New Paratroopers are great!

I love the Paratrooper in BNW. The range extended to 9 tiles from 5(?), which finally makes it useful to drop behind enemy lines in an offensive war where your units are usually already 2-5 tiles in enemy lands.

It also has the 'no movement cost for pillaging' promotion which is fun to use. People have been asking for bombers to be able to pillage improvements: now you have such an unit.

And with the new XCOM Squad, it has a powerful upgrade path. XCOM is way better then the giant robot, especially because it is on tech path of the science victory. You really want to beeline to the Hubble and Space factory, before going to the top half of the tech tree for the other space parts.

What are the experiences of others with the new Paratrooper?

I like paratroopers too. With the 1UPT rule, bottlenecks often occur near the frontlines, and paratroopers are able to fly past the bottleneck, swoop down from the sky and assault a city that has been worn down by your artillery.

On the other hand, the XCOM squad is powerful on paper, but comes way too late in the game to be of any consequence IMO.

They are great diversions!
I tend to use them mostly to hunt barbarians on snowy islands completely surrounded by ice.

The only thing I dislike is that they can't attack on the same turn. This usually just makes them a diversion and not a unit to reliably use to launch a surprise attack. Since cities can defend themselves I really see no reason they shouldn't be able to attack instantly.

I drop them on every uranium source I see and plunder away.

Yzman said:

The only thing I dislike is that they can't attack on the same turn. This usually just makes them a diversion and not a unit to reliably use to launch a surprise attack. Since cities can defend themselves I really see no reason they shouldn't be able to attack instantly.

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It would make it too powerful. Drop enough PT and you can take a city before the enemy can respond. Being only able to defend through the city is not enough. Optimal strategy would be just to invest in PT as you would be guaranteed to take cities if you had enough of them.

I think the 5 tile thing came from the designers wanting players to be able to PD up to 1 CITY away. But due to 1UPT and a lack of HEXS that was a little limiting, so they upped it. I think that is the gist anyway, but its just my opinion.

Rohili said:

I like paratroopers too. With the 1UPT rule, bottlenecks often occur near the frontlines, and paratroopers are able to fly past the bottleneck, swoop down from the sky and assault a city that has been worn down by your artillery.

On the other hand, the XCOM squad is powerful on paper, but comes way too late in the game to be of any consequence IMO.

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They provide a bit of a laugh while you finish the last couple of spaceship parts really.

Rohili said:

I like paratroopers too. With the 1UPT rule, bottlenecks often occur near the frontlines, and paratroopers are able to fly past the bottleneck, swoop down from the sky and assault a city that has been worn down by your artillery.

On the other hand, the XCOM squad is powerful on paper, but comes way too late in the game to be of any consequence IMO.

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SPIES + Nuclear subs + XCom = easy one-turn domination win.

Seriously.

Send some nuclear subs loaded up with a missile or two out, put spies into the capitals you're going to take, and... well, you can figure out the rest.

Rohili said:

I like paratroopers too. With the 1UPT rule, bottlenecks often occur near the frontlines, and paratroopers are able to fly past the bottleneck, swoop down from the sky and assault a city that has been worn down by your artillery.

On the other hand, the XCOM squad is powerful on paper, but comes way too late in the game to be of any consequence IMO.

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Actually the key advantage of the XCOM is that it can be used to finish a game faster (get troops to the Front lines) similar to the Stealth bombers massive range... it allows you to pop enemy capitals easily, bypassing the intervening forces.

The GDR is the only one that is not really useful at that point. (it should probably be ~250 Strength instead of 150 to be worthwhile)

Seabastian Civ said:

SPIES + Nuclear subs + XCom = easy one-turn domination win.

Seriously.

Send some nuclear subs loaded up with a missile or two out, put spies into the capitals you're going to take, and... well, you can figure out the rest.

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KrikkitTwo said:

Actually the key advantage of the XCOM is that it can be used to finish a game faster (get troops to the Front lines) similar to the Stealth bombers massive range... it allows you to pop enemy capitals easily, bypassing the intervening forces.

The GDR is the only one that is not really useful at that point. (it should probably be ~250 Strength instead of 150 to be worthwhile)

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I know how the XCOM can be used, guys. My point is that by that time, you would usually already have won by culture or diplomacy, or are very close to winning by science. It's simply not worth the effort building XCOM/Stealth Bombers/Nukes to win by domination by that point in the game.

Which is faster - Building a Stasis Chamber and a Spaceship Engine and sending them to your capital to win by science, or building X number of XCOM/Stealth Bombers/Nukes/Nuclear Subs and then sending them to each and every capital left in the game to win by domination?

The only situations where XCOMs would be useful are if there were just 1-2 capitals left to conquer, or if you were neck in neck for the science victory with an AI and you need to attack their capital so as to stop them from winning a science victory. This would be a very rare situation indeed - usually you would have far outstripped the AI by now, or you would be lagging behind and won't be able to build enough XCOM to beat them before they launch.

Don't forget, X-COM squads are also good for fighting aliens!
(at least we're not having any rage about them being in the game here)

Yzman said:

The only thing I dislike is that they can't attack on the same turn. This usually just makes them a diversion and not a unit to reliably use to launch a surprise attack. Since cities can defend themselves I really see no reason they shouldn't be able to attack instantly.

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Probably because it's not very fun to have your city taken without warning and without even having a turn to react?

That said, IIRC paratroopers with Logistics (+1 attack) get to attack after dropping.

FECAL_URGENCY said:

Probably because it's not very fun to have your city taken without warning and without even having a turn to react?

That said, IIRC paratroopers with Logistics (+1 attack) get to attack after dropping.

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Do they even get log? Blitz perhaps? Any can anyone confirm this?

Maxym said:

Do they even get log? Blitz perhaps? Any can anyone confirm this?

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I can't think of anyway that PT would get logistics. Blitz, yes. But even with blitz, I'm about 90% sure that the PT has the specific limitation that it can't attack after drop, regardless if it has the attack movements. May be wrong though, good question.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you can't upgrade paratroopers though, it would take some time to get blitz paratroopers going IF they can in fact attack after a drop with blitz.

FECAL_URGENCY said:

Probably because it's not very fun to have your city taken without warning and without even having a turn to react?

That said, IIRC paratroopers with Logistics (+1 attack) get to attack after dropping.

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Their range is what, 8 tiles? I won't be sending them from very far. Cities typically also have 100+ defense at that point in the game, at least in my games. I have tried paratroopers a few times and this is what always happens.

1. Paradrops paratrooper within 2 tiles of city ( any farther is pointless due to them not being able to reach the city again after that, destroying the point of using a paradrop)

2. Fortify the paratrooper to maximize defense. Pray he lives.

3. Watch as city and every unit the enemy has available kill the paratrooper in 1 unit.

So I would say no, paratroopers wouldn't be taking any city in 1 turn if they could attack right away ( city has limited access anyway due to 1upt) Right now they seem like nothing more than meatshields. MAYBE they would be more useful if you didn't need line of sight, but once again, you do so they are basically stuck paratrooping to where you already have units or near a city with a spy ( which I just went over)

If you nuke the city to no health or bomb it to oblivion and the paratrooper takes it that same turn....who cares? The city is going to fall anyway. It could probably even be taken by a fast mounted or armor unit late game.

I don't see it being gamebreaking. Heck, the easiest way to get the xcom achievement is just to put an xcom unit deep into enemy territory. I got it first try, because it died that turn, never being able to even attack.

Yzman said:

So I would say no, paratroopers wouldn't be taking any city in 1 turn if they could attack right away ( city has limited access anyway due to 1upt)

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Nobody said anything paratroopers taking cities by themselves. They are great in combination with Bombers especially, but Artillery too can work. If you could bomb a city, paradrop in and capture the city in the same turn, that would be OP is what people mean.

Yzman said:

Right now they seem like nothing more than meatshields.

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I play at Immortal, and in terms of city siege, every melee unit is a meat shield. It's very rare at high level play to use melee units to actually attack cities, almost never (except to capture). Ranged units are OP, but I digress...


I agree with the general consensus of the thread, Paratroopers are great! Makes running over backwards civilizations much faster and great for strategic positioning.

The xcom squad is great and many players use them online. I've used them before and it made conquering cities a lot easier before the victory.