Controversy : Kris Swordsman

Though I have a difficult time imagining Australia getting in to begin with, I have an even more difficult time imagining them getting an Aborigine unique. That would be like if they gave the Americans the Mohawk Warrior.

My only issue with the Kris Swordsman is that the promotions aren't chosen, but are randomly selected from a small pool. I'd much rather have the promotions unique to the Kris be promotions I can choose rather than get assigned automatically. After all, let's say I only have 5 Kris get promoted before they upgrade, and that 4 of them got promotions that won't help me for whatever reason. That's a pretty bad UU, then. And the scenario I just described isn't at all unlikely, given that rushing to get sword units has been severely hampered by changes in G&K (though BNW may change this).

I actually like the randomness. They have designed every element of Indonesia to make thins difficult to use. It's a pro civ where you have to play very differently. You have a melee unit whose development is somewhat beyond your control, you need to get to other landmasses to get your bonuses, you need to let other religions in to your cities for the Candi to work well. I see the whole design as an attmept to challenge us by offering new ways to play.

A way around the randomness would be to give a choice, but have the choices disappear after they are chosen once, until they're all chosen (i.e. like The Mayans' GP selection). I don't mind random though, especially if they've come up with a ton of different promotions.

The only reason I mind the randomness of the Kris is that the swordsman is not a unit I tend to build a lot of, and I assume this is the case for many, if not most, players who have G&K. Of course, a swordsman UU I'll build more often than a regular swordsman, but I'd still say it's a low priority unit given that Civil Service unlocks both irrigation bonuses as well as pikes.

That, and composite bows are what I usually build a bunch of around the time I could be building swords. If the Kris swordsman was a replacement for, say, musketmen, I'd have a far less difficult time accepting that I don't get to pick the promo, because I'd probably have a lot more Kris swordsmen being built if they replaced muskets. Ultimately, I just don't like the odds that I could end up with the majority of my smallish group of Kris swords having a promo that isn't so good for my strategy. This is especially the case because one of the promos actually has a debuff effect when on defense, and I can see Indonesia being a very defensive civ given that they are going to want to quickly settle on foreign continents.