bjarkieinars
Chieftain
Zulu's UB gives its melee units +1 range
Top 5 best special units for war in BNW!
- Thread starter B.A.Start
- Start date
Zulu's UB gives its melee units +1 range
Picking out a few roads less traveled here:
Venice's Great Galleass is frighteningly awesome, if you can find time to use it.
Comanche riders are very powerful, and upgrade very nicely as tanks.
Janissaries are nerfed from vanilla, but still extremely boss.
Conquistadors are BOSS with +2 sight and city-settling on other continents.
Landsknecht: Carpet of doom!
Venice's Great Galleass is frighteningly awesome, if you can find time to use it.
Comanche riders are very powerful, and upgrade very nicely as tanks.
Janissaries are nerfed from vanilla, but still extremely boss.
Conquistadors are BOSS with +2 sight and city-settling on other continents.
Landsknecht: Carpet of doom!
This.
On lower difficulty (like King / Emperor), these are somewhat crazy, (and I don't often say this, but maybe even "broken").
The main point is, that you CAN get these in time, where you really shouldn't yet get something so powerful.
You can get these easily without having techs that would really give you or enemies units that would be comparable; this is totally different thing to those normal balanced Unique Units that come with techs. This one comes from Ideology, and that is what makes it powerful, if gotten early.
Just collect and conserve culture bombs (writers), "streamline" fast to industrial age -> build quickly 3 factories to get ideology -> select Freedom -> culture bomb and by any means necessary get more ideology selections -> select Foreign Legion..
You will have 6 Foreign Legion units, while all other your (and enemy) units are weak when compared as you (all) are still in the beginning of Industrial Era!
This alone makes Freedom in my opinion best Ideology for post-Industrial Era domination victory
EricTheGreat12
King
1-X-Com Squad
2-Nuclear submarine
3-Nuclear missile
4-Crossbowman
5-Pathfinder
2-Nuclear submarine
3-Nuclear missile
4-Crossbowman
5-Pathfinder
Just tried making a video about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AzUjnE1KCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AzUjnE1KCs
ArmChairAttila
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2006
- Messages
- 78
1. Long Bow into machine gunners are really powerful starting industrial era. If you have two gunners backing one infantry they will mow down everything in their path. Tough versus other ranged units and just require minimal meat shielding.
2.Keishiks are unstoppable during mid evil age except when confronted by the Impi.
3. Impi are the best infantry in the game.
4. Chu-ko-nu is great for a double tap ranged unit that will help you in the industrial.
5. Ship of the Line is probably the best ship in the game and will also help you tremendously in the industrial.
2.Keishiks are unstoppable during mid evil age except when confronted by the Impi.
3. Impi are the best infantry in the game.
4. Chu-ko-nu is great for a double tap ranged unit that will help you in the industrial.
5. Ship of the Line is probably the best ship in the game and will also help you tremendously in the industrial.
Tiggurix
Warlord
I'm really excited to try out the Kris Swordsman! While they do have a chance do be worse than a regular Swordsman, a 6/8 chance to be potentially quite a bit more powerful seems worth it to me. Here's my evaluation of all the unique promotions of the Kris Swordsman, in order from most to least powerful:
1) Restless: Indisputably the best of the of the random promotions. Not only do you get a free Blitz promotion, you also get +1 movement, which essentially makes them like Mechanized Infantry (with the Blitz promotion) in the Classical Era! This promotion also makes me wonder: If you have two different promotion that gives a unit extra attacks (like Restless and Blitz for the Kris Swordsman), and you have enough movement points that you could conceivably attack more than two times, do those promotions "stack", and enable you to attack more than twice?
2) Heroism: An effectively free Great General is nothing to sneeze at, and if you have an actual Great General stationed under this unit, I believe it makes you almost effectively get the first half of China's UA. Now if that isn't crazy, I don't know what is! The only problem with this promotion is that it does nothing for the unit itself with it.
3) Invulnerability: As the name implies, this makes the unit into the perfect tank! They are much stronger in defence, and the promotion makes the Kris Swordsman heal faster than an Immortal! One nice side effect of this promotion is that it makes the unit more likely to survive to get more promotions and become even stronger.
4) Recruitment: Getting the main advantage of both the Jaguar Warrior and Janissary, but stronger, seems like a pretty good deal to me! The problem with this promotion is that it doesn't make the Kris Swordsman more likely to kill an enemy, but then again, making it more likely to survive tends to make the unit stronger in the long run.
5) Ambition: +50% Combat strength bonus on the attack is huge! The Kris Swordsman becomes as strong as its upgrade, the Longswordman, on the offence! Now, it does have an explicit downside, in that the unit is -20% weaker on the defence, but I think the upside makes up for the downside, even if this promotion makes the unit more unlikely to survive in the long run. Besides, I like this promotion much better than the next promotion, which is...
6) Sneak Attack: +50% bonus from the flank attack bonus! And since the flank attack bonus is at +10%, that translates to... +5%... This promotion is extremely underwhelming in what it does, and like this much less than Ambition because, even though Ambition has an explicit downside and this is technically all upside, the effect is so small that I prefer Ambition's massive bonus on the attack.
7) Enemy Blade: The first of the all negative promotions, I nonetheless prefer Enemy Blade to Evil Spirits because, even though this makes it almost impossible to go and try to conquer an enemy city with this unit, it is still decent on the defence, within your own borders.
8) Evil Spirits: The worst of the promotions one could get, and a pretty harsh penalty to the unit, that hinders it in all it does, unlike Enemy Blade. -10% effectivenes on the attack is not ideal, to say the least, and -30% (!) on the defence ensures that the unit will probably not survive long. Honestly, one would probably best be served by just disbanding a unit that gains this "promotion".
So, in review, I definitely think that the Kris Swordsman will turn out to be my favourite of the Brave New World Unique Units, especially since I like games of chance. One could argue that its unreliability, and the fact that one doesn't know which bonus (or penalty) one can get with a given unit makes it worse than the base Swordsman, but I think the unit brings an important element of excitement, and, then again, there's only a 2/8 chance of the Kris Swordsman getting an entirely bad promotion, so I think the gamble is definitely worth it, especially considering that, if you get lucky, the Kris Swordsman is potentially much more powerful than any other Unique Unit.
1) Restless: Indisputably the best of the of the random promotions. Not only do you get a free Blitz promotion, you also get +1 movement, which essentially makes them like Mechanized Infantry (with the Blitz promotion) in the Classical Era! This promotion also makes me wonder: If you have two different promotion that gives a unit extra attacks (like Restless and Blitz for the Kris Swordsman), and you have enough movement points that you could conceivably attack more than two times, do those promotions "stack", and enable you to attack more than twice?
2) Heroism: An effectively free Great General is nothing to sneeze at, and if you have an actual Great General stationed under this unit, I believe it makes you almost effectively get the first half of China's UA. Now if that isn't crazy, I don't know what is! The only problem with this promotion is that it does nothing for the unit itself with it.
3) Invulnerability: As the name implies, this makes the unit into the perfect tank! They are much stronger in defence, and the promotion makes the Kris Swordsman heal faster than an Immortal! One nice side effect of this promotion is that it makes the unit more likely to survive to get more promotions and become even stronger.
4) Recruitment: Getting the main advantage of both the Jaguar Warrior and Janissary, but stronger, seems like a pretty good deal to me! The problem with this promotion is that it doesn't make the Kris Swordsman more likely to kill an enemy, but then again, making it more likely to survive tends to make the unit stronger in the long run.
5) Ambition: +50% Combat strength bonus on the attack is huge! The Kris Swordsman becomes as strong as its upgrade, the Longswordman, on the offence! Now, it does have an explicit downside, in that the unit is -20% weaker on the defence, but I think the upside makes up for the downside, even if this promotion makes the unit more unlikely to survive in the long run. Besides, I like this promotion much better than the next promotion, which is...
6) Sneak Attack: +50% bonus from the flank attack bonus! And since the flank attack bonus is at +10%, that translates to... +5%... This promotion is extremely underwhelming in what it does, and like this much less than Ambition because, even though Ambition has an explicit downside and this is technically all upside, the effect is so small that I prefer Ambition's massive bonus on the attack.
7) Enemy Blade: The first of the all negative promotions, I nonetheless prefer Enemy Blade to Evil Spirits because, even though this makes it almost impossible to go and try to conquer an enemy city with this unit, it is still decent on the defence, within your own borders.
8) Evil Spirits: The worst of the promotions one could get, and a pretty harsh penalty to the unit, that hinders it in all it does, unlike Enemy Blade. -10% effectivenes on the attack is not ideal, to say the least, and -30% (!) on the defence ensures that the unit will probably not survive long. Honestly, one would probably best be served by just disbanding a unit that gains this "promotion".
So, in review, I definitely think that the Kris Swordsman will turn out to be my favourite of the Brave New World Unique Units, especially since I like games of chance. One could argue that its unreliability, and the fact that one doesn't know which bonus (or penalty) one can get with a given unit makes it worse than the base Swordsman, but I think the unit brings an important element of excitement, and, then again, there's only a 2/8 chance of the Kris Swordsman getting an entirely bad promotion, so I think the gamble is definitely worth it, especially considering that, if you get lucky, the Kris Swordsman is potentially much more powerful than any other Unique Unit.
ArmChairAttila
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2006
- Messages
- 78
Watched your video. I have not played with the siege tower yet so don't know about it. I love the B-17 but it comes to late to make my list. Agree with every thing else you said
Arachnofiend
Perturbed Pugilist
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 1,950
Wait... what? Correct me if I'm wrong but, as a Pike replacement, Impi should upgrade to Lancers, right? I'm actually currently in an Emperor Zulu game and I absolutely agree about Shaka's Spears being practically their own UU; I didn't even need to build a ranged unit until I went after Darius and his Great Wall, and even then Impi were taking out units so well I only needed trebuchets. I was really worried because the game just got to the Renaissance for a couple civs and my giant carpet of doom worth of Impi was about to go out of style, but if Impi really upgrade to Rifles like you just said... Damn.
Heart Break Kid
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2012
- Messages
- 174
Impi's are exceptions, they become Rifleman instead of Lancers.
Wow that is a game changer. If you ever wanted to know how bad lancers are, that just changed my opinion of the zulu 180 degrees.
Navelgazer
King
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2012
- Messages
- 876
For quirks/ways of playing... which isn't always for domination per se with these, though they work well for domination as well.
1. Siege Tower: On the whole I'm okay with them not coming quite as early as the Battering Ram, because part of what I love about the ST is how spammable it is and how they buff one another. Having it come at Mathematics means 1. that I've had time to get my Royal Library up and running without having to choose either/or (and hopefully the Great Library, if I'm lucky) and 2. that once I've beelined Mathematics I'll actually have a tech differential to all but guarantee that there will be techs down other paths to steal when I take over enemy cities. This would all be more of a crapshoot if the ST were available any earlier, IMO.
2. Longbowmen: 3 Range in that era still beats almost anything. Sitting outside of garrison range and wrecking cities is a sick joy to me even after all this time.
3. Kris Swordsman: Something I've yet to see written about these guys is that, since the promotions mean that you will place them where they can do the most good, the negative promotions place the Kris in the front lines. After all, you're not going to bother upgrading a unit with, say, enemy blade, so the negative promo gives you license to make him into canon fodder. This is liberating to me, at least.
4. Impi: All the promotions on top of Ranged+Melee makes them pretty insane, and then they upgrade to riflemen, holy wow.
5. Dromon: For a very specific purpose. I play archipelago maps a lot. In order to make the most of the honor track, you need to be able to culture-farm encampments. On an archipelago map, the dromon is basically the only way to do this early on, and can be a major advantage if pressed in this way.
1. Siege Tower: On the whole I'm okay with them not coming quite as early as the Battering Ram, because part of what I love about the ST is how spammable it is and how they buff one another. Having it come at Mathematics means 1. that I've had time to get my Royal Library up and running without having to choose either/or (and hopefully the Great Library, if I'm lucky) and 2. that once I've beelined Mathematics I'll actually have a tech differential to all but guarantee that there will be techs down other paths to steal when I take over enemy cities. This would all be more of a crapshoot if the ST were available any earlier, IMO.
2. Longbowmen: 3 Range in that era still beats almost anything. Sitting outside of garrison range and wrecking cities is a sick joy to me even after all this time.
3. Kris Swordsman: Something I've yet to see written about these guys is that, since the promotions mean that you will place them where they can do the most good, the negative promotions place the Kris in the front lines. After all, you're not going to bother upgrading a unit with, say, enemy blade, so the negative promo gives you license to make him into canon fodder. This is liberating to me, at least.
4. Impi: All the promotions on top of Ranged+Melee makes them pretty insane, and then they upgrade to riflemen, holy wow.
5. Dromon: For a very specific purpose. I play archipelago maps a lot. In order to make the most of the honor track, you need to be able to culture-farm encampments. On an archipelago map, the dromon is basically the only way to do this early on, and can be a major advantage if pressed in this way.
for me the dromon is more like a composite bowman which can swim and stack with a real composite bowman, which makes byzantium a beast in early coastal warfare. but the cataphracts are more like swordsmen as meatshield.
I love how Tiggurix listed all the specialties a Kris swordsman can get and the random factor to the UU makes it really interesting and probably the only reason why I would play Indonesia since the rest of his kit is pretty awful.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned pathfinders, you can select what bonus you can get from ruins. Although ruins are hard to get its worthwhile when you upgrade them to... COMPOSITE BOWMAN! If you are able to make 3 of these composite bowman before turn 50 its really easy to takeout any city that isn't a capital. Just my two cents though.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned pathfinders, you can select what bonus you can get from ruins. Although ruins are hard to get its worthwhile when you upgrade them to... COMPOSITE BOWMAN! If you are able to make 3 of these composite bowman before turn 50 its really easy to takeout any city that isn't a capital. Just my two cents though.
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