I find the Jaguar rather an underused UU and wanted to give it a try in my last few Immortal games. Now, I am convinced that it really is a horrible UU. :-) So I am proposing a way to fix it. Once we have consensus, I want to send Firaxis an e-mail with hopes of them making Jaguar better. Here is the poll:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6380966

The conclusion I reach at the end of the article is the following, read the article for a detailed analysis:

Improve the woodsman II and/or III skill by improving the city attack odds of Jaguars; ie. give attack bonus when attacking cities. Right now, Woodsman III is not a warmonger trait. It has to be something like Guerilla III with %50 withdrawal chance and +%25 hill city attack. Something like %30-50 CityRaider in addition to the already good combat skills + 2 Free Strikes and +%50 Jungle Attack.


Look at Brennus or Brennus and Boudica. Their UU is very similar to the Jaguar of the Aztecs, so let's compare the two swordsman-based racial units. Praetorian of the Romans is also a swordman based UU. I will also add the basic swordsman unit to the comparison to get a better idea what is won and what is lost with the special UU skills.

Lastly, comparison of the 4 units must take into account under which circumstances they come to play, the map type, and the actual usage of the swordsman unit in human vs. AI battles.

How important is being resourceless for an UU?

Jaguars production does not require Iron to be hooked up, but at what cost? Iron is plently on most maps types, especially in most commonly used climate types. In most of my Immortal games on Pangea Temperate climate maps, almost all AIs had Iron in their proximity. I opened many maps with the world editor and almost all have Iron somewhere not further than 8-10 squares of the starting location.

Furthermore, the AI rarely searches for IronWorking first and does not know the location of the Iron before you do. Hence, the probability of him settling the Iron is rather low. Even if it settled the Iron by chance, you still could do an immense archer or chariot rush to capture the Iron city and switch to swordman-based unit production.

Therefore, the only good things about not requiring Iron are:

1) No need to research the wheel to hook up the Iron. A minimal plus considering you will need Wheel technology anyway to hook up other resources and to grow your city.
2) No turns wasted in hooking up the Iron with workers. Hooking up Iron would mean:

a) settling your city near the Iron (you would have settled near the Iron anyway to take advantage of the +3 hammer bonus, so it makes little sense not wanting to settle near the Iron)
b) Time required to build the mine=12 turns in Marathon (again negligible, you would have mined the Iron anway to take advantage of the hammer production bonus)
c) hooking up with roads, approximately 6-12-18 turns with a single worker. I am only counting the time lost connecting the Iron to one city, because you would have connected the 2 cities with roads anyway to create a trade route.

In conclusion, while on theory being resourceless might sound historically correct, cool, and good looking, in CivIV practice, being resourceless is an extremely poor bonus, definitely not worth in explaining why some UU gets a strength reduction.

P.S. The Gallic warrior unit can be built with both Bronze and Iron, thanks to MadScientist for pointing this out. I believe same reasoning on being resourceless can be applied to Gallic warrior as well. Being built with Bronze as well as Iron is not a particularly important skill for an UU.

When do humans use Swordsman units against the AI? Combat comparison during the siege of the AI capital.

To make a solid comparison between the different swordsman units, we must consider the uses of the swordsman.

Well, obviously to beat the AI you need to capture their cities, in particular their highly populated capital. Sitting in forest and jungles nearby the enemy city will not lure the defenders out. Now that the AI has gotten smarter with the 3.13 patch and its slavery usage, to capture highly defended cities, City Raider promotion has become ever important. While it might sound cool to block the enemy forest production tiles, the reality is if you have upgraded Woodsman II for the speed bonus on your jaguars and parked your large stack of Jaguars near enemy capital quickly, with only 5 strength and no upgrades on CityRadier I&II due to your promotion choice of Woodsman II, you will suffer much larger casualities than the CityRadier I&II promotion path.

Furthermore, it makes little sense to use Jaguars on a desert/foodplain filled surrounding. Their usability is limited to forest&jungle rich environments. It is very common for the AI to chop the forests around its capital, thus you won't have much advantage in attacking.

Well, if the city raider promotion path is so much better at city raiding compared to the Woodsman promotion path, then what that is the point of choosing the 5 strengh Jaguar instead of the regular Swordsman unit? Crippling their economy might some of you say, but fact is when you try to cripple the economy of 1 AI with a huge stack outside of your cultural boundries, you end up crippling your economy more than theirs. Besides, the AI you are attacking probably is not the only AI out there. You want to finish off the war as soon as possible and start building on the new land you acquired.

Take for example a basic fortified archer at enemy capital. I will also add the city cultural defense or walls bonus, because bringing catapults would make the Woodman II quick sneak through forests useless. More important is that you will need expensive techs to start building the catapults. Bringing spies could work, but again has the disadvantage of Alphabet requirement. In most of my Immortal games, I delay Alphabet and get IW first in order to locate the iron and produce a sizeable army.

(+40% Cultural Bonus(or +50% Walls bonus) +50% Unit City Defense+25% Fortification defense- (+10% Jaguar City attack))=%105 I am not even counting the first strike on the archer. If the Jaguar has an extra promotion, say CityRaider I, then the %105 would go down to 85.

3strength on Archer*(1+1.05)=6.15 vs 5.5 strengh Jaguar through Combat I
3strength on Archer*(1+0.85)=5.55 vs 5.5 strengh Jaguar through Combat I

Approximately %40-50 winning chances not counting the first strike, similar odds if the Jaguar has CityRadier I promotion as well. To win at such odds against a capital city of 5-7 defenders, you will need to bring at least 15 Woodsman II Jaguars and expect to lose more than half of them, significantly crippling your conquest advance.

Adding Woodsman III to the mix would not change the odds much either, because as discussed earlier, Woodsman III is not a great skill at city capturing.

Now let's compare the Gallic Warrior. Take Brennus for example, because both Montezuma and Brennus are spiritual. Celtic leaders are also charismatic, a multitask trait, highly superiour to the warmonger only aggressive. To simplify things and make this discussion easier, I would argue that there is no difference between the regular Swordsman unit and the Gallic Warrior when capturing cities assuming if both of them are CityRaider I&II upgraded.

A Gallic Warrior with City Raider I&II reduces the AI city defenses by %50. %105-50=%55.
3*(1+0.55)=4.65 effective archer strengh vs. 6 of the Gallic Warrior.

5.55 effective archer strength vs 5.5 Jaguar or
4.65 effective archer strength vs 6 of the Gallic Warrior. The odds of winning are much higher with the Gallic Warrior, not only that, once a few battles are won, due to the Charismatic trait, some Gallic warriors will gain lvl 3 city raider quicker than the Jaguar counterparts, making further conquest much easier through -100% city defenses.

Now, lets have a final look at the praetorian, because some might argue Jaguars are not to be used at city capturing, some might say they are good a forest ambush and pillaging. Praetorians have an effective combat 3 promotion when they are produced. 6+2(%33 strengh increase=combat lvl III). They don't have the +10% city attack bonus, but it is really negligible assuming you will upgrade your praetorians to CityRaider II&III anyway. Their base strength makes them a much more versatile unit than the Jaguar, because core strength gives good fighting odds at all battle situations.

Vs an archer during city siege, Praetorians get approximately 4.65 vs 8, a ridicilously good odd compared to the poor jaguar. Since your win/loss ratio will be very high with Praetorians, you will get a quick General and begin to have a large CityRaider II&III upgraded army very early on. Then, you can capture any commerce rich capital you like and force the AI to capitulation. You also don't have to search the techs necessary to build Spies or Catapults.

Here is further data for the comparison:

Production cost:

Hammers required (normal speed):
Jaguar-> 35,
Gallic Warrior->40
Praetorian->45
Swordsman->40

Hammers required (marathon speed):
Jaguar-> 70,
Gallic Warrior->80
Praetorian->90
Swordsman->80

Conclusion on cost discussion:

With the same hammer production of 5040, you can produce 72 Jaguars, 63 Gallic Warriors and Swordsman, or 56 Praetorians. To make more sense out of these numbers, I will scale them to my average army size near 2000-1000 BC. I can produce 14 Jaguars, 12 Swordsman, or 11 Praetorians with the same hammer production.

The fact jaguars are slightly cheaper than Praetorians or regular Swordsman is not enough to compansate for the fact that less of them will be able to win during a city siege; therefore leading to less number of CityRaider II&III promoted troops. Once you have a limited number of good city attackers, your advances will be severely crippled. Your economy will not be able to recover as quickly, because you will be forced to support your huge number of losing Jaguars. Oh, I forgot to add that each extra Jaguar costs 1 more gold to the treasury.

Basically, while it might be cheap and you can mass them rather quickly, once you start losing your huge hammer investment during AI capital siege, you will realize Jaguars are one of the worst UUs in the game.

Strength:

Jaguar-> 5, with Montezuma's aggressive trait and free Combat I promotion 5.5
Gallic Warrior->6, Celtic leaders are Charismatic leading to easier promotions. Boudica is even Aggressive making Gallic Warrior a 6.6 strength unit
Praetorian->8, +2 strength for a total of 8 (basically a %33 strenth bonus, effectively a Combat lvl I, II, and III bonus) If perceived as 3 seperate promotions, this 33% increase in strength makes understanding why Praetorions are much stronger. The %10 city attack bonus is lost, but Praetorians are teched for City Raider II&III anway, making the loss of bonus unimportant.
Swordsman->6

Special promotions:

Jaguar-> Woodsman I, +10% CityAttack,
Gallic Warrior->Guerilla I, +10% CityAttack,
Praetorian-> Roman leaders are Imperialistic, thus with an early Great General and Barracks, you can start producing CityRaider I&II troops right from the start. However, Praetorians don't get the +10% CityAttack bonus other swordsman based units get.
Swordsman-> +10%CityAttack.

According to this following strength and usability comparison, praetorians are overpowered with an effective %33 strength bonus at 8 strength. They should have Combat I&II bonus instead and keep the +10% City Attack bonus other Swordsman get. Consequently, they would lose some of their versatile strength and be more balanced. But such change would create the problem of extending the intended high strength to all eras of the game, since the combat I&II bonus will carry after upgrades. Praetorians should probably be 7 strength(%15 strengh increase) and regain their +10% CityAttack bonus.

Furthermore, the synergy of City Raider promotion with the already high strength of Praetorian is what makes it so powerful. In order for other UUs become as successful, the synergies of the alternative promotions to the CityRaider Promotion must be as strong as the synergy of the Preatorian CityRaider II&III synergy.

Since in most games the turning point revolves around capturing critical cities, it makes sense to include city attack enhancing promotions to lvl III Guerilla and Woodman promotions. For example, %50 withdrawal is a great promotion for lvl III Guerilla. A similar approach should be taken with the Jaguar Woodsman II&III promotions. Right now, Jaguar promotions are not aimed for city conquest.

Jaguar potential promotions:

Woodsman lvl II, +30% on Jungle&Forest Defense, double movement on Jungle&Forests.
Woodsman lvl III, +2FirstStrikes,%15healing of units in same tile, and %50 Jungle&Forest attack (basically nullifying the terrain defense bonus so you can attack enemy SOD stacks in the jungle&forests as well. Unfortunately, when you attack cities, this bonus is useless since when a city is settled jungle or forest are automatically chopped. Even if jungle or forests were not automatically chopped, it would have little sense, because the AI could chop the city main square and make the lvl III forest&jungle bonus useless when attacking. Compare this attack bonus to the bonus Celtic Warrior gets at Guerilla III.

+2First Strikes are cool skill, but definitely not as strong as %50 withdrawal change the Gallic Warrior gets. Healing is great as well, but they won't increase your odds of winning battles. Compared to the Gallic Warrior, the Praetorian or even the standard Swordsman, the reduction in strength to 5 cannot be compansated by the +15% healing rate. They will only make the regeneration 2-3 turns quickler, you will lose actually more amount of units when attacking the city due to the strength reduction.

Gallic Warrior potential promotions:

Guerilla lvl II, +30 on Hills defense, double movement on hills
Guerilla lvl III, +50 Withdrawal chance (great offensive skill that will cut your loses by %50), and +25% Hills attack( basically when you attack a unit on the hill, his terrain defense bonus is nullified) Some cities are settled on hills or some maps have more hills than others, thus Guerilla lvlIII is a great offensive skill, an alternative to perhaps even City Raider I and II. Still, unless specifically aiming to target a city on hills, I would rather go with the regular CityRadier I,II&III upgrades, since it makes a more versalite unit for later on.


SUGGESTIONS TO FIX THE JAGUAR:

Well, if the goal is to fix the Jaguar by bring it to a similar level at least to that of Gallic Warrior, his strengh in attacking cities must be increased.

The simplest solution I can think of would be to increase the basic +10% City Attack bonus by %20 to atleast %30. Or maybe even give a free City Raider I promotion, but it could be abused quite easily, by massing huge numbers of CR III promoted Jaguars and upgrading later to a strong CRIII maceman army.

Alternatively, all Jaguars should start with Combat lvl I&II. Having both combat lvl I & II would make them effectively a 6 strength unit. This fix does not make much sense, because it makes no reason to reduce UU strength to 5 only to increase it later with combat I&II. It also has the risk of extending the combat II advantage to other eras through units upgrading. Thus, making the Jaguar a 6 strengh unit just like the Gallic warrior sounds like a better idea than giving a Combat II promotion.

The usage of swordsmen in human vs. AI battles in mainly in capturing cities, thus I am more symphatetic for solutions that will make the Jaguar a better City Raider. Having a low strength also definitely limits Jaguar life span and usability. Compared to Praetorians which have a life span of about 2000 years minimum, Jaguars become pretty useless after Feudalism due to Longbowman. If somehow their skills at city raiding were improved, even despite their low 5 strengh, they still would be a preferred choice at higher levels of CivIV play.

Thus, my final suggesting is the following:

Improve the woodsman II and/or III skill by improving the city attack odds of Jaguars; ie. give attack bonus when attacking cities. Right now, Woodsman III is not a warmonger trait. It has to be something like Guerilla III with 50% withdrawal chance and +25% hill city attack. Something like +25% CityRaider in addition to the already good combat skills + 2 Free Strikes and +50% Jungle Attack.

Let me know what you think of, and I hope Firaxis can finally fix this Jaguar issue.

Edit: CityRaider I gives +20% attack bonus, while CityRaider II gives +25%. Some math in the article was pointed out to be slightly inaccurate.

Woodsman III gives 2 first strikes, thats actually quite good for fighting. I don't think this promotion needs a buff, Jaguars just need to be 6 strength instead. (I have no idea why they are 5 in the first place...) When i attach generals to units, woodsman III promo is very efficient in keeping them alive to get a huge amount of other promos.

I agree, making it 6 strength like the Gallic warrior would be the simplest solution.

I agree with strength six - there are plenty of resourceless units that aren't weaker than the base unit.

The jaguar does have one special feature. With three promotions - 10xp - you can produce a woodsmen3medic1 unit which is a superb healer. Making a couple of these is enough justification for me for the UU - thats a benefit that lasts the whole game and is as good as a medic 3 which requires a great general.

I use jaguars down one of two lines -

- Woodsmen 2 - can move fast through the forest/jungle to pillage horses/metals. Good for capturing workers/settlers and general harrasment.

- City Raiders - where they are just as good as axes. More vulnerable to melee, less to chariots and less vulnerable on forests. Usually I will mix the stack with axes, but I can whip jaguars in cities that aren't connected yet which is a small plus.

Agreed as well, I think that previously Gallic Warrior had 5:strength: and was crappy. Not any longer now :goodjob:

So simply RAISE. JAGUAR. STRENGTH. TO SIX. Higher base strength gives better use of first strikes, and in the same time nullifies possible abusing of free promotions with upgrades.
With 6str and double movement in forest Aztec empire finally would be a true warmonger's love. And altars of course, let's not forget the altars :D

Only gripe with that is that poor Monty would become a public enemy no.1 then. With his unit-spam abilities he'd be REAALLY dangerous :trouble:

Ok with enough replies to this forum, I will send an e-mail to Firaxis to update the Jaguar strength.

Well I have a question. I will admit I didn't read that essay all the way so you may have brought it up. Monty is crazy and builds tons of these guys and attacks you all the time and non stop. Don't you think a beefed up jag that would be fun for you to play with, might make monty invincible as an ai? At least against other ai's? With his psycho war mongering, maybe that is the reason he was toned down a bit?

I think that simply increasing strength to 6 would make the jaguar too good unless its hammer cost was increased as well. Being resourceless is a huge advantage early in the game saving a lot of time and trouble with researching and building roads and cities. Being able to attack early with a highly mobile strength 6 unit will be overpowered as the AI will not have anything other than an archer or two defending even well established cities. Simply isolate those cities by breaking the roads and then send enough jaguars and maybe supporting axemen to take the defenders out.

If jaguars are good at attacking cities (which simply increasing the cost to 6 would make them), resourceless and highly mobile then their cost needs to be increased considerably, 40 hammers is probably not enough as they would then be much better than normal swordsmen let alone agressive swordsmen. The cost would probably have to be 45 hammers to stop them being as overpowered as praetorions. Monty is Agressive and that has to taken into account.

Right now jaguar warriors are significantly better at fast conquests of weak cities but are no better than swordsmen at sacking tough cities. The problem is the slow stack of cr2 jaguars rarely benefit from woodsman 1.

They are subpar pillagers compared to chariots.

At higher difficulties, you have no chance once they reach longbows, and you'll probably need catapults vs 40%-50% cities.

I say give them woodsmen 2 for free, then even upgraded to macemen they become useful. This is basically in line of what I hear about the civ 3 jaguars, broken fast moving terrors.

Woodsman 2 will make Jags too powerful in MP.

Jaguars are fine. If anything i would get rid of the woodsman and go back to the jungle only traverse of vanilla.

Jaguars could be abusive with 6 strength and the woodsman skill. Back in the day when I used to play MP, all sorts of massing early caused huge problems. I can understand why the strength is left at 5. It could cripple the enemy to a great extent if he has not chopped the forests around the few cities it has.

The problem is not so much that the Jaguar has less strength. It just suxs at city raiding if you choose the Woodsman promotion path. Upgrading for woodsman 2 leaves you without CR II for a long time.

That is why I suggest a boost to his city raiding skills, but I am not sure how. Increase the +10% city attack bonus to %30 maybe? Or make woodsman III include a city raiding skill as well. Gallic warriors with Guerilla III have +25% hills attack and %50 retreat chance.

If they were just 6 strength they would be fine imo. They are decent now and I wouldn't call them "horrible". At 6 strength they certainly wouldn't be better than the praetorian and they are in the game :mischief:

The UU is only a small part of a civ. The civs aren't completely balanced of course but you have to look at the whole picture not just the UU...

True, but Monty is nothing great imo. The UB is good his traits are average and his starting techs leave a lot to be desired imo.

Jaguars could be abusive with 6 strength and the woodsman skill. Back in the day when I used to play MP, all sorts of massing early caused huge problems. I can understand why the strength is left at 5. It could cripple the enemy to a great extent if he has not chopped the forests around the few cities it has.

The problem is not so much that the Jaguar has less strength. It just suxs at city raiding if you choose the Woodsman promotion path. Upgrading for woodsman 2 leaves you without CR II for a long time.

That is why I suggest a boost to his city raiding skills, but I am not sure how. Increase the +10% city attack bonus to %30 maybe? Or make woodsman III include a city raiding skill as well. Gallic warriors with Guerilla III have +25% hills attack and %50 retreat chance.

What I don't understand is why hill 3 will give you 50% retreat, but wood 3 won't.

The jaguar is one of the best units in the game....as every non resource requiring unit is...

Anyone who played against other humans would know.....

1. They do not require a resource....huge
2. They can get woodsman 2 promo straight away and race through these forests & jungles where no other unit of their era can touch them....(only the dogs maybe)

....imagine having 6 wodsman 2 jags (in pairs of 2), camped in 3 forests around your capital.....how would you counter that? ....basicaly your game is ruined.

To kill 2 fortified forest jags you need 6-8 shock promoted axes.....

Yes, fine for multiplayer, which changes a number of things of course (e.g., quechuas aren't so hot in multiplayer). But even then if someone fortified a couple jags on a forest near my capital (I would've chopped the ones RIGHT beside my capital asap) I would just leave them there until they decided to move. I don't see how it ends my game right away. If they move to pillage, I take them out. If they don't, they sit there until I can deal with them. I don't see how that ability makes them extremely powerful.

And frankly, woodsman 2 units might be able to race through wood/jungle to get to my capital, but they'll have a helluva time taking that capital relative to many other units.

Same goes with single player. Your only shot is being able to overwhelm the AI by racing your jags to the destination (which assumes a large amount of jungle/wood between you and them which is not always the case). However, you can overwhelm the AI with pretty much any unit.

The jag is better than I once thought, but nothing outstanding imo, and giving it strength 6 wouldn't make it an overpowered unit, especially not relative to some of the other UUs that are available.

I dont think its exactly fair to balance the game for both SP and MP in the exact same way. I wonder if there is an easy way to have separate traits (slightly, like in this case) for each.

Of course, such a thing would be a bit of a programming nightmare, I suppose, but if its possible, I think it would help both forms a lot.

That being said, I used Jags recently in vanilla to rush MM, and while decent, I had way more losses than I expected.

You can't kill them. You could try counterchoke, but wood III jags are actually decent in removing chokes.

I dont think its exactly fair to balance the game for both SP and MP in the exact same way. I wonder if there is an easy way to have separate traits (slightly, like in this case) for each.

Of course, such a thing would be a bit of a programming nightmare, I suppose, but if its possible, I think it would help both forms a lot.

That being said, I used Jags recently in vanilla to rush MM, and while decent, I had way more losses than I expected.

No. VirusMonster's comments are spot on marathon SP game. Quick MP game is the total opposite.

I also don't believe that a 6 strength Jag would create that many problems in SP, but definitely would create problems in MP. The ability to reliably whip out Jag reinforcements from newly conquered cities is a big deal.

They're not that terrible in SP anyways. Monte's Aggressive trait puts them up at +10% strength. With the right info, Cover or Shock could be taken with tactical considerations. The lower cost means an extra Jag at the site compared to normal Swordsmen. This can translate to a city being taken with one less defender (since you attack earlier) or a success where it would otherwise fail.

A normal Swordsman with a non-Aggressive Civ can be used to attack cities. I don't see why an Aggressive Jag would be any the less inferior for the purpose. Lower cost and non-Iron hookup translates to faster rushes and the Aggressive makes up the strength penalty.

Admittedly, at higher levels this would be significantly less valuable. Then again, at Immortal level, you occasionally completely skip over UU's to begin with, particularly awkwardly placed ones. If you're ready to completely NOT use a Civ's UU, I don't see where the Jag's limited usefulness is all that detrimental compared to other UUs like the Ballista Elephant, the Landsknecht, and the Cataphract.

A very good and thourough article, however....

a few comments

1) Prats: The most overpowered UU in the game. Unfair to bring them into any conversation. I am not complaining, some UU has to be the best and because of history Rome definitely should be.

2) Gallics: An odd unit especially with a similar ability to the UB. To me one of the worse and least useful, although building a swordsman with copper seams OK.

3) Jags:
I think they are fine as they are. They start with 2 free promotions at the expense of one strength. They also require no resources. With a barracks and either theocracy, vassalage, or a settled GG you can build them out of the gate with woodsman III, something not possible with any other civilization. If you need an example of their uses, my RPC MONTY game certainly showed it where early Jag's with that +10% city raider and free woodsman crippled nearby Ragnar very early leading to his downfall.

Also I think MONTY is one of the strongest of the war-mongers early on (Pre middle ages). He has a resorucesless UU, starts with mysticism and is spiritual so he can found an early religion and swap to slavery without anarchy, can build a fast temple to run a priest and get an early shrine to fund any early warfare. Once established, he should be able to roll over anyone. Also take into account his cheap UB, once he get CoL and slave alters built he is one of the best SE leaders that has no Philosophical trait (perhaps second to Rome because of the UB). Build farms, run specialists, slave for building and troops, and just go conquer yourself an empire.

MONTY is all about fast, early warring. If he is isolated or tries to build a little early your not playing him right.

To me Monty is the best war monger after Ghengis Khan.

Well said madscientist, I'm in complete agreement :) The only important factoid you missed is they are 35 hammers versus 40 for a normal swordsman. That with the other things you mentioned makes them balanced.

To anyone who thinks the jaguar's strength should be increased to 6, I ask what hammer cost you think that is worth? Surely you would not want all the current abilities AND 6 strength, so what abilities would you give up or what should the cost be?

I think Jags should be improved by giving them the ability they had in civ 3 (I think it was them .. maybe another unit) to enslave defeated enemy units - for example 30% chance when defending and 50% when attacking. What do you think? Basically, the defeated units has a chance to become yours.

Like OP stated in his long post hammer difference is no difference. I'd gladly have them at, say, 42-45:hammers: even, as long as they'd have 6:strength:

Prets we won't discuss, there's no point.
Gallic with Charismatic leader can easily get Guerilla III and 50% withdrawal is big (joined with 6 base power).

And as for stacks of Jags outside my cities... Come ooon! In MP surely forests are chopped near the capital/large cities, and few shock axes can ensure safety. Most likely one can lose one-two border cities, which can be reconquered easily.

Only issue is with overpowering AI Montezuma, but it can be fixed by changing his personality template. I mean, Augustus AI has Praets but he is not as terrifying as Monty can be. Also, if Aztecs will conquer one or even two of his neighbours... Well, that means more fun later in game, when there's no Jags anymore, and we can have our own army to play.

Besides, in my games, whenever I'm close to Monty he's the first to kill on my list. 95% of cases xPPPPP

The OP's hammer comparison is way off-kilter. Speed is the name of the game. It's unfair to compare one Woodsman 2 Combat Jag with one City Raider 1 Swordsman because the Swordsman will take longer to produce and will take longer to get to the target city.

Worst case scenario, you use Monte and never see a Forest or Jungle the whole game. Completely unlikely, but let's bear with it. You can tool an early production city to have 9-18- production - 1 Jag every other turn or one every 4 turns. A Swordsman would take 3 turns or 5 turns. In assmebling your army, that's as much as a two or three turn delay in attacking, and we all know what the AI will do with those turns.

The enslavement of civ3 was imo totally overpowered. The Mayan UU had this ability, along with the two best traits in that game. :rolleyes:

I think the woodsman promotion is good for flavor although it doesn't stop the Jaguar from being one of the weakest UUs for SP in my eyes.
Base strength 6 along with reverting hammer cost back to 40 and requiring copper to build might be fair..

What about adding +25% attack FROM forests to Woodsman III? Can make them effective attacking cities (a little better than a non-CR sword), if there are woods next to them. But also gives players a defense (clear cutting) and requires a commitment to their unique point. Also make the rush interesting in jungle environs, since it is harder to clear before the hordes arrive.

@Roxlimn
Whip, whip, whip. With 30/44/whatever hammers from one pop, 5 hammers doesn't make that much of a difference, whereas 5 strength vs 6 does.

Obviously, my opinion only.

And also, VirusMonster gave numbers of units one can build in the same time. I'd really prefer 12 Swords (not to mention Gallic Warriors) than 14 Jags :p

I agree that the Jaguar is a weak unit. A fun unit, but weak. Since everyone's throwing out suggestions, here's mine: Str 6, -10% vs. cities. It gives them a +20% strength, but a net -20% vs. cities, which is a slight improvement in taking on cities, but makes them a true terror on the field. On open ground, they're no better than any other Aggressive swords. Perhaps, as fast, resourceless units, a -15% city attack would be better, for a net -25%.

As it is, even with Combat 1, Woodsman 2, they aren't as hard to dislodge from forests as Praets are (10.5 vs 12, I believe). With this change, they have a slight advantage (12.6 vs 12). Of course, that is against an unpromoted Praetorian; with Combat 1, the Praet goes up to 12.8, but at least it's close with defenses of 13.5 and 13.6. Jags should be the toughest swordsmen in the forests.

One way to improve it might be to Increase its difference from an ordinary swordsman, ie give it cost 30 instead of 35. (same as prats might be better at cost 50)

That's a little ridiculous, there isn't an early unit in the game which can take out a woodsmen 2 jaguar in a forest.

I think having such a small balance difference between overpowered and being considered weak shows the problem.

The jags are a bit weak, but they fit nice with the UB and Monty's traits making the Aztecs a decent civiliztion. Increasing their strenght and cost and making them require copper or iron would just make them boring and really unique. If you really want to boost them I would just make them cheaper to balance out their weakness.

The point I try to make about Jag is that they are one of the most versatile units, and retain the free promotion upon promotion (huh?).

Frankly, I don't care about my offensive units having a defensive bonus/promotion. If I think that moving quickly through terrain will help me minimize the # of troops the AI will build then, yes, I will give my troops woodsman 2. However, that is only if I am certain I can overwhelm the AI. Otherwise, I routinely give them city raider 1 because otherwise they are pretty marginal at taking cities imo.

Making it 6 strength like the Gallic warrior would be the simplest solution.

Sort of off topic but still. Because of the Celtic UB all their units start with guerilla I meaning that there is absolutely no benefit that the Gallic warior has over a normal swordsman (if a dun is present) or anyother unit for that matter
7 strength, an innate withdrawl chance or a lower production/maintenence cost would be more effective.
Of course if it were up to me the gallic warrior would replace... the warrior that and guerilla I would be decent

Jaguars are fine as they are, exept they act as stack defenders instead of city attackers, and can be very effective in that area.
forest defense: 50%
Woodsman I 20%
Woodsman II 30%
Combat I 10%
110% meaning that a jaguar would have 11 strength (135% if on a hill aswell 13.5 strength .) this for a unit with a base strength of 5 pretty good! not a city raider but that's not what there for, with Woodsman III they get the ability to heal the stack they defend and give them 2 first trikes to increase ther defensive strength
They also make ideal fog busters
Forested hill with woodman 1, 2 combat I + fortify and 20% barb bonus = 18 strength strong enough to beat barb cavalry!!!!!

I think there needs to be a distinction made between MP and SP. The reason why people have a tough time with the jaguar unit is that you have to realize that Firaxis has made units with Multiplayer in mind as well. The Jaguar is one of the best units in MP, but sucks in SP. Why? Well...let's face it, SP war is very basic. All you do against the computer is stack up a ton of troops, invade, take cities, done. So that's why humans will build large stacks of city taking troops, like axes and swords and go and take cities. Warfare in Civ was designed to be more complex than that, and it is, in multiplayer. In a MP game players will use ALL units at their disposal, including spears, axes, chariots, horse archers, and to a lesser extend swords. In MP it's a lot more difficult than just sending a stack to take a city. There is a lot more fighting done in the field. There is more worker stealing, pillaging, etc. This is where units like the impi and jaguar shine. If you've never played MP against the zulu or aztecs then you can't possibly know what I'm talking about. Basically, if I send jags into your territory and pillage your farms, steal your workers and pillage your metal resources, you're screwed. They are very good MP units and don't need a buff. The problem is just that players playing the AI don't want to bother with all that work, they just want to get in, take the city, and get out. If you want to see the jag at it's best, play MP.

First, Praets are not a swordsman replacement. They're a maceman replacement that's available far earlier in the game, for far fewer hammers. Against which they give up +50% vs. melee, big deal.

What about adding +25% attack FROM forests to Woodsman III?

This has actually been my suggestion for the jaguar's base ability. 40 hammers, strength 5, resourceless, +25% when attacking from forest or jungle. It's cool and flavorful. It's not actually better than base strength 6, so resourcelessness is still their main draw, but it gives you a way to offset the lower base strength by using them appropriately, in true Aztec style (and especially early, before most of the forests get chopped).

peace,
lilnev

"First, Praets are not a swordsman replacement. They're a maceman replacement that's available far earlier in the game, for far fewer hammers. Against which they give up +50% vs. melee, big deal."

Preatorians are swordsman replacements. They upgrade to maces.
Your first sentence is incorrect.

My post was rhetorical, to get you to ask yourself, "when is a swordsman not a swordsman?" Praets may have UnitClass == swordsman, but they're functional equivalent is the maceman.

a swordsman is not a swordsman when its a preatorian. Lyrical.

2) Gallics: An odd unit especially with a similar ability to the UB. To me one of the worse and least useful, although building a swordsman with copper seams OK.


Madscientist, I did not notice that the Gallic Warriors can be built both with bronze or iron. Thank you for bringing that up. They are even better than I thought. I will update the article.

Your points are reasonable, but at what difficulty setting are you playing? While you can cripple AI economy better than anything out there, if you are losing your huge hammer investment during the capture of a single city, you will not be able to advance as quickly.

And to all those who say Jaguar strength should stay at 5, because Montezuma is aggressive:

well aggressive is a trait and to be aggressive means you are not any other trait. The advantage of the trait is the free promotion, and your most needed warrior, the Jaguar has less strength than its counterpart. I don't think it is fair to Montezuma, because leaders who are not aggressive have the strength advantage over Jaguars and benefits of the other trait.

The problems is woodsman 2 and 3 are mainly defensive skills. Even if the strength is to be kept at 5, some offensive capabilities must be included into Woodsman II and III.

Some good suggestions for fix are:

1) Reducing Jaguar cost to 30 hammers instead of 35.

2) Giving Woodsman III a retreat chance of around %50 just like Guerilla III. That way during city siege, there will be plently wounded Jaguars that will take advantage of the Woodsman III healing ability.

3) Increasing strength to 6. Jaguar cost can be adjusted to reflect on this strength upgrade. It could be 40 hammers again.

4) Give more than +10% CityAttack bonus during city siege, +30% city attack?!


If I figure out the way to create a poll for this article, I will add it. Any help in adding a poll is appreciated.

Some good suggestions for fix are:

1) Reducing Jaguar cost to 30 hammers instead of 35.

2) Giving Woodsman III a retreat chance of around %50 just like Guerilla III. That way during city siege, there will be plently wounded Jaguars that will take advantage of the Woodsman III healing ability.

3) Increasing strength to 6. Jaguar cost can be adjusted to reflect on this strength upgrade. It could be 40 hammers again.

4) Give more than +10% CityAttack bonus during city siege, +30% city attack?!


If I figure out the way to create a poll for this article, I will add it. Any help in adding a poll is appreciated.

When you post there should be a link at the bottom to add a poll. I am not sure if it needs to be an origional post though. Try editing it.

The MONTY RPC game was on Monarch and limited to a strict SE.

When you post there should be a link at the bottom to add a poll. I am not sure if it needs to be an origional post though. Try editing it.

The MONTY RPC game was on Monarch and limited to a strict SE.

I just read your Monty RPC game =) I am also going to read the Mongolian conquest report =) Funny game, I like your style of reporting.

But you got lucky with the special quest that upgraded your Swordsman units with CRI? I am not sure what the quest did, but it seems to have buffed your Jaguars. Can you tell what the random event did?

You also did not go for a quick city attack with Woodsman II; you massed and waited with your stack for catapults. True, you crippled Ragnar's economy, pillaged his iron and bronze and he could not do much about it, apart from waiting.

Still after sacrificing your 2 catapults, you still lost 7 Jaguars during that capital siege. Not to mention the fact you waiting a lot of turns outside cultural borders with high maintanence costs.

I don't know... I think a small boost to Jaguar city attack is needed.

I just read your Monty RPC game =) I am also going to read the Mongolian conquest report =) Funny game, I like your style of reporting.

But you got lucky with the special quest that upgraded your Swordsman units with CRI? I am not sure what the quest did, but it seems to have buffed your Jaguars. Can you tell what the random event did?

You also did not go for a quick city attack with Woodsman II; you massed and waited with your stack for catapults. True, you crippled Ragnar's economy, pillaged his iron and bronze and he could not do much about it, apart from waiting.

Still after sacrificing your 2 catapults, you still lost 7 Jaguars during that capital siege. Not to mention the fact you waiting a lot of turns outside cultural borders with high maintanence costs.

I don't know... I think a small boost to Jaguar city attack is needed.

All good points, and I cannot remember when I got the random event, but I forgot that part. Nevertheless the quick Jag builds allowed me to cutoff Ragnars copper, something I could not have done effectively with chariots or waiting for conventional swords and axes.

STill, I think the UU is OK as it is. I understand your desire to impre it though.

I don't see why giving them, say, the equivalent of city raider 1 for free is less broken than giving woodsmen 2. If he has a free city raider, then you can specialize some jaguars to be much stronger at attacking cities than normal swordsmen, whereas if you force every jaguar to have woodsmen 2, you force them all to have a specialized benefit.

Example: 5 exp, let's say you have a free cr1 or equivalent: either woodsmen 1 city raider 3 or woodsmen 2 city raider 2 or woodsmen 3 cr1. If you give woodsmen 2: either woodsmen 2 city raider 2 or woodsmen 3 cr1.
At 3 exp: cr2 woodsmen 1 or cr1 woodsmen 2 for free cr.

I have a question, would we want them to be better city raiders straight up than a swordsmen? aggressive swordsmen?

I don't see why giving them, say, the equivalent of city raider 1 for free is less broken than giving woodsmen 2. If he has a free city raider, then you can specialize some jaguars to be much stronger at attacking cities than normal swordsmen, whereas if you force every jaguar to have woodsmen 2, you force them all to have a specialized benefit.

Example: 5 exp, let's say you have a free cr1 or equivalent: either woodsmen 1 city raider 3 or woodsmen 2 city raider 2 or woodsmen 3 cr1. If you give woodsmen 2: either woodsmen 2 city raider 2 or woodsmen 3 cr1.
At 3 exp: cr2 woodsmen 1 or cr1 woodsmen 2 for free cr.

I have a question, would we want them to be better city raiders straight up than a swordsmen? aggressive swordsmen?


Jaguars are 5 strength and they are at least %16(im not even counting the compound effect of combat mathematics in civ4) less effective than Swordsman in capturing cities due to the reduced strength.

To increase their city attack skill will only help them to come with similar odds to Swordsman in city attacking.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=6380966

Yes, fine for multiplayer, which changes a number of things of course (e.g., quechuas aren't so hot in multiplayer). But even then if someone fortified a couple jags on a forest near my capital (I would've chopped the ones RIGHT beside my capital asap) I would just leave them there until they decided to move. I don't see how it ends my game right away. If they move to pillage, I take them out. If they don't, they sit there until I can deal with them. I don't see how that ability makes them extremely powerful.

And frankly, woodsman 2 units might be able to race through wood/jungle to get to my capital, but they'll have a helluva time taking that capital relative to many other units.

Same goes with single player. Your only shot is being able to overwhelm the AI by racing your jags to the destination (which assumes a large amount of jungle/wood between you and them which is not always the case). However, you can overwhelm the AI with pretty much any unit.

The jag is better than I once thought, but nothing outstanding imo, and giving it strength 6 wouldn't make it an overpowered unit, especially not relative to some of the other UUs that are available.

Even for single player the AI is so stupid that if you put 2 jags in a forest next to a city it will loose unit after unit trying to kill them...when all you get is free promos and generals.

Also the point of choching is not actually taking the capital but making it hard for the other player or AI to develope....It will be hard to move workers unescorted and you will always need more units in city for defence...so while you are building units to escort your workers and loosing lots of turns the opponent is developing without any hassle...

Shock axe or two accompanying worker and You're laughing. And if You'll sacrifice worker to lure Jags to the open field... Well, there'll be no jags anymore.

So You won't be able to chop forest occupied by terrorist jags. In the same time, aztecs are paying a lot of money for maintenance. The more units, the more strain on the economy. War has to be swift and efficient in order to bring benefits, otherwise it's a pyrrhic victory.

Workers cost 60 hammers and a jaguar costs 35 so that's not a good trade.

The jaguar is good at a harrassing sort of war rather than the city taking kind that most humans prefer. It is easy to severely stunt another civs economy and development with them. That can weaken the other civ while the aztecs continue to develop and grab the best sites and resources.

I agree that approach can work, but in SP it is not as powerful as simply conquering the nation outright and putting their land to use. That imo is why jags are seen as weak. Why would I want to annoy the AI when I can simply play a civ with stronger swords and take the cities outright?

Sure, in multiplayer you can do different things, but a LOT changes in MP.

I agree that approach can work, but in SP it is not as powerful as simply conquering the nation outright and putting their land to use. That imo is why jags are seen as weak. Why would I want to annoy the AI when I can simply play a civ with stronger swords and take the cities outright?

Sure, in multiplayer you can do different things, but a LOT changes in MP.

Well lots of reasons....

1. You might not afford to take more cities...so you want to keep them buzy while you develope
2. You might not get iron so have no swords with another civ
3. As I said the AI is stupid and will try to attack the jags, so you will gain experience easily
4. You might destroy their coper or iron and then use the jags to make it hard for them to recconect it
5. The Ai does not realize that jags can move 2 plots..so while it builds up defences in the city it thinks you will attack..you can change target and move fast to another less defended city

Well lots of reasons....
3. As I said the AI is stupid and will try to attack the jags, so you will gain experience easily

My short experience with Arabian Empire shows that AI will not attack a Woodsman II in a forest. A war with jags will often look like a stalemate. You cannot take cities and the AI cannot kill your jags.

Generally the AI will ignore Woodsman II jags in a forrest in my experience. They are good to monitor a vitak resource while you take down their cities. Jags are still better at city attack than axes.

@Uncle JJ
I've used plural. Jags. I wouldn't sacrifice worker for one Jaguar. And it's a worst case scenario anyway, I meant possibility to build roads, farms etc while I have a lurker at the threshold in nearby forest :)

And I also agree that perhaps in Vanilla AI would attack Woodsman II/III Jags in the forest. In BTS not. Same goes for almost any other unit, unless it has 4-6 archers in city and You have single Woodsman II warrior who just stole his worker.

The Jaguar Warrior is definitely the best UU for early rushs in multiplayer. When you use fastmoves the careless enemy has normally 2, rarely 3 turns between seeing your stack and loosing his capital. A stack of 4-6 Jags can reach an enemy border before turn 40 (fast speed).
Still, when you dont rush, the Jag is very strong
-woodsman 3 grants extra healing
-They can protect your stack of horsearchers if you lack iron and copper
-they can sit on enemy forests to prevent him from getting more hammers from chopping

Strengthening the Jag further would definitely be imbalanced for multiplayer.

Strengthening the Jag further would definitely be imbalanced for multiplayer.

Only if there wasn't something offsetting. E.g., if they made the cost more, but increased the strength. Not the most original, but would help imo. Or try different things. Plus tbh civ4 is more of a SP game than a MP game.

Keep them as they are! You are only discussing city attack and vs AI play, while on multiplayer, they are really to be feared in those woods around your capital!!!

I posted this idea a long time ago .

Jaguar -- 6 str , woodsman 1 , 50 hammers and 50 % production bonus with copper / iron .

Without resource they cost 50 hammers
With copper or iron they cost around 35 hammers .

not bad at all

Hmm, I thought about this Jaguar issue again, and I don't think they need a boost.

I changed my mind, because I read the following articles on unit healing:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5811533
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3671223

If you want Medic III to stack with Woodsman III healing, the only way seems if they are both on the same unit. It will not work if they are on different units. Thus, a Jaguar with CombatI and WoodmanI needs to be promoted only 5 times to achieve WoodmanIII, Medic III promotion.

Most other units in the game need 50 or 37 experience to reach the uber-healer status. Despite their lack of city attack capabilities, I think Jaguars are balanced due to superior healing potential.

let's see... pikes require iron(maces can be done with copper too); xbows require iron; knights require iron('xcept for saladin's joke). Cuirassers require iron. All of the wooden ships from astronomy(frigate, privateer, ship of the line... heck, even the ironclad requires iron in an unexpected way :p)

I remember even now the only game in which I actually lacked iron... ok, I lacked copper too. Heck, even asoka thought in that game I'm riped for conquest(was like, wtf, since when is asoka ever declaring...). Point is, not requiring iron is a... ugh, hey, noone likes camel archers... they don't require either horses nor iron, yet they're weak. Why? Because you always have iron. The rng gods are nice and always put iron near you. It's like the sun and the moon... there's always iron near you...

It's an uber unit for hiding in the woods. Fine... pitty that hiding in the woods never won a war. I mean, yeah, sometimes the ai put some 1-2 whatever unit in the woods and sit there... I always wondered why the heck does he expect me to attack since his units do nothing but eat his money. Also, you can't pillage with them either. They still move one, so either you sit in the forest or you get out and get creamed. Plus, beside vital resources I never pillaged a cottage except late game stalling with carriers razing every improvement on some other continent I didn't plan to conquer... Why would you pillage your future cottages anyway?

Ok, you get m3/w3 for an uber doc. Really, it's too little for an uu.

Worse - they start with 1 worker on immortal, don't they? The 1st thing they do is chop their forests. Heck, even you who have more brains then the ai still have to chop in order to rush things...

The uu is just bad; which wouldn't be an issue per se, since there are also other crap uus. However, a bad uu, with a bad combo of starting techs, with mediocre aggresive, ok paired with the very much to my liking spiritual... something has to be beefed up at monty. Lately I've been able to win most of my random leader games on immortal. Yet, I don't play with saladin and I still don't play with monty; ok, the rng gods can give me a less chessy leader, that's why I set random leader to start with. However... it can be that bad... monty is... overall, too bad.

At higher difficulties, you have no chance once they reach longbows, and you'll probably need catapults vs 40%-50% cities.


Well that's the case with regular Swordsman as well. Longbowman are tough defenders. Unless you have Cats and Maceman, any attack against them is going to be difficult. They have a base strength of 6, the same as a Swordsman, with a 25% city defence bonus which makes them hard to take out.

I rather like Monty; the Altar has some very interesting applications (sustainable whipping at very small city sizes when it's at its most efficient) and I also quite like the Woodsman promotion. Easy worker stealing and decent for pillaging, mobile enough to raze lightly defended cities... I find them good for harassment if not conquest.

Most of their utility stems from the failure of the AI to account for their faster movement through forests, but in Single Player I'm not complaining. Yes their true usefulness is somewhat map-dependent... but still, they're an interesting variation and they get a bonus that sticks.

I rather like Monty; the Altar has some very interesting applications (sustainable whipping at very small city sizes when it's at its most efficient) and I also quite like the Woodsman promotion. Easy worker stealing and decent for pillaging, mobile enough to raze lightly defended cities... I find them good for harassment if not conquest.

Most of their utility stems from the failure of the AI to account for their faster movement through forests, but in Single Player I'm not complaining. Yes their true usefulness is somewhat map-dependent... but still, they're an interesting variation and they get a bonus that sticks.

Personally I would be much happier with the Jaguar if you were able to build both Swordsmen and Jaguars. You would not have to sacrifice the advantages a Swordsman gets just because you play as the Aztecs. it would give you some nice options: Jags for healing/harrassment AND Swordsmen for city raiding.

Expanding upon that -- there are several UU's with the problem that, sometimes, you want the original.


So, there are two questions:

(1) Why not just provide a mechanism for any CIV to build the original instead of their UU, if desired?

(2) Is the current way a feature for balancing civs and/or encouraging certain types of gameplay?


It would be interesting to hear thoughts on (2); e.g. is Montezuma of the Aztecs sufficiently good that it would be (slightly) unbalancing to allow him to build swordsmen and jaguars?

The most important thing about the jag is that it does not need any resource to build. Of course this only applies to the early game. The Aztecs do not have to worry about hooking up iron to get their swordsmen. Therefore as soon as iron working is teched they can build their "swordsmen" while everybody else has to find the iron and hook it up. Yes, iron is usually abundant but it can still sometimes be many turns before it is hooked up while the Aztecs can just start rushing out the jags and start an early war as the other civ is likely to still only have archers or maybe axemen and/or chariots. When the jags find the resources and cut them off, you're screwed because you have to get the copper, iron, or horses while the Aztecs can even start building jags in your weaker cities that they have already conquered. Once the catapults come knocking at your gates you're dead.

Considering the math in the original post (I havent read further), the second city raider promotion only adds 25% for a total of 45%. So atleast your Gallic Warrior calcs are a bit off, and dunno about swords. Also, by fixing the jaguar, I do not hope you mean making it as overpowered as the original post says. Adding 50% CR to Woodsman III would be imba and illogical. It has the benefits of more than 2 medic promos, more than 2 drill promos, and eliminate enemy +% when in forests... that's basically 5 promos worth, and you get it by wasting 3, with Jags 2 promos... You are correct that the Jag is not good at attacking cities, because that is not what it is for! It's an awesome unit for defending your alnd if you come to realize you have no metals. If you have, use axes for attacking. Simple as that.

If any, I'd say the Jags should have str 6 but no +10% city raider innate ability...

Considering the math in the original post (I havent read further), the second city raider promotion only adds 25% for a total of 45%. So atleast your Gallic Warrior calcs are a bit off, and dunno about swords. Also, by fixing the jaguar, I do not hope you mean making it as overpowered as the original post says. Adding 50% CR to Woodsman III would be imba and illogical. It has the benefits of more than 2 medic promos, more than 2 drill promos, and eliminate enemy +% when in forests... that's basically 5 promos worth, and you get it by wasting 3, with Jags 2 promos... You are correct that the Jag is not good at attacking cities, because that is not what it is for! It's an awesome unit for defending your alnd if you come to realize you have no metals. If you have, use axes for attacking. Simple as that.

If any, I'd say the Jags should have str 6 but no +10% city raider innate ability...

hmm, thank you. I'll read the article again and fix if I miswrote about the 2nd CR bonus being +30%.

Jags are for blitzing and pillaging. Just scout well ahead and find out which cities have a forest/jungle tile right next to the city that hasn't been cleared, then surprise attack a couple of selected cities and send in a couple of suicide units to pillage the metal tiles to prevent further axe production. In BtS there are so many forests and jungles that you can take advantage of. They are actually a fun UU. If you want them to be strength 6, then you need to raise the hammers back to normal.

The problem though, is Montsy really has no economy to speak of.

Heh, apart from the whip economy with those sacrificial altars of his. Ever wondered why Monty builds huge stacks that can be a worry (he loves his pillaging) despite being behind in tech?

The trouble with "How to fix the Jaguar" is that it bumps right against a much larger issue - balance in SP is a very different creature than balance in MP.

Unfortunately, I don't really see any way to get around this other than a different set of units for MP than for SP, which doesn't seem like the sort of thing Firaxis would be willing to do.

Welcome to forums nar =) hmm I just wished Jaguars had like +25-30% city attack instead of +10%, that would make them perfectly balanced.

That actually might run the risk of making them even stronger than Praetorians. No, I'm not exaggerating.

To kill 2 fortified forest jags you need 6-8 shock promoted axes.....

If you are going leave your jaguars fortified in forests away from my cities then I don't need to kill them anyway. ;-)

The problem with Woodsman III jags is that they are worse than vanilla swordsmen in the initial rush. Too few of your strength deprived jaguars will survive long enough to get Woodsman III.

I suggest bringing them back to Strength 6, removing Woodsman I and let them simply be cheap swordsmen you can build w/o iron.

I tried a game on epic/monarch, researching iron working straight away. I did not build anything No warrior, worker, or settler. Popped a scout with my start scout from a hut, started stonehenge in the capital on turn 1, then build a barracks and 6 jags, then declared on Spain (which was closest (15-20 tiles) away)
I took down entire spain (3 cities) with about 10 jag warriors, giving me two holy cities, a bunch of workers, some pillage money, a great general and a bunch of cr2 jags.
Then I moved on to the next target, researching math and construction.
Expansion was so fast, the barbs have cities between my capital and Madrid.

I declared on Ragnar, who was trying to settle the land towards my capital and took his capital and wonder city (with pyramids in it) with catapults and 8-10 jags.

I consider the game basically won now. The jags are available extremely early, woodsman is a bonus, not their main use IMO. Jags can take cities, but they have to be fast to do it. I never use swordsmen with other leaders, because they are available too late to be useful usually.

How about a different approach to improving the Jaguar?

Jaguar: -50% Unit Maintenance cost

This would make them even better at choking and harassing.

parachute4u:

That's the right way to use them. At higher difficulty settings, it CAN be difficult to rush with Jags if you come up against Protective leaders or leaders with Bowmen, but otherwise, they're pretty spiffy.

The Aztec Swordsman offensive is so radically different from normal Swordsmen offensives that people think they're useless; and they would be if all they could do was a weaker version of the standard unit's capabilities.

As an alternative, you could have settled one settler very near to the target Civ while teching Iron Working, preferably both self-supporting in terms of upkeep and having good production (but just good production/growth will do). Beeline IW. As soon as IW hits, whip Jags like you're insane. Works remarkably well - as well as your experience in many instances.

Jaguar is a warrior that doesn't use any metal weapons, so it should be inferior. Maybe instead of having it improved, it should be made available early, like with masonry? Just like the Ziggurat no improvement, just early availability.

How important is being resourceless for an UU?


Very important...especially if one of your traits is Aggressive.



Jaguars production does not require Iron to be hooked up, but at what cost? Iron is plently on most maps types, especially in most commonly used climate types. In most of my Immortal games on Pangea Temperate climate maps, almost all AIs had Iron in their proximity. I opened many maps with the world editor and almost all have Iron somewhere not further than 8-10 squares of the starting location.

Furthermore, the AI rarely searches for IronWorking first and does not know the location of the Iron before you do. Hence, the probability of him settling the Iron is rather low. Even if it settled the Iron by chance, you still could do an immense archer or chariot rush to capture the Iron city and switch to swordman-based unit production.

Therefore, the only good things about not requiring Iron are:

1) No need to research the wheel to hook up the Iron. A minimal plus considering you will need Wheel technology anyway to hook up other resources and to grow your city.
2) No turns wasted in hooking up the Iron with workers. Hooking up Iron would mean:

a) settling your city near the Iron (you would have settled near the Iron anyway to take advantage of the +3 hammer bonus, so it makes little sense not wanting to settle near the Iron)
b) Time required to build the mine=12 turns in Marathon (again negligible, you would have mined the Iron anway to take advantage of the hammer production bonus)
c) hooking up with roads, approximately 6-12-18 turns with a single worker. I am only counting the time lost connecting the Iron to one city, because you would have connected the 2 cities with roads anyway to create a trade route.


You're missing the most important advantage: being guaranteed access to the unit, which plays the role of an Aggressive-boosted city attacker that can be used either with or without Catapults.

In the case that Copper is not available, a quick tech advance of Iron Working does not pose the risk of not finding Iron, since it would still enable production of the unit.


In conclusion, while on theory being resourceless might sound historically correct, cool, and good looking, in CivIV practice, being resourceless is an extremely poor bonus, definitely not worth in explaining why some UU gets a strength reduction.



It's very useful if you want to win a high percentage of your games, played not only with favorable conditions but also unfavorable conditions...

I dont understand what the problem everyone see is.

There is a lot of forest in the early game, which is exactly what jags want. Use the promo for woods II and you got a 2-move unit that no other single unit can remove from a forest tile. Even if you need to wait for cats to take some hill cities, the jags can easily stop any expansion. And you dont need iron or anything else to make them so IW is a safe beeline.

Being resourceless is relevant, even if you always have iron. It means your conquests can whip out semi-useful units before they are connected to your trade network, and they can even get to the frontline more quickly thanks to Woodsman II.
Being able to build them as soon as you have Iron Working researched is also good. Iron or copper is usually readily available; having a worker on standby and a settler on the way means connecting it shouldn't take long but a slight time advantage remains.

You have a practically unlimited supply of auxillary healers for minor stacks.

I wouldn't dream of complaining about any UU with a free useful promotion.

In practice, Woodsman II is better than it should be because the AI always underestimates the units' mobility. Strikes on un(der)defended workers/cities are successful more often thant they should be because AIs are idiots.

Woodsman III is arguably the best promotion there is, having it in reach so easily is nice.

***

To the beancounter, it's one of the weakest UUs (A Jaguar who spends a promotion on Combat II is equal to a Swordsman with Woodsman I... you essentially lose your AGG bonus).
Their advantages, however, are easily leveraged and give the Aztecs a very unique and enjoyable playstyle. I rate them about average in terms of general usefulness, with bonus points for style and fitting the atmosphere of their civ extremely well.

Average? Gallic Sword and Jaguars are the best uu's in the game. Sword and horse dominate. A sword uu enhanced with movement is damn near overpowering.
Preatorians are lumbering, iron dependant white elephants, and phanalx's are underpowered slow marching sluggards.

I didn't read the entire thread here... But isn't the obvious idea to combine both resources and resourceless?

If you build a jaguar without iron, it has reduced power. If you build it with iron, it has normal swordsman power. It keeps its woodsman bonus, but its primary bonus is that iron (while nice) isn't necessary.

The same would go for camel archers and the like. They get their standard power ratings when the resources are present. Their bonus is that you still get a good, functional unit when no resources are present.

Better idea:
Woodsman II and Guerrilla II now give +20% attack vs. the power land, so that GI and WI bonuses are nullified, as well as units completely untrained to fight in a special type of hard terrain are worse off than if they were in open ground when attacked by a bunch of good old Rambo's with GIII or WIII.

_________________________________________

@ troytheface: Even though I love all the ways the mobility promotions can be (ab)used, in addition to the medic stuff, I stand by my rating of average.

Swordsmen are the number 1 can opener for quite some time. The Woodsman line isn't very useful for that, so you are in effect losing 2 promotions from your primary city attackers (2* 'combat' needed to get to the default strength of 6). This is something I can't ignore, never mind how much I love using the unit.
If you consider speed to be so very useful, I'm surprised you don't consider War Chariots and Immortals the top units...

I didn't read the entire thread here... But isn't the obvious idea to combine both resources and resourceless?

If you build a jaguar without iron, it has reduced power. If you build it with iron, it has normal swordsman power. It keeps its woodsman bonus, but its primary bonus is that iron (while nice) isn't necessary.

The same would go for camel archers and the like. They get their standard power ratings when the resources are present. Their bonus is that you still get a good, functional unit when no resources are present.

This would actually be the best fix for this kind of problem, just allow the non-unique units alongside the unique ones. (except when the UUs are obviously better, that is have ONLY boni and no drawbacks)
So Rome(cheaper SM), Azteca(better Cityattacker), Japan(with Bronze, lacking Iron) and Arabia(higher strength) should also be able to build their UUs' basic unit if they fullfill the requirements.
The Jags might then be just a crappy UU, but the Aztecs wouldnt be worse off than other civs with (next to) useless UUs (Landsknecht, Panzer, .. anything badly placed or insignificant)
As it stands, Azteca has a bad city-taking potential until maces as it lacks the high strength attacker. Jags are nice harassers, but the cost is city conquest.

We need a standardized phrase for this. I liked it when someone used "holy thread resurrection, batman!"

How about whipping immediately and camping outside all enemy cities?

Yeah, go and camp with Your army while Your treasury goes to sink, as well as research.

I said it ages ago on the first page here and I say this again - make Jags 6:strength: and job done. Tampering with free bonuses/promotions can create a mess later on when Jags will upgrade. Leaving them strength of a swordsman is an elegant and simple solution :)

I think of it from this point of view,

Why are Jags 5 str and not 6 str?

Would a 6 str Jag be overpowered? from a theory point of view, no not really when you compare it to other UUs that have both negatives and positives,

eg- Dog soldier, Vulture, Cataphract

If the units above didn't have a negative to balance our their positive, they would be arguably overpowered

but the Jag porbably more or less would not be overpowered if they were 6 str, I agree that they should be 5 str without iron and 6 str with iron hooked up.

Then why did the creators of the game make Jags 5 str in the 1st place and not 6 str? Well look at their Swords... they arn't made out of metal lol...

6 Str Swordsmen with movement 2 and better defense in Forests, resourceless, and Combat 1?

I recognize that the move 2 and Combat one are not native to the unit, but that's how it's going to be in the game. Why is this not overpowered?

Some UUs are simply better than others, and one of them must be the worst.

No (official) change needed. Otherwise by the same logic Praetorians or Quechas should be reduced too...

it would be overpowered. simplistic reasoning from youth whine for "more strength" because they neither have the finesses or strategic where with all to utilize anything that is not "walk up and bash them with catapults and uu's"
it is a bit touching in its naivete, i suppose, "give them more strenth" in addition to...
resourcelessness, aggressive with free combat and woodsman. Like a kid that wants more- understandable and completely counter intuitive to making units "unique".
anyone that struggles with a jag is predisposed to noble and below and would be better served playing a simple added strength uu so they don't get confused and cry home to mama if they lose a few units.

I have written on the use of Jags in my strategy article in my signature.

To summarize, Jags as they are currently conceived are useful in three ways:

1. An early city attacker with Woodsman II, capitalizing on surprise and movement and underdefended AI cities;
2. A "raider" used for worker stealing and pillaging; and
3. a standard swordsman in late classical age city-busting stacks with catapults.

I see nothing wrong with the unit, as it does all three functions just fine. This "role flexibility" and resourceless construction makes it a great early unit. While I appreciate the OP's frustration (which essentially boils down to having a reduced strength of 5), the Jaguar Warrior fits Monty just fine.

True, but Monty is nothing great imo. The UB is good his traits are average and his starting techs leave a lot to be desired imo.

I don't know if this has been mentioned already in the Jag-slam, but Monty can reach Theology quite quickly with his starting Mysticism. Hunting is need for Archery, which is needed for Horse Archers. Diversify your stack and the "weakness" of the Jag is not so apparent. Horse units and Woodsman II Jags can keep pace using different paths and can reach a city at the same time. His aggressive trait gives him quick barracks and so with the free CI and Woodsman, the Jag has got some options for promotions. As someone stated early in the thread, mixed stacks are the way to go. If people are complaining about the difficulty in taking cities with Jags, maybe they are missing something.

I see I was a bit misunderstood. Jaguars are ok-ish. Can be fun, providing there's enough jungle/woods to storm through. But in most cases they suck.

As shocking as it sounds, I'd rather be a Khmer and have a dangerous Phants than be deprived from a proper Swordsman unit as an Aztec.

NOW

Remember Gallic Warriors? They had 5:strength: too in Warlords. Now they have six and everyone will admit they they have their uses, especially with Guerilla III.

The only possible explanation of leaving Jags at 5:strength: is that AI Monty would be VERY, very dangerous. I personally don't mind (Monty is always #1 on my "to kill" list, very rarely I'm befriending him), but I realize that, say, on Deity it could be a disaster to face bazillions of 6:strength: Jags.

I don't know if this has been mentioned already in the Jag-slam, but Monty can reach Theology quite quickly with his starting Mysticism. Hunting is need for Archery, which is needed for Horse Archers. Diversify your stack and the "weakness" of the Jag is not so apparent. Horse units and Woodsman II Jags can keep pace using different paths and can reach a city at the same time. His aggressive trait gives him quick barracks and so with the free CI and Woodsman, the Jag has got some options for promotions. As someone stated early in the thread, mixed stacks are the way to go. If people are complaining about the difficulty in taking cities with Jags, maybe they are missing something.

The ability for Monty to get Theology or Feudalism from the Oracle (and the +2 xp from either Theocracy or Vassalage) is big. The only downside: using the Oracle tech for Code of Laws gives Monty his Sacrificial Altars, making it a very attractive free tech.

I generally play one of two kinds of Monty games: a Jag-heavy game focusing on an early trek to Iron Working, or a more traditional expand and conquer game emphasizing religion and the sacrificial altar -- where war is in the late Classical period and the Jags are in a "Raider" or traditional swordsman role.

Gallic warriors, 6 strength, always.

Camping, -1 or 2 gold per unit to choke a civilization.

it would be overpowered. simplistic reasoning from youth whine for "more strength" because they neither have the finesses or strategic where with all to utilize anything that is not "walk up and bash them with catapults and uu's"
it is a bit touching in its naivete, i suppose, "give them more strenth" in addition to...
resourcelessness, aggressive with free combat and woodsman. Like a kid that wants more- understandable and completely counter intuitive to making units "unique".
anyone that struggles with a jag is predisposed to noble and below and would be better served playing a simple added strength uu so they don't get confused and cry home to mama if they lose a few units.


Right on brother!! :lol::D

Still, it is a good point that Monty lacks some city crackers. A handful of jags can choke another civ for a reasonable price, but you will still need cats to take most cities.

Sorry, my bad. I have no idea why I always thought that Gallic Warrior had 5str initially and it was changed to 6 in some patch. Nevermind.

My reasoning is, if we have Praets, Cataphracts or other War Chariots I see no reason to bring Jaguar to Swordsman strength. So Jag can run through forest and be hard to kill there. Yay. The moment he'll step on the open field to snatch a worker or pillage it will be the end of him. Not to mention that for pillaging simple Chariot will be better.

I can understand why Numidian Mercenary has lowered strength - innate bonus vs melee makes it more then efficient. Jags can run through forests. And jungles. So it can be fun when playing Rain Forest map :rolleyes:

Well this is the early game we are talking about, so any civ close enough to want to harass will have somewhat limited land. Given that the first X units outside your border are free to support, it very well could be free to choke another civ with jags.

If you focus early in the game, you can do a Jag rush that can be superior to an axe rush. How so? (a) Faster movement through forests/jungles with Woodsman II and (b) you're fighting archers, not melee units. If you do it soon enough, 8-12 Combat I / Woodsman II Jags can take out a nearby opposing non-Protective / non-holy city capital and satellite cities. By getting to the enemy capital faster, you end up facing fewer units, because the AI has less time to build defenses after you declare war. You are also getting to the enemy border several turns faster than with an axe stack.

You just have to beeline Iron Working and build/whip units from two, possibly three cities ASAP. I can verify that this is doable on Monarch difficulty and below. Remember that against city defenders, the Jag is 5.5 strength with a 10% city attack bonus that helps knock down the archers' defensive bonuses a little.

The jag rush is the functional equivalent of a war chariot rush.

IW is a big tech that early in the game. If you have copper then you wont get more/faster jags than if you went with axes, and woods2 means no city raiding, and the axes will be stronger - unless you give the jags CR which means no double movement.

Im beginning to think they are underpowered. They are hard to remove from a forest, but so is a normal sword. They make great medics, but thats kind of a very small niche role for a UU. They also make good defenders, but normal units defend just as well against any single unit, so at most you might save 1-2 defender units this way.

I hear you, Ibian, but the point is that copper is fairly rare in BTS and Jags are resourceless. You just have to beeline the tech. This also frees you up to settle uber-food sites to whip them out.

They're not underpowered -- they're just useful for a short time, like Quechas. I would argue that they are more useful than standard swordsmen due to their resourceless nature and starting with combat I and woodsman I. Do they have the long-term power of axemen (and axemen UUs?) and praets? No. But swordsmen are already a bit of a specialty unit.

I just dont see how resourceless should have to equal downgrade/sidegrade depending how you look at it.

Other UUs are straight upgrades. Dog soldiers are resourceless and better than normal axes, vultures are a straight upgrade, phalanxes are a stright upgrade that essentially obsoletes chariots, Izzy gets mounted units that get defensive bonuses etc. I cant think of any other UU that is arguably weaker than the base unit.

If i were to suggest a change, it would probably be something like giving them an attack bonus when attacking into a forest, enough to take down an axe... so +100%. Enemy units would be limited to flatland where they dont get defensive bonuses, making the Aztecs the rulers of the forest and jungle.

Resourceless means the unit is available sooner than its peers and is unpiilageable. This has value. Combined with Combat I and Woodsman I, the Jag has a place at the table if you use it correctly. You wouldn't try to make a Quecha a Praetorian ... so why try to make a Jag a Vulture?

I would also argue that the Dog Soldier and Jag are very analogous -- both have a reduced base strength and heightened specialty in their area. Both are slightly weaker overall, but both are resourceless.

Chariots will run over normal axes as fast as dog soldiers, so their downside is practically nonexistent while still performing better against melee. Its slightly worse as a city raider when up against archers, but you typically need 2 axes for every archer you take down so this doesnt really change either.

Quecha are the warrior version of prats. Overpowered with no downside.

The jag is a pure downgrade in terms of combat potential, with better access to medic promotions and easier access to fast forest movement in compensation. It cant do anything meaningfully better than other units except move around in forest. Just doesnt seem like a good trade.

Jags fight horse, spear arrow and on defense axe.
Chariots - spear death, no inherant defense.
Fact: Jags slice threw cities better than any other unit as per thousands and millions of tests.
Fact: Early game- tons of woods.
Fact: Some can't use Jags because they are inept at best, cowardly horse builders at worst

Fact: Jags slice threw cities better than any other unit as per thousands and millions of tests.
Explain.

8, 9, 10 chars

well horse and sword with gallics or jags are lethal. But i like chariots for the graphic
and they can come earlier- they lack punch to be city takers in my experience.
Whereas the godlike Jag i can't tell any difference at all with a regular sword, exept the graphic is cooler , the color is like an evil green, and they can move.
But the jag life is short. i use'em til their dead and rarely upgrade.

I think im gonna need more booze before you start making sense.

Ibian, pay no attention to forum trolls ;)

@Slobberinbear
Of course that Jaguars can be leveraged, like You've nicely described in Your Montezuma's Revenge.
People mention choking, which can be very efficient. Still, choking can stifle economy, and imo can lead to lower score in the end, because one or more of AI's didn't develop, didn't tech, didn't improve the land and consequently didn't allow You to trade. It's cool to eventually kill that choked civilization, and be happy about vast amount of land to settle, but... We have no trade for resources (AI workers were inside city all the time), techs and gold. If Imperialistic, Settler spam is nice, but otherwise it's good to let the AI build and prepare cities for You.

As for resourcelessness... Well, copper is to be found, and if not with Iron, it would be better to build some Swords, give them CR... Oh hey, Aztec have no Swordsman unit... Or rather they do, but it's 5:strength: and instead of CR we're pumping woodsman promos there...

Honestly, it's good to build few Jags to jog through woods and jungles, perhaps disrupt road here and there or nab a worker. But axes and swords (the latter that Aztec's don't have) does the job better.

Native Americans? Please, they have hyper totem pole archers to accompany Dog Soldiers. Aztecs have a leader with a funny hat.

I just played a very enjoyable game as the Aztecs and I was able to take out plenty of cities with their 2 or 3 archers quite easily with my WII jags. Some got a CR promotion, while others got a WIII. I gotta tell you, the WIII is addictive, the healing and the first strikes to counter the archers' ones is great. Then when I reached Machinery (got Civil Service way back) I was able to up grade my WIII, CR2 jags into some kickass Macemen. The WIII promotion makes the Maces like Samurai almost, accept that it can heal itself. Throw a Medic, WIII in the stack and you are set! I only built a few Cats near the end as the civs on the other side of the map had the culture up and the axeman at home.

I will admit that the pillaging of their copper or iron was tough when they would hit my jags, but I reckon a Shock, WII or WIII jags could handle it. The problem was that I was going Jags only, hence the AI would counter with their anti-Melee unit. Throw in a few WII axes of your own and your jags are not as vulnerable. Jags, kick ass!

Gaurdian's accusation is like a closet case homophobe whose job it is to point out who is gay. But since slander seems to be the name of the game- read the above post- not on original thought or perception. if he is like 10 i apologise.

Guardian_PL:

What's so special about a Swordsman unit anyway? +10% City Attack? The fact that it's a melee unit means that at that stage in the game, it'll only be useful against Archers on low culture cities Axes created on similar cities makes Swordsmen significantly less useful. It's useless against Shock Axes. In fact, many peeps would prefer to use Axes for attacking in any case.

If you have Cats, you would want Cats to lower culture defenses AND attack units, then stack defense units for mopping up. No use for Swords, either, since Swordmen aren't as good as Archers or Crossbowmen or Axes for stack defense. I'd even go to Chariots for taking out enemy Axes over Swordsmen.

So the prime target for Swordsmen are low culture Archer defended cities that don't especially need siege equipment to attack.

Under that premise, a Jag is significantly stronger than a Swordsman because you don't need as many Worker-turns to connect your primary production centers and it's also cheaper in terms of hammers, meaning faster Jags sooner, and assured Jags as well (no gambling). Aside from that, any captured cities can start creating reinforcement Jags through the whip without connection to the trade network - great for taking out satellite cities after capturing a capital.

So what if I don't have Swordsmen? Is that really such a huge loss? I've never really understood why not having regular Swordsmen is such a big deal since I don't use them all that much even if I DO have them!

In contrast, a Jag is different enough in terms of function from an Axeman that I really do feel that my armamentarium is significantly better. Where I have an unconnected city, I can whip out Jags instead of Axes. Where I need a rapid scout unit with significant defenses, I can use Jags in Forests. I can use the same to outrun enemy units to key cities in their own territory. (2 move vs. 2 move; as long as you get a headstart with a Jag stack, the city is dead).

Using an overpowered unit to justify powering a unit up to that standard only leads to power creep. Cataphracts are kind of okay. Praetorians are too strong. War Chariots are kind of okay-ish as well. None of those are resourceless.

IF you have copper, this can be moot, since you can do an Axe Rush. However, I think that it's a strong point for the Aztec Civ that an Axe-type rush of a latter variety is more or less assured regardless of map.

Dog Soldiers are not the same, and I DO kind of feel a little gimped when I have to play Native Americans with Dogs instead of normal Axes.

The problem with Dog Soldiers is that they're worse against Archers - an early game defensive unit. If you've got no Iron, it gets worse. No Swords and bad Axes means that your offense is basically nixed until you get to Catapults, and even then your mop-up Dogs are weaker at the mop-up job.

Vultures and phalanxes are better, but those are not resourceless and do not enjoy the advantages of being always available.

How useful is being resourceless? Well, imagine if Elephants were resourceless. That would actually change the balance of the techs and the early game. The same is true of the Jag. You can't appreciate how good a resourceless Woodsman 2 Combat 1 Swordsman (6) is until you've tried it.

So I invite anyone who thinks the Jag is underpowered to do so. If nothing else, you'll find out that the setting is more to your liking.

Granted, i mainly use swords because they are cheaper to upgrade to rifles than axes, though it is useful to have them as an option when up against something other than axes.

But that doesnt change that a jag is a terrible city cracker compared to a normal sword, or even to a normal axe.

Jag with woods2: 6 str.
Jag with CR1: 7 str.
Nonaggressive axe with CR1: 6 str.
Aggressive axe with CR1: 6.5 str.
Nonaggressive sword with CR1: 7.8 str.
Aggressive sword with CR1: 8.4 str.

Thats what the lineup looks like. A jag is a fast moving axe that loses to other axes, or a weak sword that moves at normal speed. And looking at the other resourceless UUs still leaves me unconvinced that being resourceless is enough justification for it.

It's NOT a "terrible city cracker" at all, because it does something that no one other unit can do: it's a melee unit that can move 2 moves and maintain great defense along specific terrain. If you can't figure out how that can come in handy, you don't play this game nearly well enough to comment definitively.


Is it a fast moving axe that loses to other axes?

It can be. That function has certain uses, as I'm sure anyone above Noble level can think of. You don't need an axe to win against other axes if the city you're targeting doesn't have axes. What you need there is speed and a solid stack (one that doesn't die to random attacks en route), and Jags can give you that, whereas normal Swords cannot.


Is it merely a weak Sword that moves at normal speed?

No, it's not. At worst it's a slightly weaker Sword that's great on stack defense (better on Forest, for instance). If you're attacking with a Swordsman, then you SHOULD be attacking an Archer and you SHOULD be attacking with a Cover-promoted Jag or Swordsman (not CR at all). The strength hit is significant, but the number and speed advantage of resourceless and lower hammer req should offset that nicely.


Is it the same as other resourceless units?

Absolutely not. Iron Working to Swordsman is a fairly early tech gambit for the Aztecs, early enough to classify it as its own rush - not as early as an Axe, but not as awkwardly placed as Swordsman. Getting Iron Working going gets you just enough of a window to get the Jags online (possibly from having an Axe Rush push ruined by not having Copper) and still get the units to the site fast enough to beat increasing culture defense.

Lower cost, Agg trait, resourceless, and faster movement options all contribute to making this viable. So yes, in this case, it absolutely matters. Contrast this to Camel Archers, for instance. In the case of Camel Archers, the no-resource ability is worth significantly less because you can hardly "beeline" Guilds+HBR the way you can Iron Working, Knights are a marginal unit for "rushing" anyways, and the timeline gives you more time to secure Iron and Horses in case you foresee that being a problem.

If jags came with BW it might be more worthwhile, but IW is a big tech for a rush. If it can even be called a rush waiting that long.

If speed is your argument, then id argue that dog soldiers are better. Also resourceless, and comes hundreds of beakers before jags so you can have a lot more of them in the same time. Yet you feel gimped using dogs. Which is even more odd since just a few axes more than you expected can ruin your jag armys day, but dogs will have an advantage over any other unit against axes.

And the better forest defense is hardly meaningful. A normal sword is about as hard to remove from a forest. All the jags have is speed at the expense of power, yet that speed advantage is mitigated to some degree because IW comes later than the other base units.

If you're attacking with a Swordsman, then you SHOULD be attacking an Archer and you SHOULD be attacking with a Cover-promoted Jag or Swordsman (not CR at all).
This is where you get needlessly far into details again. It doesnt matter what promo we use for comparisons, especially since a normal sword has a higher base str so it gets more out of multipliers than jags.

It is a fairly big tech, I'd agree, but it's not that far off. In fact, if you have the infrastructure in place and a vulnerable neighbor, you could beeline for IW to get the Iron for normal Axes for a late Axe Rush if you didn't pop Copper. There's no guarantee, though. With Jags, you have that guarantee.

Would Dog Soldiers be better for the speed?

It depend on what difficulty level you play. At Monarch and above, the AIs start with the ability to make Archers and an Archer unit. You're pretty screwed right there, never mind if the neighbor is Protective.

Here, the tech you're chasing is Archery and the unit you're avoiding is Archers, which the AI has a tendency to spam. Comparatively, with Jags, it's Swordsmen vs. Bronzeworking and Axes + Copper hookup. I'd take my chances with the Jags, honestly, though the Dog's resourceless quality also makes up for their inability to take Archers somewhat.

The window is smaller than with Jags, though.

Is better Forest defense meaningless?

Not at all. A normal Swordsman is nowhere near as powerful as a Woodsman 2 Jag on defense. I know because I've had the opportunity to have Swordsmen and Jags attacked in Forests. Moreover, the Swordsmen are liable to have Cover or CR, whereas a stack of Jags heading out alone to take a side city are all likely to have Woodsman2. It's just no contest, and I have to wonder why you would reach such an incredible conclusion.

Compared to an Axe, a Jag is definitely on-par even considering it comes from IW, whereas I rate Swordsmen as slightly weaker because their specialized functions are a little too narrow (attacking Archers in low-culture cities before Cat comes online). Compared to that, a Jag's speed gives him relevance even in an age where a Swordsman is almost completely superfluous.

Would Dog Soldiers be better for the speed?

It depend on what difficulty level you play. At Monarch and above, the AIs start with the ability to make Archers and an Archer unit. You're pretty screwed right there, never mind if the neighbor is Protective.
Im not sure if a jag could take out an archer solo. I kind of doubt it since normal swords need some sort of promo to do it reliably.

If it takes 2 jags for each archer, then whats wrong with using 2 dogs instead? Or 3?

Not at all. A normal Swordsman is nowhere near as powerful as a Woodsman 2 Jag on defense. I know because I've had the opportunity to have Swordsmen and Jags attacked in Forests. Moreover, the Swordsmen are liable to have Cover or CR, whereas a stack of Jags heading out alone to take a side city are all likely to have Woodsman2. It's just no contest, and I have to wonder why you would reach such an incredible conclusion.
What can remove a normal sword from a forest? An axe cant do it. Nothing before a shock elephant can.

Now a jag can likely kill 2, maybe even 3 units before it needs to heal while a sword can probably kill 1 or 2. So if you are outnumbered and on defense jags have some advantage. But if thats the case id wonder what went wrong in the first place. In a war where you have things under control a jag is not meaningfully better for defense purposes, and if its a rush you wont be on defense in the first place.

Compared to an Axe, a Jag is definitely on-par even considering it comes from IW,
Only if its defending against an axe in a forest square, not if it attacks the axe. You cant take cities by sitting in the surrounding forest.

whereas I rate Swordsmen as slightly weaker because their specialized functions are a little too narrow (attacking Archers in low-culture cities before Cat comes online).
Swords have their place. There are enough archers to make it worthwhile to bring some along, and they defend better against everything except melee than axes do, and any melee not an axe is not a threat. The only time axes would be better for taking cities than swords is if there are axes defending said city.

Thanks Roxlimn, but I don't buy it :)

My gripe is that Aztecs have no City Attacker unit, and no 6:strength: unit (Horse Archers at best, but no CR or Cover promo).

(...)So what if I don't have Swordsmen? Is that really such a huge loss? I've never really understood why not having regular Swordsmen is such a big deal since I don't use them all that much even if I DO have them!
I entered World Builder and let me show You how +1 strength makes all the difference You need ;)

C1 Woodsman Jag vs Hill Archer +40 cultural city def - 9.3% to win

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0009-1.jpg

C1 Swordsman (wow, so they do have Aztec Swordsmen in WB!) vs same Archer as above - 23.7% to win

http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0010.jpg

Weaker city now, only 20% defense and flatland. Sorry, took C1 axeman instead of Jag, but still it's 30% to win.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0011.jpg
C1 Swordsman has 67.2% to win. 1:strength: more, yet roughly +35% to win.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0012.jpg

While I was already there, I gave CRII to units attacking hilled capital, and CRI for the weaker city. Again:

24.3% to win for CI, CRII Jaguar
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0013.jpg

59.2% for CI, CRII Swordsman (more than twice the chance to win)
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0014.jpg

On a weaker city, it's tad better, 59.2% to win for CI, CRI Axeman (Jag will have few % more).
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0015.jpg

...And 73.6% to win for CI, CRI Swordsman.
http://i219.photobucket.com/albums/cc36/Guardian_PL/Civ4ScreenShot0016.jpg

So You see, with stack of 6 Swordsmen I can take on a hilled capital, but when playing Aztecs I have to wait for cats or burn insane amount of units to get that city.
Even for weaker defended cities, 60% to win vs 75% is noteworthy.

(...)Using an overpowered unit to justify powering a unit up to that standard only leads to power creep.
Strength six allow You to save a LOT of hammers simply because Your units are more sturdy, and they'll survive more battles. It's not about powering up Jag, it's about bringing it to the game standard.

So imo, Jag is NOT on par with an Axeman (axes are counters vs melee, VERY important role), and not on par with Swords either (less strength, less usage, higher death rate=more wasted hammers).

Ibian:


Im not sure if a jag could take out an archer solo. I kind of doubt it since normal swords need some sort of promo to do it reliably.

If it takes 2 jags for each archer, then whats wrong with using 2 dogs instead? Or 3?


Well, you're going to have to try that ou