Helicopters are BEASTS at pillaging. In fact, if you upgrade them up from landsknecht then you could potentially have an 8-10 movement helicopters that ignores terrain and ZOC, and doesn't use movement points to pillage. Yeah, imagine two of those lining up against your borders.
I love mounted units and hence tanks too, but you don't need too many of them, maybe 3-4. They can intervene anywhere on the battlefield to reinforce a weak spot and finish off fleeing units or destroy artillery and then retreat to safety, pretty useful.
Recently I used autocratic tanks to speed up city taking in late domination game: start outside the city range, move in, attack, pillage and retreat. They can do more damages than a bomber with virtually no risk if the city is not a huge megalopolis. Very good units, very poor position on the tech tree for non domination games.
Tanks can be very useful and very much fun which is for me more important actually
If you play deep into the end game like me, you will also appreciate how they upgrade to GDR.
I find that's the biggest step since at that level the enemy cities defenses no longer improve.
Thus your GDRs can stomp everything on their way. Even if your enemy has all the crazy defense bonuses and wonders and the cities have their defense at 200, five promoted GDRs will still do them in and you don't even need stealth bombers or rocket artillery as support.
Seeing as all the armor units have a long and useful upgrade path, by the time you have modern armor or GDRs, they will have crazy promotions. Attack + attack + retreat, or attack + pillage + retreat , and heal every turn anyway. That's win in my book.
In another thread, I have been corrected about this! Helicopters that upgrade from lancers can move after attacking. Helicopters can get logistics as their third promotion, so that lets them move after attacking as well.
Tanks are great units. As has been pointed out though, they aren't useful for everything - but neither is anything else.
One thing I really like about Civ5 is the design focus on combined arms. In the later eras especially, having good mix of units supporting each other is much more effective.
Tanks are particularly good at attacking and retreating or surviving the counter-attack. For offensive situations, I have the tanks flank to go after artillery/AAA or exploit holes in the enemy lines to pillage or surround units to prevent retreat.
For a strategically defensive civ, I'll only build a couple tanks, but will keep them in reserve away from borders. If attacked, they can respond quickly and help keep enemies out of your territory.
Tanks are great units since they're very mobile. Giant death robots are also great units when there's uranium. The only time I don't like mobile units is when the land mass isn't that big which makes their mobility useless.
I hardly ever use them.
If I go for a conquest victory, all enemies are usually wiped out by the time I get to the required tech. For any other victory type, I usually don't go too far in the bottom of the tree.
Maybe it's a unit that's more useful for longer/higher difficulty games.
Like in real life, tanks need support. I used to think they sucked, that was before I invested in autocracy.
They really shine if you use the autocracy tree.
+1 movement
Ignore Zone of Control
Additional +15% attack.
Stack that with Heroic epic for 30%
Take Clauswitz Legacy, another 25%!
They need 3 promotions, the third one is Charge. 33% extra damage on already damaged units.
My regular WW2 tanks were doing well over 110 damage! They were literally steam rolling great war infantry, and beat up regular infantry bad too.
But it gets better, with 6 movement, they first smash an artillery damaged unit, take little damage, and then just move around pillaging back to full health. If you have planned for the upgrades the landship is also good, around 80-90 damage and 5 movement.
I love tanks, have not got to them yet on level 4 or 5, I generally beeline for artillery, after I get within a era or two. But on 4 or 5 difficulty (sorry I dont have the names memorized, was playing on Prince, but now on... King?)
MY current game was planned to go that route, and somehow I am one tech from making modern on the opposite side of the tech tree.
I do agree they come late, but on these higher difficulties I find I am having trouble hitting techs even by the year they really happened, let alone a century earlier like on warlord.
Still my UU spawns great generals, if you are fighting other civs.. So I have strayed away from the ranged attack, to try and stock up on a half dozen experienced Companion Cavalry to upgrade them later to tanks. None have survived yet. I get silly and send them exploring. When I don't have my scouts that were magically upgraded to other units to explore for me.
The game UU special abilities should carry over on their upgrade paths IMHO.
So once you get horseman as Greece all further mounted units get the boost to GG spawning.
A command unit is even today, generally VERY well defended. Not just grab em up and toss em in your sack like an artist or a prophet. (One could even make an argument for prophets being hard to catch/kill based on their religions infiltration into an area).
Tanks that spawn Great generals. move like the wind, and get the ability to retreat or attack twice? Yeah Tanks are boss. But too late game.
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