maps with a different style depending on the leader and what sort of start I get :)

And I've thought of several uses for carriers. The question wasn't "which unit has no uses" the question was "which is the most useless" as in relative to the others. It can still be a fairly useful unit but still be the 'most useless.'

The machine gun since it can't attack and most games are won with offensive units?

on a duel map with private continents i couldn't get oil so i had to substitute subs and destroyers due to bad planning i held him off to the end of the game with my subs blockcading his ports endlessly...

Explorer! When you can build then, the whole world is all ready explored...

Murky, I found that machine guns can be quite usefull when you're conquering new territory. You never know when some cavalry will go just past you, and having a MG or two garrisoned in the latest captured city makes coutering this much easier. You don't have to worry about pillaging, since the city hasn't expanded yet, and you'll need defenders, no matter the type, so MGs seem perfect for this.

I never tried it but isn't it useful to have a few machine guns for stack defense?

EDIT: actually, I have tried it but AI wouldn't attack

i don't like those threads, since every unit has some use, but there are some points here i want to discuss!

Submarines are useless??
try desert war scenario, and come again...

I very often beeline to radio, so delaying the battleships. I have a good use for flanking subs, believe me!
those, plus one or 2 carriers loaded with fighters, make any enemy fleet to easy prey for my destroyers. Even battleships sink, you know ;)

Carriers.

Their only use is obtaining a beachhead on a totally unfriendly continent. Once you have a beachhead and rebase your airforce, carriers are just eye-candy.

The problem is that building enough carriers+fighters to crack that first city is way more expensive than building the requisite number of disposable marines/artillery/barrage-tanks to do the same job.

You need to be trying to establish beachheads on many separate, unfriendly continents that have no friendly cities within bomber range for the construction of a carrier task force to be worthwhile. Maybe it's just how I play, but I usually keep a few friends around.

Subs with Flanking I and II are 80% likely to withdraw. Go ahead and attack with them. And how else are you going to get your spy onto that unfriendly island AI to scout around before declaring war?

I've actually built ironclads to prevent AI frigates from coming out of the gray and pillaging my sea resources. The AI can't defeat them until destroyers since it probably can't get its ironclads to my coast easily.

Machine guns with drill promotions just eat up AI riflemen, grenadiers and even infantry. They're not too bad against cavalry too. Very useful to have in a stack.

My vote goes for: dudududududuuuuuuuu IRONCLAD

Carriers.

Their only use is obtaining a beachhead on a totally unfriendly continent. Once you have a beachhead and rebase your airforce, carriers are just eye-candy.

The problem is that building enough carriers+fighters to crack that first city is way more expensive than building the requisite number of disposable marines/artillery/barrage-tanks to do the same job.

You need to be trying to establish beachheads on many separate, unfriendly continents that have no friendly cities within bomber range for the construction of a carrier task force to be worthwhile. Maybe it's just how I play, but I usually keep a few friends around.

:lol: What a limited form of game you must play :p

Carriers (with their fighters) are the queen of the ocean and allow power projection and force multiplication that no other unit can bring to the game. If there are enemy coastal cities then a carrier task force is usually the quickest way to take them out. Wars should be short and use overwhelming force.

Force Multiplication
You don't need battleships to counter the AI fleets although a few do help. Your battleship versus his battleship is pretty much a 50 / 50 gamble and the same for destroyer versus destroyer. But strike the enemy battleship with 3 or 4 fighters from your carriers and the odds are pretty much 100 / 0 and even a destroyer can usually beat the battered battleship at say 99 / 1 odds.

When you want to take a coastal city just embark your Marines on the transports, send the destroyers to lower the defence and stike at the defenders down to half strength with the carrier fighters, attack with the marines from the transports... the city is yours and you are unlikely to have lost a unit. Land other defencive units to hold the city.

Next turn sail, to next coastal city and repeat. Three turns after I declare war I have 3 enemy coastal cities in my control (or razed if I can't hold them). That is what a carrier force can do for you. On the other hand, land forces in the age of the carrier that you use, are slowed down by the enemy culture and the need to rebase bombers.

The key advantage of the force multiplication is that my units will survive the combat and hence gain experience and produce lower war weariness, while your units doing the same tasks are gambling at bad odds and take casualties. That means they don't get better unless very lucky and you gain a lot of war weariness. War weariness is very expensive in lost gold and beakers if you have to raise the culture slider to counter it. The cost of your "expendable unit" strategy can be more than just the lost hammers.

Hammer cost and logistics
Simple comparison of the total hammer costs is misleading anyway. The carrier is a mobile platform that should never really be fighting itself. It is its fighters and jet fighters that do the work. Unlike a battleship that has to fight and once damaged is at risk. Unlike tanks and marines fighters don't get promotions so it doesn't matter where they're built or what civics you run.

I build my fighters in cities that can't build anything else useful like small fishing villages or captured enemy cities with low production and I use the whip to hurry them :whipped: ... so for me they are nearly free. My tanks and marines and other quality troops get built with maximum experience so I am careful where they get build and what civics are running when they get built and they get looked after.

If you lose a battleship, a tank or marine its replacement has to be transported to the frontline and that takes several turns even using airports. A fighter lost from a carrier is replaced this turn and ready to go again next. For me the carrier is the most flexible and useful of all naval forces since it is the only one that can (through its fighters) weaken enemy forces and shift the combat odds in my favour.

Maybe you'll look at carriers a little differently in future. At least give them a go at how they enable coastal cities to be taken as I described above.

I guess I just haven't run into the right sort of naval scenario for submarines just as some people haven't run into the right sort of naval scenario for carriers :P

2-3 carriers don't cost much compared to the price of all the units on your transports in the invasion fleet. I use them as floating air defence platforms, very rarely to attack. Not only do they defend the fleet, they defend the captured city from airstrikes on the first most vulnerable turn (because you don't have to rebase and then put them on sentry the next turn) and you don't risk losing the fighters if the enemy recaptures the city.

My vote goes to Spies.
Never found a good use for them in the games I have played.

Explorers: With map trading, open borders, and all the huts gone there just arent that many reasons (read: none) to build one.

Carrier: With Vassel States, I can put my air force in a capitulated city. That pretty much puts the nail in the coffin for me concerning carriers.

What does everyone think the most useless unit is? I vote for ironclad or musketeer.

Musketman or Musketeer? While I agree the ordinary musketman isn't much good other than for city defense, the Musketeer is of a different class entirely. They are better than knights (since they also have two moves, have no hard counters and receive defensive bonuses) and you can get them earlier if you take the Education route (which leads to Liberalism).

People who say they have too small a window of opportunity are usually just not making the decisions that facilitate their use. When I play Napoleon, I don't get grenadiers. I use Musketeers to stifle my neighbours until I get cavalry, with which I will crush their mostly medieval forces quickly. Grenadiers take forever to cross enemy territory.

Well for the record I play Marathon speed on random maps with a different style depending on the leader and what sort of start I get :)

And I've thought of several uses for carriers. The question wasn't "which unit has no uses" the question was "which is the most useless" as in relative to the others. It can still be a fairly useful unit but still be the 'most useless.'


Wouldn't that be "least useful" - not "most useless"? ;) A subtle distinction, but some people have indeed used the thread to say - I have not found any use for X unit.

I just think its testament to game balance and ultimate variety of strategies that we can have so many different opinions. :D

Musketman or Musketeer? While I agree the ordinary musketman isn't much good other than for city defense, the Musketeer is of a different class entirely. They are better than knights (since they also have two moves, have no hard counters and receive defensive bonuses) and you can get them earlier if you take the Education route (which leads to Liberalism).

People who say they have too small a window of opportunity are usually just not making the decisions that facilitate their use. When I play Napoleon, I don't get grenadiers. I use Musketeers to stifle my neighbours until I get cavalry, with which I will crush their mostly medieval forces quickly. Grenadiers take forever to cross enemy territory.

Woops, I meant Musketman.

There really isn't a unit that has no usefullness. Probably the least used units are the late Modern age units because most games don't go that long.

The unit that I use the least is the Explorer, but that probably says more about my style of play than their usefulness. Actually, I intend to try out some of the uses for these units suggested in this thread. :thumbsup:

As for modern era units, they can and do come into play. Recently I finished the 'Earth - 18 civs' scenario (marathon speed with a huge map) with a domination win; modern armor and stealth bombers played a major role towards the end.

While the ironclad may be nearly useless, the carrier is worse than useless, it is a massive drain on your production for little gain should you choose to build one (or more).

Carriers are not completely worthless. True, they do require a large investment in defense ships (I prefer a escort of destroyers with an outer perimeter of submarines), and are expensive to arm with aircraft. Often times, however, they are the most effective way to pillage an enemy territory when you don't have easy access for land units. Particularly when facing sprawling late game empires. Typically in late era wars I will deploy one or two carrier groups and within a few turns can deny access to all of my opponents resources.

With the chaos and plague in their cities due to lack of luxuries/health and the loss of stratigic resources limiting the units they can build it is impossible for them to mount a decent defense. All you need at that point is a handfull of tanks to blitz through their weakened cities and some units to defend them.

Faster wars and with a smaller investment in land units. Most of the time this will justify the cost of a carrier and its escorts.

Does anyone know if you get WW points for doing airstrikes? Might be a potential way to minimize losses, battles, and consequently WW if you don't.

My vote goes to Spies.
Never found a good use for them in the games I have played.

Try running a tight space race and you'll see the use of them. Sabotaging spaceship parts or sabotaging critical improvements (see: aluminum)in "friendly" competing civs can make the difference between victory and defeat. And even if you're not in a space race, they're excellent for putting in the middle of enemy territory just for their superb LOS.

:lol: What a limited form of game you must play :p

Carriers (with their fighters) are the queen of the ocean and allow power projection and force multiplication that no other unit can bring to the game. If there are enemy coastal cities then a carrier task force is usually the quickest way to take them out. Wars should be short and use overwhelming force.

The limited form of game that I play is called Civ 4. I'm not sure what game you are playing, but it ain't Civ.

Once you have a beachhead on a new continent, you can rebase your *entire* airforce there immediately, obsoleting carriers. Once you have a foothold, transports and airlifts will bring in the units that can actually alter borders. Carriers are certainly helpful for taking that first city, but there are far cheaper ways of performing that task.

If you are just having fun role-playing an Admiral deploying massive Carrier Task Forces, that's great, but you'll probably get more relevant feedback in the Stories and Tales forum than the Strategy forum.

The limited form of game that I play is called Civ 4. I'm not sure what game you are playing, but it ain't Civ.

Once you have a beachhead on a new continent, you can rebase your *entire* airforce there immediately, obsoleting carriers. Once you have a foothold, transports and airlifts will bring in the units that can actually alter borders. Carriers are certainly helpful for taking that first city, but there are far cheaper ways of performing that task.

If you are just having fun role-playing an Admiral deploying massive Carrier Task Forces, that's great, but you'll probably get more relevant feedback in the Stories and Tales forum than the Strategy forum.

As much fun as patronizing and pompous posts (and posters) are, perhaps we should actually pay attention to what he is saying. You can still rebase your bombers onto land once you've taken that beachhead. But his comment still stands that your "expendable unit" plan will drive up war weariness unneccesarily. Additionally, a carrier fleet makes marine invasions of coastal cities far more enticing, which can really speed up how quickly you can finish a war. The uses of fighters to weaken enemy naval units is also well-put. Combined with a couple submarines, a carrier-supported fleet can hobble an enemy navy before you bring in the big guns to finish it off, which also eases war weariness on your side. Sure, it represents a decent dedication to naval buildup, but controlling the seas has some distinct advantages that I feel you utterly ignore.

Once you have a beachhead on a new continent, you can rebase your *entire* airforce there immediately, obsoleting carriers. Once you have a foothold, transports and airlifts will bring in the units that can actually alter borders. Carriers are certainly helpful for taking that first city, but there are far cheaper ways of performing that task.

First of all, I really don't think fighters or carriers are particularly expensive, my crappy far off cities without barracks can build fighters in several turns. Also since fighters only have a range of 6, carriers are often necessary to move them to somewhere in range to capture cities after the first "beachead" city unless you are keeping every city, attacking in a particular order and the cities are all within 6 tiles. Finally, they are also useful for recon behind enemy lines with your fighters.

The most pointless unit is...

Warriors.

Honestly, you build one, maybe two? They're not good at really doing anything. They are beat by every other unit in the game.

Warriors suck.

Paeanblack, I seem to have irritated you with my jibes but I promise no harm was meant and my intention was to amuse you. Hence the use of emoticons. Instead you misunderstood me and responded in a hostile and superior manner. That I can understand and I'll pay no heed to it, but you are very wrong in your assumptions and assertions and they need to be put right.

The limited form of game that I play is called Civ 4. I'm not sure what game you are playing, but it ain't Civ.

I play Civ 4 in all its glory. And when neccessary, and I see fit, carriers are used. If you think that means I no longer play Civ 4 then your understanding of the game is strange indeed.

Once you have a beachhead on a new continent, you can rebase your *entire* airforce there immediately, obsoleting carriers. Once you have a foothold, transports and airlifts will bring in the units that can actually alter borders. Carriers are certainly helpful for taking that first city, but there are far cheaper ways of performing that task.

I just can't imagine how it was possible to make so many mistakes in so few sentences :eek: All these statements are wrong and in almost every respect.

Once built carriers are never obsoleted but are normally the preferred way to base fighters offering much greater mobility. If you want the fighters to use the newly captured coastal city square just move the carrier there :rolleyes:

As I said in my first post, once a carrier task force has been assembled that can take a coastal city in one turn why would you not continue to use it? Even on most Continental maps about half the AI cities are coastal ones. Naval forces with their amphibious troops move 6 or more squares through enemy culture while other land forces only move 2 squares (tanks + cavalry) and 1 for the rest except gunships that move 4 but can't take cities. Nothing can move faster than a naval force. That is why I said:

If there are enemy coastal cities then a carrier task force is usually the quickest way to take them out.

:mischief: Incidentally, for those hardcore gamers who switch off at the mention of "romantic notions" like "carrier task forces" allow me to translate for you "Fast moving amphibious SoD"... that is something that takes a coastal city a turn every turn and upto 6 squares away. Do I have your attention again? This is not just a way of conquering enemy territory, it is probably the fastest way of "altering borders" on most maps that have a lot of water.

Paeanblack mentioned airlifts and they are good ... except that you can only bring in one unit per captured city per turn until they come out of revolt (say 7 turns) and build their own airport. You could burn a GA and then rush buy an airport to bring in unlimited units quicker but that needs the GA to be in the city and the US civic running. My carrier task force strategy can capture another city a turn and that allows an additional unit to be airlifted per turn thereby speeding the build up of forces.

Your remarks set me thinking along another route. I'm not sure what military technology you had in mind when were so adamant that your method of conquering another continent was so superior that carriers were useless. I looked at the research tree to see if the answer lay there. But what I found was that Flight (giving fighters, carriers and airports) can be researched many turns before bombers and can easily be researched before Industrialism (tanks, marines and battleships). In fact there are very few prerequisites for Flight and it can be researched long before many military techs.

This leads me to think that a radical strategy for conquering another continent might be to beeline for Flight which also picks up Combustion (destroyers, transports and oil wells) and then just add whatever land technology is appropriate to overcome the AI defences at that stage (given fighter support)... maybe rifles and cavalry. The strategic movement of forces is covered by transports and airports and force multiplication from fighters based on carriers means even slightly superior defenders like infantry could easily be overcome. I must stress I haven't actually tried this myself yet , although I intend to soon, unless someone can see a major problem. If you do see a problem please post.

However, if I am right with this radical research strategy it might mean that not only could the other continent be conquered very quickly using carrier task forces but by researching Flight early you could start many turns before a more traditional approach Paeanblack is suggesting and shorten the game substantially.


If you are just having fun role-playing an Admiral deploying massive Carrier Task Forces, that's great, but you'll probably get more relevant feedback in the Stories and Tales forum than the Strategy forum.

:nono: You don't know me very well. I consider myself a serious gamer who enjoys studying the game mechanics... and I've been playing games a very long time :old: plus I've worked in the defence industry for many years so that is where the terminology comes from. My sole interest in carriers in Civ 4 is in what they offer in the game rather than some romantic notions of leading carrier task forces. I enjoy playing the game but also thinking about it, writing about it and discussing (maybe arguing) about it, for me the whole experience is fun.

Finally, since you made wild speculations about me, allow me to return the favour ;). You seem to be one of those hardcore gamers who think that because they beat the game on Deity in some weird and contrived manner that they are somehow better than other people on this forum. Other players are mere mortals that play an inferior game even if they are having fun. Of course that makes it all the more amusing for us mortals when you're shown to be wrong and playing the game in an inferior way.

As much fun as patronizing and pompous posts (and posters) are, perhaps we should actually pay attention to what he is saying. You can still rebase your bombers onto land once you've taken that beachhead. But his comment still stands that your "expendable unit" plan will drive up war weariness unneccesarily. Additionally, a carrier fleet makes marine invasions of coastal cities far more enticing, which can really speed up how quickly you can finish a war. The uses of fighters to weaken enemy naval units is also well-put. Combined with a couple submarines, a carrier-supported fleet can hobble an enemy navy before you bring in the big guns to finish it off, which also eases war weariness on your side. Sure, it represents a decent dedication to naval buildup, but controlling the seas has some distinct advantages that I feel you utterly ignore.

:eek: I've never been called patronising and pompous before so thanks for that, I guess there's a first time for everything. You on the otherhand have shown yourself to be perceptive and I'm grateful for your comments and support.

First of all, I really don't think fighters or carriers are particularly expensive, my crappy far off cities without barracks can build fighters in several turns. Also since fighters only have a range of 6, carriers are often necessary to move them to somewhere in range to capture cities after the first "beachead" city unless you are keeping every city, attacking in a particular order and the cities are all within 6 tiles. Finally, they are also useful for recon behind enemy lines with your fighters.

More sound support :)

I've always found 1 carrier useful in a modern war. I only rarely use it for amphibious assaults in which all the fighter basically just cover my landing force from being bombed to bits the second it lands.

In the majority of modern wars I simply have a carrier with 2-3 destroyers which go and take out all his faraway strategic resources (Oil, Coal, Aluminium, Iron). Usually this is a safety net for me if spies have failed on their own to destroy them due to military presence or counter-spies.

OK, maybe carriers are not THAT useful but they can be fun to use! Explorers, on the other hand, are neither useful nor fun!

(Forget about that medic to tanks thing and promote a cavalry to do the same. What, they fix broken tanks with their rapiers or something?)

I know the topic is about usefulness but admit that fun can be a factor too! :)

No such thing as the most useless unit. All units have their uses, it depends on many factors such as situation, map type, current techs, your territory at hand, what you plan on doing, how you plan on attacking, who you plan on attacking, what units and defenses they have, how you want to defend, what leader you have, what type of terrain your fighting on, I can go on and on. This is Civ4, if you are a true strategist, you will know exactly what I mean. Now there are units that won't be built as much as others but none of them are useless.

Wouldn't that be "least useful" - not "most useless"? ;) A subtle distinction, but some people have indeed used the thread to say - I have not found any use for X unit.

I just think its testament to game balance and ultimate variety of strategies that we can have so many different opinions. :D

Hmmm. To me the phrases "least useful" and "most useless" are interchangeable. But I think you're actually right on the proper use. Good point :)

I have another use for Carriers. I controlled my own continent and Alexander was dominant on the other and hated me. I placed my carriers in the ocean between us and used the planes for recon. Before long I spotted a fleet of 4 transports and 2 destroyers heading my way. This early warning gave me time to counterattack with the fleet I was assembling to invade him. Only one transport was able to land it's troops.

I find Explorers are useless because they're outdated before they're available. And I love bombers, A stack of 20 can inflict serious damage to a city and it's units, and they can stay housed in a city while striking behind enemy lines.

explorers have their uses, but noot stacks and stacks of them...
If im not mistaken, they get better results from goody huts, they come with good terrain promotions, and they can load on a caravel. Most uses are in terra maps where they are strong enough to defend against murderous barbarians if they run to the trees... I like to keep a couple on reserve if I need them, but never go more than that.

explorers have their uses, but noot stacks and stacks of them...
If im not mistaken, they get better results from goody huts, they come with good terrain promotions, and they can load on a caravel. Most uses are in terra maps where they are strong enough to defend against murderous barbarians if they run to the trees... I like to keep a couple on reserve if I need them, but never go more than that.

Barbarians tend to protect goody huts and you can't attack them with an explorer. So the better results are of absolutely no value... Everything else is done better with conventional units, IMO.

Indeed, I've always wondered what's the point of having the explorer unit in the game since Civ2. It has proven useless time and again, yet Firaxis still puts it in every installment.

Indeed, I've always wondered what's the point of having the explorer unit in the game since Civ2. It has proven useless time and again, yet Firaxis still puts it in every installment.

I don't build many explorers but they are useful sometimes and particularly when caravels first become available. It works just as it did in history :)

In one monarch game I had (epic and Large archipelago map) my caravel was about to go for the circumnavigation. Mansa was 3 or 4 techs ahead and teching fast and I wanted to win the cicumnavigation bonus badly. But I made my caravel wait a turn while an explorer was made and then they went east together. The first hut he saw on an island popped me Astronomy which was worth maybe 8 turns of research and I was back in the tech race. :thumbsup: Also the explorer was great running through the landmasses (6 squares / turn on roads versus 3 for caravel) of all the civs I met and he could have helped get the cicumnavigation bonus if the land masses had allowed, but my caravels met in mid ocean and for those who might be interested I did get the bonus :king:

I don't build many explorers but they are useful sometimes and particularly when caravels first become available. It works just as it did in history :)

In one monarch game I had (epic and Large archipelago map) my caravel was about to go for the circumnavigation. Mansa was 3 or 4 techs ahead and teching fast and I wanted to win the cicumnavigation bonus badly. But I made my caravel wait a turn while an explorer was made and then they went east together. The first hut he saw on an island popped me Astronomy which was worth maybe 8 turns of research and I was back in the tech race. :thumbsup: Also the explorer was great running through the landmasses (6 squares / turn on roads versus 3 for caravel) of all the civs I met and he could have helped get the cicumnavigation bonus if the land masses had allowed, but my caravels met in mid ocean and for those who might be interested I did get the bonus :king:

Still, the situation is very rare and you were lucky. I got the circumnavigation bonus with a GM while he was crossing the other continent once, but I wouldn't count that as one of the merits of the GM (as in helping you get the bonus while going on a trade mission) :p And you don't get Astronomy from a hut every week or even month.

:lol: You're right of course not every hut will pop Astronomy but I would have been happy with any advanced tech. After I got the circumnavigation bonus my explorer was used to pop another couple of huts although they only gave gold they could have given a tech. The chance is worth taking just like it is at the begining of the game, huts can pop really useful techs, and you need to explore the map at that stage anyway, to find rich sites to colonise and barbarian cities to take (frigates, galleons and grenadiers versus axemen / longbow).

This is especially true on archipelago maps of course but any map that has unoccupied areas (usually large and small islands) in the medieval age are best explored by the caravel-explorer combo. After that phase of the game I'd agree they are no longer useful, but during that short window they're perfect for that job and cost nearly nothing for what they can give.

The most pointless unit is...

Warriors.

Honestly, you build one, maybe two? They're not good at really doing anything. They are beat by every other unit in the game.

Warriors suck.

uh ? Warriors fortified in a city can easily defeat a barbarian archer attack.
edit: not to mention another warrior's attack.

Hmmm. To me the phrases "least useful" and "most useless" are interchangeable. But I think you're actually right on the proper use. Good point :)

not at all: least useful is something that is not as useful as everything else, but not for this useless. Most useless belongs to a category of things that have no uses at all (useless), and in this category, it's even the last, although this is clearly not possible and a paradox, since there can't be something that has less uses than none.

not at all: least useful is something that is not as useful as everything else, but not for this useless. Most useless belongs to a category of things that have no uses at all (useless), and in this category, it's even the last, although this is clearly not possible and a paradox, since there can't be something that has less uses than none.

well, most useless could have the meaning of useless in more situations than others, useless in some situations too, but not as often

or

it could mean that it's useless, requires a useless tech, a useless ressource and is not cheap, while others are useless but require less things or are cheaper...
;)

I can not think of a game where i hvae built either a warrior or an explorer...but I would have to vote with the explorer because you often start the game with a warrior unit therefore it can not be counted as "most useless".

For me, carriers are less useful than Explorers. I've been playing on fractal and archipelago maps, so Explorers are useful when you get the caravel.

Carriers, though...eh. I usually play for Domination, and I'd rather spend the resources on extra fighters, because you can ALWAYS find an ally or airbase or have some nearby conquered city or conquer an island chain or SOMETHING to base on.

In my first 10 games or so, I did use superior navies to attack coastal cities, and then conquer the interior, but now I feel just air forces and just enough navy for domination are more useful.

Carriers are useful for what the US uses them for, deterrent and instant reaction / help. But that's pretty useless for evil emperors. Note that, ever since carriers've been available, the US has launched the bulk of its bombs from land bases.

Japan needed carriers to attack us, but since it produced a hopeless situation for them, it's a little hard to say that was the right strategic scenario for them. Fundamentally, Pearl Harbor only made sense because they were a small country attacking a big one.

The people attempting to defend explorers are only showing that explorers actually have negative value; every use for explorers that I saw could be done by a scout instead, and you can build 2 2/3 scouts per explorer. The only thing the explorer does is obsolete a cheaper unit that does the job just as well, winning the 'most useless' prize.

The people attempting to defend explorers are only showing that explorers actually have negative value; every use for explorers that I saw could be done by a scout instead, and you can build 2 2/3 scouts per explorer. The only thing the explorer does is obsolete a cheaper unit that does the job just as well, winning the 'most useless' prize.

Explorers have their uses on Terra maps, since they let you start colonizing the New World with Caravels instead of waiting on Galleons. Explorers in a hill city can hold off the barbs long enough for you to produce better troops locally to conquer the rest of the continent.

The most pointless unit is...

Warriors.

Honestly, you build one, maybe two? They're not good at really doing anything. They are beat by every other unit in the game.

Warriors suck.

Warriors boost happiness on the cheap...very cheap.

I generally squeeze one non-coastal size-3 city into my empire (plains/hill/city+2 grassland/hill/mines) with no roads connected just so it can sit and build nothing but warriors until Chemistry.

If your long-term mega-commerce cities are fighting an early happiness limit, that will end up costing many cottage-turns of development. If you are whipping temples/theaters/colosseums in those cites, you are also losing alot of cottage development. Bringing cheap warriors built elsewhere at +1 Happy each helps them stick to building libraries/universities/markets/grocers/etc

Explorers have their uses on Terra maps, since they let you start colonizing the New World with Caravels instead of waiting on Galleons. Explorers in a hill city can hold off the barbs long enough for you to produce better troops locally to conquer the rest of the continent.

Sorry, but you're just plain wrong, at least on any difficulty higher than warlord. Due to the basic game rules you need either a settler or a unit that can attack to get a city in the New World, and explorers are neither. It is just not possible for you to possess a hill city in the New World until you have galleons, as explorers, missionaries, and great people cannot conquer or found a city, and they're all that a caravel can bring across the ocean. I suppose you could bring over a bunch of explorers on caravels and only one galleon, but I'd rather just wait to build or pay to upgrade more galleons and bring over real units. I'll have an army ferried over to the new world long before the new city can really get off the ground.

It would technically be possible to pull this off on a warlord or lower game if you found a hut in the new world with no unit over it (most have a barb guard) and popped a settler, but it's stretching a bit to call a unit useful because it can possibly exploit a rare situation in a beginner difficulty level.

Remember the Spanish Conquistador in Civ3 (an explorer UU)? That was a really weird unit (3 attack, 2 defense, 2 moves and treats all tiles as roads). It was extremely effective at killing workers, but quite useless otherwise in the face of 4 attack/4 defense units in its era.

I wonder where do people all against explorers find units with 2 moves on any terrain + medic I promotion for 5 xp - or Medic II promotion for 10 xp (only 5 with red cross). For an insignificant price too. And they don't die in the stacks cause they never get to defend.

I wonder where do people all against explorers find units with 2 moves on any terrain + medic I promotion for 5 xp - or Medic II promotion for 10 xp (only 5 with red cross). For an insignificant price too. And they don't die in the stacks cause they never get to defend.
Scouts do that job just as well, and they are cheaper.

I wonder where do people all against explorers find units with 2 moves on any terrain + medic I promotion for 5 xp - or Medic II promotion for 10 xp (only 5 with red cross). For an insignificant price too. And they don't die in the stacks cause they never get to defend.

As I pointed out before, 2 2/3 scouts do the job of medic better than 1 explorer. "2 moves on any terrain" doesn't do much good for a medic unit, since medics are generally following other units that don't get 2 moves on all terrain.

Convinced? If not, read all the other arguments in this thread!

I wonder where do people all against explorers find units with 2 moves on any terrain + medic I promotion for 5 xp - or Medic II promotion for 10 xp (only 5 with red cross). For an insignificant price too. And they don't die in the stacks cause they never get to defend.

what about scouts? (2 moves on any terrain? are you drunk? you start with guerilla I and woodsman I AFAIK, you need 5 XP to have the woodsman II and guerilla II)

edit : too slow :lol:

You don't need guerilla or woodsman for explorers, they already treat any terrain the same way. And fast movement for medics in enemy terrain is just about the best you can wish for.

The warrior. The most useless unit ever because you usually get bronzeworking in the very beginning of the game, which lets you have spearmen. Also the musketeer.

You don't need guerilla or woodsman for explorers, they already treat any terrain the same way. And fast movement for medics in enemy terrain is just about the best you can wish for.

Why? Seriously, I can't think of any time when I thought 'if only my medic could move 2 on hills or forests!', very minor planning (have a medic or two start off with each stack) means that you won't end up with a medic on the other side of hills/forest from a cluster of damaged units. Plus if you didn't have explorers, you'd have 2 2/3 scouts medics per explorer medic - easily enough to put 2 in every stack and have some left over.

The warrior. The most useless unit ever because you usually get bronzeworking in the very beginning of the game, which lets you have spearmen. Also the musketeer.

Your statement is very unenlightened. Care to give details on why you have such opinions? What difficulty level are you playing on such that you can survive the early game without warriors? And the Musketeer is definitely not the least useful unit if you are worth a pinch of salt playing France.

How can people say warriors are useless? They must play with no barbarians or go into world builder and place copper in their capital. They're usually they first thing I build if I don't have hunting or a resource to improve.

Why? Seriously, I can't think of any time when I thought 'if only my medic could move 2 on hills or forests!', very minor planning (have a medic or two start off with each stack) means that you won't end up with a medic on the other side of hills/forest from a cluster of damaged units. Plus if you didn't have explorers, you'd have 2 2/3 scouts medics per explorer medic - easily enough to put 2 in every stack and have some left over.

yea and on those - of course - very rare occasions they save you... flexibility is always nice to have

Wouldnt say the warrior is useless. A good cheap fog buster. Stops a rush by the inca. Cheap to explore with early game. Wouldnt say spearmen were a great defending unit although as part of a larger defense maybe. Certainly with the chariots now +100% against axemen you'll need a spearman or 2 but i'll stick with axemen as my main unit to build with swordsmen closely after to stop those pesky chariots in there steps.

Anyone who says explorers are the most useless unit in the game has obviously never played a medieval or renaissance multiplayer game.

Anyone who says explorers are the most useless unit in the game has obviously never played a medieval or renaissance multiplayer game.

Yup, I haven't. But in what exact ways are they useful in those games?

Yup, I haven't. But in what exact ways are they useful in those games?

They're useful in a few ways. Most obviously is exploring; they're not hindered by terrain and they're a cheap two move unit. If you're playing with barbarians, they're much more proficient at dispatching them than regular scouts.

In fact, they're extremely hard to kill with anything available at the start of a medieval or renaissance game, if placed on defensive terrain. Put one of those on a forest or forest hill in front of someone's city and you'll likely be able to hold it long enough to get an even stronger unit on there. They're good for skirting around your opponent's civ to see where their units and cities are, and for cutting roads early on when you intend to attack one city and your opponent only has one road between his two.

Actually in my xurrent game I think I'll be using them as stack-defenders. I don't have longbows and these things have good defense.

Ironclads are NOT useless. I was playing with my friend against multiple computer opponents. The map had two oil resources and we had neither of them. Ironclads became our only way of stopping Catherine's destroyers before we could launch assault on her continent. My friend had to sacrifice one third of his navy to kill a russian battleship(he launched a multitude of Ironclads, frigates and galleons against it). We did manage to win the game eventually. Ironclads are the best you got without oil.

Late in the game, your only enemies should be far away. The only way that I could see to use planes would be from an airport colony, or a parked carrier. Both of those, I would assume, are hard to utilize. I try to end the game militarily, or be peacefully building up culture(which I do very slowly) at that point in the game.

Scouts & Explorers make great medics. You can usually get at least one, maybe two level 1 medic promotions for your early Scouts from animals.

By mid-classical era, you might be able to produce level 2 medic promoted Explorers (barracks, civics, GGs, and the charismatic trait would definitely help).

These specialized medics allow you to promote the important combat promotions for your fighting units.

Anyhow, I think Fixaris did a great job with unit-balancing in Civ IV. All the units have their uses -- at least, I've used every single one of them. The only unit I can think of that has a really short lifespan is the Musketmen, but even they have their uses.

Whereas, Ironclads have their uses when the AIs frigates & galleons just dropped off their boarding party on your soil (which will all be crushed the following turn), and then decided to stick around your coastlines serving as naval blockades. You can really use a couple of Ironclads then.




Never thought of that. They (scouts/explorers) also make handy escorts for stacks of workers. When moving a stack over to a choice piece of real estate, 9 times out of ten even if the workers are out of movement points the scout/explorer isn't. Simply give the scout/explorer the work command and the stack will start working next turn without further orders. Scouts are ok for protecting your workers against barbarians until you can free up a warrior or other unit, to use as 'markers' for good city locations and/or to escort your settlers to that location. In this way, I've ended many a game with at least 4 or 5 seasoned explorers in my employ.

Parking ironclads on your valuable sea resources discourages piracy nicely.

I wasn't too happy with the Celtic UU. I'll have to try them again.



"Kaylee! Find that boy that's taking a dirtnap with baby Jesus!
We need a hood ornament....and Jayne, try not to steal too much of their ****!!!

- Serenity Outtakes -

My pick is the ironclad. They're not quite versatile enough. You really have to dig to find a reason to favor them. They do look cool, though. They're kinda like the Jaguars of the seas.

The warrior. The most useless unit ever because you usually get bronzeworking in the very beginning of the game, which lets you have spearmen. Also the musketeer.

I was about to jump on the dump the warrior bandwagon then I recalled the countless times they have either saved by butt or help create a early attack/choke force. This is done by upgrading them to spear and axemen. They are lot cheaper then axemen or spearmen to produce. The downside is the cost to upgrade. With tribual villages you can usual collect enough cash to upgrade 2-4 warriors fairly easily. If playing without tribual villages about 1-2 warriors can be upgraded easily by reducing research rate temporary in a crunch. Small window but can give that early advantage for the all important start.

Quite often I will produce warriors with the aim to upgrading to either spear or axemen early in the game if I get some cash. Having 2-4 warriors early in the game to upgrade as soon as you can connect either bronze or iron can turn a game. Have them positioned at the front of you culture boarders as you connect your metal resource and they have a running head start to your enemies cities.

As for explorers I rarely bother with producing them from ancient starts. They can be useful as medics. For some later era starts early on they can be useful to block workers from connecting up resources or set up sentry posts on forest hills.

I would vote for the Aztec Jaguar if unique units are also allowed for the most useless unit. They are are weakened swordmen that have defence bonus in jungle that doesnt require a resource. Very situatioal and very weak unit for the cost. Infact the explorer almost matches it against Jaguar for cost/strength and has more mobility.

By the time I've researched Iron Working I'll usualy have produced a settler to dash for the nearest metal if I didnt acquire bronze working. In a crunch I may place the settler directly on the resource and upgrade those "useless warriors" ASAP.


Cheers,

FunkyMonkee:crazyeye:

Ironclads are also very useless and musketeers seem to have a very very small window of usefullness and even then knights and macemen seem to perform better.

Garrison 2 musketmen are quite effective in my experience, but I'm only playing up to Prince so far.

Garrison 2 musketmen are quite effective in my experience, but I'm only playing up to Prince so far.

Musketmen are annoying defenders because they are only slightly better than longbows which get an automatic 50% city defence bonus. In a city on a hill, the longbow is a better defender. They can't get a city raider promotion so they aren't good attackers against longbows.

Musketmen have a short window before grenadiers which are a better attacker and defender. At standard speeds, the short window when they are marginally the best defender just doesn't justify their production.

Musketmen are annoying defenders because they are only slightly better than longbows which get an automatic 50% city defence bonus. In a city on a hill, the longbow is a better defender.

And the musketman can actually counterattack.

Musketmen are annoying defenders because they are only slightly better than longbows which get an automatic 50% city defence bonus. In a city on a hill, the longbow is a better defender. They can't get a city raider promotion so they aren't good attackers against longbows.

Actually, I like the unit itself. It is the way musketmen are obsolete too quickly that bothers me (many other people, you too, I believe). Musketmen are good defenders despite the mentioned facts, good for stack defence too. And if the way cultural and wall defense bonuses work is changed, they might gain more strategic use (that is highly unlikely, though).

Let's just note that I dislike the movement bonus to Musketeers. It's too little, perhaps a free promotion or something would work better. Just look at the Janissary - it is huge against a +1 to movement!

I would say Musketman is much more useful than "explorer". Then again I don't usually have a lot of open borders.

I think that the most useless unit is really a sort of situational thing. In a game where everything is going right, the big picks are always going to be the musketman, the ironclad, and the explorer. And some styles of play, starts, and maps are suited to where one or the other might not be needed.

Let's say I get amazing land and I don't need to do much scouring the globe. Then I don't have much use for an explorer, and hence it is the most useless unit to me. Or if I'm a technology juggernaut, then the window of time where a musketman is relevant is too small. You blink, you miss it. Or the ironclad. Let's say I'm landlocked, or that I have oil. Then it's not really that useful of a unit for me.

The same holds true viceversa. If resources are a problem, then an ironclad might be for you. On the other hand, if you've got terrible land or you're playing Terra, then explorers aren't terrible units to have. And if you need something to beef up your stack, then maybe you might use a musketman or two.

So maybe the question asked ought to be what is the least useful unit to you and why?

So maybe the question asked ought to be what is the least useful unit to you and why?

The least useful unit to me is the nuclear warhead. I have actually never built one. The AI tends to vote them out if they ever get in charge of the UN anyway.

The least useful unit to me is the nuclear warhead. I have actually never built one. The AI tends to vote them out if they ever get in charge of the UN anyway.

I would have to agree with that. I have built one, once, months ago just to try it out - and I used World Builder for that.:D

But aside from that, I would say that musketeer is pretty near the top of the list, mainly because he is not that much better than any previous unit, and he usually have a pretty short lifespan before you get something better.

The unit that probably spends the most time available without me building any is the explorer. Though, I've probably built fewer ironclads on the whole. I'd say, as others would seem to agree, that it's a toss-up between those two. Interestingly, I just realized that I have not actually built any modern armor in over 9 months now. Same goes for nukes, stealth bombers, jet fighters, and mechanized infantry. I produced all of them in my first 2-3 games, but haven't had a need for them since.

Let's just note that I dislike the movement bonus to Musketeers. It's too little, perhaps a free promotion or something would work better. Just look at the Janissary - it is huge against a +1 to movement!

Musketeers are easily as good as Janissaries. If you think muskets have a short lifespan, Musketeers at least have the luxury of being able to get there to cause some trouble for your enemy. And it can mean big trouble for him of you do this right.

Janissaries are great on paper, and if you are more advanced, you can pretty much move about unopposed for a while. But they do have a counter - muskets. The enemy might start building muskets of his own soon, and then you can no longer consider your Janisaries invincible. And they don't have the mobility to always contribute very much before this happens.

Come to think of it, isn't the Musketeer the best possible counter to the Janissary in the advent of gunpowder?

I say carrier is the worst. I agree with the first poster that spoke against carriers, but I also would like to ass their most significant failing is the inability to carry bombers of any sort, and fighter type aircraft just aren't good enough for that role. Also, the small capacity even of fighters is woeful as well, which could easily make up for lack of bombers otherwise. So what would you say 1 fighter unit is roughly the equivalent of? 10 fighters? Even light carriers in WWII could carry 30 planes, but I guess these are supposed to be fleet carriers, which in most navies was a bare minimum of 50-60 planes, with many of them ranging in the 70-100.

Unlike the ironclad, it can't even defend a sea resource in it's own era.

Musketeers are easily as good as Janissaries. If you think muskets have a short lifespan, Musketeers at least have the luxury of being able to get there to cause some trouble for your enemy. And it can mean big trouble for him of you do this right.

Janissaries are great on paper, and if you are more advanced, you can pretty much move about unopposed for a while. But they do have a counter - muskets. The enemy might start building muskets of his own soon, and then you can no longer consider your Janisaries invincible. And they don't have the mobility to always contribute very much before this happens.

Come to think of it, isn't the Musketeer the best possible counter to the Janissary in the advent of gunpowder?

This just makes beelining Gunpowder the most important task for an ottoman player, its doable on Monarch perhaps even on Emperor...

The competitiveness between janissaries and musketeers is very hard to judge because of their short timespan. Until (if ever) Firaxis decides to fix that I can't say how they relate.

However, in terms of value, I consider the janissary bonus much better than musketeers. Even after the enemy discovers Gunpowder, he will have a lot unupgraded units and jans will cut through them like knife through butter (is there such an expression in English or am I just being funny?:)). Jans can get pinch promotion to get an edge or at least be even with other musket units, they don't have an actual counter.

2 movement and 9 strenght is cool but you already have knights with 10 str. Sure, knights are mounted units with effective counters but is adding a musketman with 2 mov really that beneficial? You can pillage easier, but it won't help you fight your battles as would a janissary's bonus agains everything except gunpowder. That was my point :)

Artillery...slow moving junk. If I need to take down city defences I use air or naval power.

2 movement and 9 strenght is cool but you already have knights with 10 str. Sure, knights are mounted units with effective counters but is adding a musketman with 2 mov really that beneficial? You can pillage easier, but it won't help you fight your battles as would a janissary's bonus agains everything except gunpowder. That was my point :)

An extra move is really cool for almost any land unit. And like you said, there's no hard counter to muskets, with only other muskets as a counter unit (not considering promotions here). So Musketeers really only need to worry about knights, and terrain defense can help with that.

Let's put it this way: the Janissary is good as a main assault unit while the Musketeer is more versatile and offers more support/auxillary capabilities. The latter is also good for cleanup.

I made a thread about beelining to Gunpowder for a Musketeer rush sometime ago. I guess it can be applied to the Janissary. But that thread was talking about an Industrious Napoleon who could attempt CS slingshot (to open up Paper and then Education, which is the faster way there) with a very high chance of success on Emperor. Given the fact that neither the Warlords Napoleon nor Mehmed is Industrious, I think these musket UUs would most likely have to contend with enemy muskets by the time they are built. It makes their lifespan even shorter, and you have to be clever and creative to put them to good use. However, they are still much better than UUs like Jaguar or Camel Archer.

Actually, I like these units that get an extra movement bonus. Even though the Janissaries are on paper the stronger(est?) units, I've used musketeers before with some great success. I have yet to play Warlords, but you can use musketeers to go pillaging. Seeing as how they're so stubborn and difficult to counter, sending them in with knights to go pillaging can really cripple an enemy.

I play exclusively MP, and most of the time Terra or Archipelago, and Explorers are quite useful under those circumstances. Even so, I have to agree with most people that the Musketman/Explorer/Ironclad triple are the least useful units (though I've used all of them with great success, but not very often).

My most useless unit is:

ICBM

It comes too late to really decide the game, and it's very easy to defend against. On top of that, it's quite expensive.

Also, Carriers are definitely not among the most useless units. Adding a Carrier to each group of Battleships/Destroyers gives you a serious edge over the opponent. Most human players will have Drydock Battleships, and modern naval battles almost always come down to 50/50 attacks. Just one single airstrike will give you a 65-75 % chance to win those battles, and that's a serious advantage in MP games. By using cities as airbases, every now and then the fighters effectively lose a turn rebasing instead of attacking. Also, it limits the radius in which your fleet can operate. In Civ IV, Carriers aren't as expensive as in Civ I-III either.

must agree that carriers have some use. A double use in fact.

A carrier with 3 fighters can very effectively spot an enemy fleet coming and so let you cut it's road and sink those transports.
How would you do recon, without fighters on enemy land? how would you bring fighters in range for recon without carriers?

+ second use : is what dronten said: once a fighter has spotted an enemy fleet, the other fighters will damage the defensive boats, letting your boats close in for the kill.

While not 100% useless, I very rarely build carriers.

How would you do recon, without fighters on enemy land? how would you bring fighters in range for recon without carriers?

I find spies do just as well, and they aren't vulnerable to attack.

As with many people the explorer comes stone last. When constructed there's never anything left to explore unless it's a Terra map. Ironclads similarly I find of minimal use, though I might occasionally park them on top of seafood resources. Their inability to keep up with enemy frigates leaves there better strength rather academic for attacking purposes.

While not 100% useless, I very rarely build carriers.



I find spies do just as well, and they aren't vulnerable to attack.

playstyle...
I never (well almost never) build spies;) + the recon from spies is better in cities (entering city screen!) but it has a very small line of sight... even more so on the sea :lol:

As with many people the explorer comes stone last. When constructed there's never anything left to explore unless it's a Terra map. Ironclads similarly I find of minimal use, though I might occasionally park them on top of seafood resources. Their inability to keep up with enemy frigates leaves there better strength rather academic for attacking purposes.
well, for explorers i have no argument. It's a waste to build those IMHO. They don't even count as a defensive unit in your city for happiness purpose!

But high level ironclads can be cool! i just finished a warlords game where i built 2 of those (could have used more, but needed gallions which go better with frigates), which gave me an edge on my bad tempered neighbout (stalin) : i sank his frigates and gallions with ease, with my 4 moves ironclads (navigation 1 and 2!).

playstyle...
I never (well almost never) build spies;) + the recon from spies is better in cities (entering city screen!) but it has a very small line of sight... even more so on the sea :lol:


The idea with the spy relative to spotting sea movements is that you park him in the enemy's major port. When the enemy ships are no longer there, that's your clue to intercept.

Musketmen are quite formidible with the protective trait. I have launched succesful attacks on marathon speed with regular musketmen and completely annihilated the AI with janisarries.

Explorers are very useful in multiplayer games, but completely suck in SP.

I rarely ever build air units, since I am usually going for space victory by that time. It just takes to long to get to flight when I could already have done major damage with infantry, tanks, and marines. However, they can be useful in very tight modern era games.

That leaves the three most useless units: Ironclad, carrier, and machine gunner. I never build any of these, except the ironclad occasionaly to guard sea resources (its only use). Air units are not useful enough to even justify building carriers, so they get my vote for the worst unit.

So what would you say 1 fighter unit is roughly the equivalent of? 10 fighters?

The U.S produced over 300 000 aircraft during WWII...

I'd estimate that one fighter unit equals a WWII fighter group, around 200 planes.
1 carrier might be more than 1 ship too.

Ill agree that musketman aren't all crap. Besides, one can beeline for gunpowder while bypassing longbowmen too. However I would always in this circumstance move on to chemistry directly. But in case I needed a few techs to get that, I might build a few.

Machinegunners - you might find a use for 1-2 in an empire

Carrier - never built, but they might have a certain use too. If naval combat was more realistic, or true to real-world practises it would of course be one of the best units. Naval combat is sadaly still a joke - to stop enemy shipping you need to form a SOLID barrier on the SEA. If they ever made a battle of britain scenario it would end quite differently from what happened in real life...Germans could simply sail past the spread-out fleet (or mabye hammer one square with bombers + one destroyer) and then happily sail past and unload 20 divisions on british soil. Wonder how they managed to avoid sea-zones of control and passive interdiction in the game.

Ironclad - hm Ive built one, when I had circumcision bonus. Still slow and it was painful to see the juicy enemies withdraw to open seas and taunt me. Yeap, these get my vote. Also somewhat because they had little impact in real world history (apart from being the forerunner to battleships/dreadnaughts...hm thats actually a big impact).

Hmm...I must say this thread is actually very useful, though I thought it was not when I first read it. As has been said by many, all these units have great utility in the right situation, but realizing how short the useful life of musket men is has saved me a lot of time and gold. I used to use Explorers in Civ3 as quick sacrificial pillagers of key resources or sometimes in a pillaging stack to cut off the capital from the rest of the target AI. There extra movement allowed them to pillage and then run back to the slow moving stack. Cutting all trade to the capital would end all foreign trade of strategic resources, but I don't know if this still works in Civ4. Anybody know?

...circumcision bonus...

Ouch! Unless I started the game with that bonus, I think I'd pass.

Rofl ..........

Ironclad's suck... I once had a frigate attacking then retreating out of my shore line bombing my city repeatedly until my on frigates appeared on the screen...
I think carriers have a purpose when you’re on a continental map and separated by oceans. The point is to get two or three attacks on enemy transports and escorts then sink them with your healthy fleet before they can land on your shore... this also give you a chance to preposition your troops of they manage to get on shore.

If you're going for a spaceship victory, you may want to put off researching astronomy till the last moment, because it obliterates the Colossus (and Scientific Method behind it obliterates the Great Library, so you may want to put off researching that path).

In THAT situation, where you are very advanced but don't have galleons or frigates, ironclads are your only defence on the sea. I played this way in GOTM 10, and I can attest that it is a great pleasure to blow a wooden ship out of the water with an ironclad. I should note that they wouldn't be much use against a human opponent, since the galleons and frigates could simply sail outside the edge of your cultural border, and only enter it when they get an opportunity to plunder some fish or drop off some units. But against the AI they are effective.

I like the ironclad. For me, naval warfare tends to be "facing all the enemy frigates who want to pillage my workboats while my army smashes holy hell out of them on land" or just "send out a massive lightly-defended fleet that declares war just offshore, dumps masses of units next to a major city, then makes a run for home followed by the soon-to-be-pillaging frigates". That's where ironclads are damn useful, because they don't even need to move very much and they're more economical than just frigate-v-frigate attrition. I've used them quite a bit.
And of course if Ragnar gets his hands on them, 4 or 5 movement ironclads are pretty nice :D

My vote for most useless has to go to the poor old jaguar. I LOVE the very similar Gallic Warrior, but I have utterly failed to do anything much with the jag. There's a VERY small window where the no-resource thing means a rush might work if the enemy hasn't connected copper, but it only really takes a single axeman to stop them dead in their tracks. You're still going to need horses or copper for dealing with axemen (including barbarian axemen), which kind of defeats the resourcelessness thing. And how often do you not get copper, iron OR horses anyway? Sure you can also rush them straight out of captured cities, but any decent assault is going to involve combat engineers very quickly building roads to the front lines anyway. The unpillageability is nice, but jags+archers are barely going to stop mounted units and especially axes from going through your empire like a hot knife through butter anyway.
Unlike Gallics with Guerrilla, Woodsman II doesn't help the jag that much because they really just don't have the strength to properly exploit it.
Oh yeah, and if you beeline Iron Working, you can pretty much say goodbye to any chances of an early religion too.
Worse, if you beeline Code of Laws to get the earthshatteringly-good Sacrificial Altar (which I think is a better tactic for Monty), you'll just about be at the point where you could really use the extra punch of the swordsman against their cities. The cheapness almost works against them too, since you lose a bunch of production (and effort) if you micromanage production to use two population per whip. I once made a custom Monty without an early UU, and he was a ferocious thing to behold once those altars were up.
It's a real shame because they look so cool, especially with those animations.

Submarines are crap. Their counterunits (destroyers) are extremely common and move faster, and they lack the bombardment value of destroyers and battleships.

Hell, any naval unit that can't carry troops is pretty much worthless. I mean, as long as there is no real blockading and transports are completely safe while docked in a city (or moving between cities in a single turn), warships are almost completely pointless. Frigates or battleships bombarding a city is nice sometimes, but rarely matters and is a huge investment to make it anywhere near effective. Getting your fishing nets pillaged is annoying, but that's usually all it is; an annoyance. The replacement cost of the workboat is considerably less than the cost of the warship you'd have to build to protect it.

On the other hand, try running and supplying a transcontinental invasion or playing on archipelago with no ships...

As for fishing boats, it's not just the hammers for the boat you're protecting, it's the food and health they supply during the turns they'd otherwise be down.

On the other hand, try running and supplying a transcontinental invasion or playing on archipelago with no ships...
Well, you can't do it with no ships. But, it can certainly be done, and rather easily I might add, without any warships.

As for fishing boats, it's not just the hammers for the boat you're protecting, it's the food and health they supply during the turns they'd otherwise be down.
Then, if you prefer, build the replacement ahead of time. You're still out fewer hammers than if you'd built a warship simply for protection.

I do like to be able to move fresh troops to the enemy continent without getting them sunk on unescorted galleons/transports.

Also, if an enemy boat comes and sinks your fish and camps on it for the duration of the war as they like to do, you are out 3 food per turn for the duration of the war, say over 25 turns; 75 food is worth more than the price of a warship before even taking the replacement fishing boat into account.

I know it's been said a lot by now, but Explorers.

Which is a shame. I'd really like to use Explorers because they seem like they'd be amazingly useful REAL EARLY IN THE GAME, but who the hell runs across undeveloped land of any real size by the time you get Compass technology? Even as Carthage, I don't develop Compass until well into the Classical Age, sometimes even the Rennaisance.

Explorers should have been made available with horseback riding, IMHO. They'd still be rarely used, unless you were a horse-loving civ, but at least they'd have a use.

Also, if an enemy boat comes and sinks your fish and camps on it for the duration of the war as they like to do, you are out 3 food per turn for the duration of the war, say over 25 turns; 75 food is worth more than the price of a warship before even taking the replacement fishing boat into account.

Even worse, a couple of enemy ships hanging around one of your coastal cities can completely cut off ALL coast/sea tiles, resulting in starvation for a sea-dependent city. Moreover, you can use the same tactic on your enemy, planting a couple of ships in their waters to slow or reverse their city growth.

In my current game, where 2/3 of my cities depend on water tiles for much of their food AND commerce (financial/colossus), allowing enemy triremes to enter my waters would have been disastrous.

I haven't built a single transport vessel as yet, but the production of triremes and caravels to achieve naval superiority has been a vital part of my war strategy. These ships have helped to keep my cities profitable and whip-ready, gained vital information on enemy troop numbers and movements, and blockaded enemy cities to starve them (which, as well as reducing their commerce and production, makes the resistance disappear more quickly once they're taken).

If you're going for a spaceship victory, you may want to put off researching astronomy till the last moment, because it obliterates the Colossus (and Scientific Method behind it obliterates the Great Library, so you may want to put off researching that path).

In THAT situation, where you are very advanced but don't have galleons or frigates, ironclads are your only defence on the sea. I played this way in GOTM 10, and I can attest that it is a great pleasure to blow a wooden ship out of the water with an ironclad... against the AI they are effective.

i'd never thought of that! i often put off astonomy if my economy is doing okay (since it does limit some trading opportunities), and sci method, for those reasons and for monasteries. great idea, thanks!

maybe....in my opinion
modern armor and mechanized infantry

because you never be able tech to it -_-'

If you're going for a spaceship victory, you may want to put off researching astronomy till the last moment, because it obliterates the Colossus.

Make this decision carefully...the increased trading from Astronomy can add up to a ton of extra commerce. If your cities are all trading domestically because you conquered your continent and don't have Astronomy, you could be really hurting your research rate.

Also, if you end up researching a tech you could have picked up trading with someone across the globe, that's just throwing beakers away. Even if the civs across the ocean won't trade a tech with you, it becomes cheaper to research that tech simply because you have met them.

The Colossus bonus is very simple and visible, but Astronomy is usually worth more if you add up all the side effects.

Bears. All they do is eat up your precious early units.

I'd vote to take machine guns off the candidates for "most useless unit" title. Previously, I had always ignored them and bee-lined to get Infantry, which I thought were superior in every regard. Following some tips from another thread, I built some in my recent game and they made quite a difference. In particular, they greatly improved the ability of my stacks to survive against multiple cannon/artillery bombardments because they don't take collateral damage. With first strikes, they also last much longer than you might expect when considering their strength alone.

I'd estimate that building 2 machine guns per stack can speed up any war effort by 10-20%.

Bears. All they do is eat up your precious early units.

If only you could capture them and use them to eat enemy units. Or, if playing as Russia, force them to dance for added happiness in your cities (although only when using the 'Animal Cruelty' civic, of course).

hm Ive built one, when I had circumcision bonus.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

On a more serious note, every unit can be useful. Ironclads and machinegunners are huge advantages if you get them at the right time, i.e. when your opponent is still running around with frigates and riflemen. Not being able to attack is weak, but if you need some quick defense in the industrial era, the machinegun is useful. It also comes with railroads, which you should be going for anyway. Granted they don't last very long, but every little bit helps.

If I had to vote, my vote goes to explorers. Never used them as a medic because I usually have some ancient unit lying around thats full on medic promotions. I don't think I have ever built a single explorer in the bajillion civ games I've played.

If only you could capture them and use them to eat enemy units. Or, if playing as Russia, force them to dance for added happiness in your cities (although only when using the 'Animal Cruelty' civic, of course).

I suddenly had a wild 'Open Season' game idea, where you control nothing but bears and the objective of the game is to find and kill all enemy scouts on the map. I'm sure this is pretty easy to set up with the worldbuilder. Of course, you must activate "Require Complete Kills".