Underrated UUs/UBs

One word, just one word : ikhanda.

It's hard to pick between the two, as they're both stellar. Sumerian Ziggs don't get a lot of love either, despite coming with a tech you can actually get by BEGGING if you need to do it X_X.
 
Ziggurat is in fact one of the few UB that can make me base a part of my strategy on him, unlike sacrificial altar, because having EP so soon can really help.

The other one is the Dike, because with it you can make a prod city with a simple big lake, and it make filler city much more productive, so I have less calm to make city with a lot of sea. (even if it's not an underrated UB at all).
 
Ziggurat is in fact one of the few UB that can make me base a part of my strategy on him, unlike sacrificial altar, because having EP so soon can really help.

You base your strategy on pre-CoL Courthouse EP? How can that even remotely compare to double whip speed in strategic influence? That's what, less than 10 ept for about 50 turns equaling 500 EP at most (probably exaggerating a lot, too, in reality it's probably more like 200-300 even under optimal circumstances)? I'd hardly consider that a game breaker worth altering my strategy. Ziggurat is a good UB but nowhere near Sac Altar in basing your strategy around it IMO.
 
I used to think sac Alter was great too, until someone pointed out that it's basically just another tool for getting extra happiness. Unless you're whipping every other turn, the ball court (for example) is just as good if not better.
 
IMHO the most underrated UB is clearly the Spanish one. In the end people don't like it because they don't like castles ( better said, a lot of players has a unreasonable and hard to justify love for the Economics tech and a equally unreasonable and hard to justify lazyness in getting Engineering ). Getting lvl 3 arties and MGs out of the gate is probably one of the most unbalanced things you can have in this game, given that the only anti siege mechanism there is in game besides air power is flanking and artilery is the only siege unit that can't be flanked by units of their era....

A honorable mention to the American UU: sad it comes too late in most games.

About underrated UU .... deciding between the mongol and and the french UU. Most players simply don't know how to play with fast units, and without that this two definitely look worthless.
 
I used to think sac Alter was great too, until someone pointed out that it's basically just another tool for getting extra happiness. Unless you're whipping every other turn, the ball court (for example) is just as good if not better.

This the same someone who thought whip unhappiness runs concurrently with other whip unhappinesses if you stack it? If you had read that thread further you had noticed that this isn't the case and if you whip every 5 turns without a Sac Altar the unhappiness diverges to infinity. With it, unhappiness stays at a constant 1. ;) No amount of ball sports can match that...
 
My biggest issue with the aztec UB is that most cities simply can't grow two sizes in 5 turns in normal speed, most of the time not even one ;) That makes it hard to fully use the potential of the UB :p
 
You base your strategy on pre-CoL Courthouse EP? How can that even remotely compare to double whip speed in strategic influence? That's what, less than 10 ept for about 50 turns equaling 500 EP at most (probably exaggerating a lot, too, in reality it's probably more like 200-300 even under optimal circumstances)? I'd hardly consider that a game breaker worth altering my strategy. Ziggurat is a good UB but nowhere near Sac Altar in basing your strategy around it IMO.

I have not said that the sac altar were less powerful. But I can't see where I play differently with sac altar ; I whip more often, and I have more chance to be growth limited rather than happiness limited. Ziggurat enable the same EP strategy as an early GS from the great wall and for that I play really differently with thoses.
 
@ r_rolo: At size 10ish, you only need a food surplus of edit: 8 to do a 2-pop whip every 5 turns. This is quite achievable and usually worth it if you keep in mind that the likes of plains mines are barely worth working (net 1 hammer if the food that goes into supporting them could have been channeled into the whip, same as a grassland forest).
Whipping gets even better if you need some production before you have grown into your stable size yet or when whipping happiness infrastructure: you use the food to grow and work more good tiles before converting it all into production. Of course, this is mostly incidental... the true usefulness of the ability to whip twice as often becomes apparent in cities that lack production tiles but are still worth building up.

Spain is an interesting case. Obsoleting castles, the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus can hurt your economy quite badly. I have postponed Economics until after Artillery, keeping the older benefits and focusing on military (Conquistadors, better cannons, better artillery... the edge lasts long enough to matter).
Still, just regarding the Citadel it seems like a lot of effort for fairly minor benefit.

I'm trying to keep an open mind about HA replacements and Musketeers, but I've never been able to make them work in a way that impresses me. I'd prefer War Chariots to the former and Conquistadors to the latter.
 
@Iranon

True, but 10 pop cities are far out the maximum efficiency pop numbers for the whip in terms of hammer per food ;) My point is that, within the area of maximum efficiency of the whip ( 4-6 pop ) in that regard, it is almost impossible to leverage the Aztec UB to the fullest and that in most cities you can only do it with bigger sizes ( thus less efficient ) or after bio, that, for alll it's worth, comes a little later than the Aztec UB ;)

About Spain... someday I'll definitely make a case game showing how to push the UB to the max ;)
 
True, but 10 pop cities are far out the maximum efficiency pop numbers for the whip in terms of hammer per food ;)

Who care ? If the ratio food / hammer is not good, but you have so much more food at size 10ish than size 2ish, then you should wait for size 10ish.

What you seek is not a good food / hammer ratio, it's a good final hammer per turn. Letting cities get too big can hinder the whip efficiency, buit it should be looked in overall production.
 
This the same someone who thought whip unhappiness runs concurrently with other whip unhappinesses if you stack it? If you had read that thread further you had noticed that this isn't the case and if you whip every 5 turns without a Sac Altar the unhappiness diverges to infinity. With it, unhappiness stays at a constant 1. ;) No amount of ball sports can match that...

You're right, I misunderstood how the whip unhappiness works. It can still match it for short bursts of whipping, though.
 
My biggest issue with the aztec UB is that most cities simply can't grow two sizes in 5 turns in normal speed, most of the time not even one ;) That makes it hard to fully use the potential of the UB :p

A thing I like about it is that you can actually make 2 1-pop whips in the place of a single normal 2-pop whip with the same net unhappiness payload. Last time I got convinced that Sac Altar rocks was when going for a culture victory with Monte in the recent PYL. Sac Altar made a bajillion 1-pop missionary/SPItemple whips viable.
 
I'm playing Isabella in my current game for the first time. Do conquistadors get defensive bonuses?
 
I'm playing Isabella in my current game for the first time. Do conquistadors get defensive bonuses?
Oh yes. That is their main beauty. They can defend the seige units themselves, massively speeding up the process of conquest. Conqs + CRIII trebs (citadel+barracks+theology/vassalage) = :assimilate:
 
Oh yes. That is their main beauty. They can defend the seige units themselves, massively speeding up the process of conquest. Conqs + CRIII trebs (citadel+barracks+theology/vassalage) = :assimilate:

Their better ability is anti-melee (pikes are pretty weak there). No true counter until rifles and even defensive abilities makes them impressive.

They don't have good synergy with the UB though, since with the UB you will want siege and with siege you forgo the powerful 2move advantage of the UU.

I thought the citadel was rated decently but if not then it is underrated too. Even if you blow right by the spanish UU, engineering is easy enough to trade for and with a UB like this one can be tempted to go steel/avoid economics for a long time. CR III siege is strong enough to encourage using it as the primary tool of destruction.

Citadel can be realistically carried until arty/rifle/machine gun quits working (well you COULD go all the way to flight but there's no point as the UB does nothing there). Corp is a pre-req on AL so you'll need it then. I like infantry and factory/power very much so this tech path deviation is hard for me though I'm willing to do it in spain's case.
 
@Iranon

True, but 10 pop cities are far out the maximum efficiency pop numbers for the whip in terms of hammer per food ;) My point is that, within the area of maximum efficiency of the whip ( 4-6 pop ) in that regard, it is almost impossible to leverage the Aztec UB to the fullest and that in most cities you can only do it with bigger sizes ( thus less efficient ) or after bio, that, for alll it's worth, comes a little later than the Aztec UB ;)

I disagree.

To regrow from pop 4 to 6 you need 29 food. Very achievable in 5 turns, you don't even need a food resource. 4 grassland farms all the time and 1 grassland mine at size 5 usually regrows in 5 turns (6 every few cycles).

Using the Aztec UB heavily in small cities (or in cities that haven't yet reached their stable cap but need production asap) isn't hard and usually worth it. The only question is... can you be bothered to do the micromanagement?

Not sure if the following clarification is necessary... sorry if not.
I deliberately used size 10 because I think it's worth pointing out that the SA is useful even there; I took for granted that it's great at smaller sizes.
Avoiding growth to make the Sacrificial Altar better makes little sense - the objective is to get the best setup we can, taking into account the use of our UB. Not to get the most of our UB at any cost (we aren't running 100% culture at all times just because it makes the hippodrome shinier, after all).
Even if the marginal tile is just a grassland forest, growing is worth it. In case of a 2-pop whip every 5 rounds you gain 5 direct hammers and lose 2 food (because each regrow costs one more food), which is a good trade-off. And if you set up your economy for the Sacrificial Altar, growing doesn't take long at all.
The Sacrificial Altar is at its best with small cities that still need to grow, quite good in the late game with Biology/the Kremlin and weaker in between... but usually still worth using until your growth caps reach the teens.
 
Much better players/posters than I perfectly explained why I think the SA is the best UB in the game.
 
Top Bottom