Germans are over powered

I love the German UA. Sure, your army tends to run a little heavier on melee than is strictly "optimal", but what the hell, you can just use the extras as cannon fodder. I've smashed cities with a couple Ranged units early game and a whole bunch of Brutes/Spearmen etc. Doesn't matter if you lose one or two if you have extra freebies. Also, while you might not get many Archers you can absolutely get some Hand-Axes pretty quick, and we all know how annoying they can be. Worst case you just build a couple of Archers yourself.

Worst worst case is that you simply stick to a relatively standard army composition, enjoy not having to produce a bunch of it early on, and enjoy extra gold from lower maintenance costs. That takes exactly zero deviation from most game plans.

Germany's one of the few civilizations that I find can make good use of Honor to start.

Something I tried as Germany was having a huge army from barb hunting (on a Terra map, no less) and then going for diplomatic victory as autocratic Germany with Gunboat Diplomacy and placing my huge army near every CS. Was allied to every city-state, easily.

tried the new Germany one time a month ago at Standard speed, and found the barb UA to be breakingly useful. 2 Warriors 1 Archer in the Ancient era, never having to spend the time to produce any military in the initial queue, early military score kept Montezuma from attacking as early as he is used to attacking, and 2 of the 'free' units went on Working-stealing duty to both a CS and Babylon. no point in going Honor (it wasn't my goal). kicked a first Settler out and had full tempo throughout the early game which really makes all the difference.

eldiablonoche said:

I've done a couple dozen BNW marathon Germany games by now and archery units from barb camps are... uncommon.

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I see a lot of barbarian Archers pop up around the encampments. It's a little micromanagy, but you could bring over some archers of your own to kill the melee unit in the encampment, the barbarian Archer will jump in to defend it, and then you can capture the encampment and hope that your 67% chance kicks in.

shaglio said:

I see a lot of barbarian Archers pop up around the encampments. It's a little micromanagy, but you could bring over some archers of your own to kill the melee unit in the encampment, the barbarian Archer will jump in to defend it, and then you can capture the encampment and hope that your 67% chance kicks in.

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I can confirm this works, and it's how I make sure the camp gives me something I want. I still end up a little heavy on melee, but overall it's not bad. Raging Barbs actually does help a bit here because you don't wait as long for a "new choice" to come along.