Does China's Unique Unit make historical sense?

daft

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In CivIII I enjoy playing as China, and besides changing most of the silly, westernized city names to realistic ones I marvel at the Chinese Unique Unit, Rider.
The unit looks and acts more like an Arabic or Mongolian unit, not a Chinese one at all.
Am I way off base on this?
Are there other historically inaccurate UU's in CIVIII?
 
In CivIII I enjoy playing as China, and besides changing most of the silly, westernized city names to realistic ones I marvel at the Chinese Unique Unit, Rider.
The unit looks and acts more like an Arabic or Mongolian unit, not a Chinese one at all.
Am I way off base on this?
Are there other historically inaccurate UU's in CIVIII?

A more appropriate Unique Unit for China would be either some form of Rocket Troop, or a Repeating Crossbow-armed unit.

The Persian Immortal is depicted totally incorrectly, as they were Spearmen with Wicker Shield, similar to a lighter-equipped Greek Hoplite.

The Iroquois Mounted Warrior is another problematic one. The Iroquois were primarily forect-dwelling slash and burn agriculturalists, not nomadic horsemen. A clubman would be more accurate, or bowman.

The F-15 is not the greatest Unique Unit for the Americans. More appropriate would be a Heavy Frigate, as in USS Constitution and its sister ships or a specialized US Marine, as the US Marine Corps size and strength are pretty much unique to the US. The problem would be handing amphibious units for other countries.

The Janissary would be much more appropriate for the Ottomans than the Sipahi, as they were unique to the Ottoman Empire.

The true Numidian Mercenaries were actually light cavalry, not Spearman. If they were called Spanish mercenaries it would be more accurate. Also, rating them as better than the Greek Hoplite is clearly off. The Hoplite is underrated for combat.

For Korea, the Unique Unit should be the Korean Turtle Ship, without question.

The Swiss Mercenary is a odd choice for the Netherlands, as they were not used that much at all. The Reiter, an armored cavalryman equipped with pistols would be much more accurate.
 
Maybe, if they renamed it the Youxia.
 
It looks like in later Civ editions they "corrected" some of these mistakes. For example:

A more appropriate Unique Unit for China would be either some form of Rocket Troop, or a Repeating Crossbow-armed unit.

For Korea, the Unique Unit should be the Korean Turtle Ship, without question.

In Civ5 the Chinese UU is a crossbow unit (Zhugenu) that can shoot twice per turn (while the "ordinary" crossbow that every nation can build, has only one shot per turn). And Korea has two UUs, the Hwach'a and the Turtle Ship, which is a more powerful Caravel (but cannot sail the ocean like the ordinary Caravel).

Apparently Firaxis did their homework this time and put quite a bit of historical research into the selection of unique units, unique buildings and special traits of each nation. I like it.
 
It looks like in later Civ editions they "corrected" some of these mistakes. For example:



In Civ5 the Chinese UU is a crossbow unit (Zhugenu) that can shoot twice per turn (while the "ordinary" crossbow that every nation can build, has only one shot per turn). And Korea has two UUs, the Hwach'a and the Turtle Ship, which is a more powerful Caravel (but cannot sail the ocean like the ordinary Caravel).

Apparently Firaxis did their homework this time and put quite a bit of historical research into the selection of unique units, unique buildings and special traits of each nation. I like it.


Yes, very well done, but still could be more accurate.
Chinese UU in both CivIV and CivV is called Chu ko nu and Korea has both UU's you mentioned.
Are the Babylonian Bowmen in fact historically accurate? Or were they conveniently invented by Firaxis?
 
A more appropriate Unique Unit for China would be either some form of Rocket Troop, or a Repeating Crossbow-armed unit.

The Persian Immortal is depicted totally incorrectly, as they were Spearmen with Wicker Shield, similar to a lighter-equipped Greek Hoplite.

The Iroquois Mounted Warrior is another problematic one. The Iroquois were primarily forect-dwelling slash and burn agriculturalists, not nomadic horsemen. A clubman would be more accurate, or bowman.

The F-15 is not the greatest Unique Unit for the Americans. More appropriate would be a Heavy Frigate, as in USS Constitution and its sister ships or a specialized US Marine, as the US Marine Corps size and strength are pretty much unique to the US. The problem would be handing amphibious units for other countries.

The Janissary would be much more appropriate for the Ottomans than the Sipahi, as they were unique to the Ottoman Empire.

The true Numidian Mercenaries were actually light cavalry, not Spearman. If they were called Spanish mercenaries it would be more accurate. Also, rating them as better than the Greek Hoplite is clearly off. The Hoplite is underrated for combat.

For Korea, the Unique Unit should be the Korean Turtle Ship, without question.

The Swiss Mercenary is a odd choice for the Netherlands, as they were not used that much at all. The Reiter, an armored cavalryman equipped with pistols would be much more accurate.

Immortals are made even more strangely into light Cavalry in CIIV!

Mounted Warrior is great, except it's not a Iroquois type unit at all. More like Comanche or Sioux perhaps. At least in CIV they got it much better on with the Mohawk Warrior.

Navy Seal (elite Marines) is the US unique unit n CIIV, good choice, but I agree that it would be wise for them to ensure the American modern Amphibious foot unit supremacy by making the Marines Unique to the US, while allowing other nations only to create a bit inferior (to Marines) Marine Infantry units instead.

They got it with the Janissaries in the next iterations but my goodness, firaxis official (historical) description of how great the Sipahi supposedly were is quite ridiculous.

Right about the Numidians not rightfully being made as superior to Hoplites, at least in offence. Hoplites were very good on the offensive as well, and a far more fitting (Attack)3-(Def)3-(Move)1, for them would be much more accurate.
 
Aren't the Iroquois stated in the blurb somewhere here to be representative of all the native north American tribes? In that case the MW is surely OK.
 
Right about the Numidians not rightfully being made as superior to Hoplites, at least in offence. Hoplites were very good on the offensive as well, and a far more fitting (Attack)3-(Def)3-(Move)1, for them would be much more accurate.

3/3/1 would be really overpowering. Even immortals and mounted warrior are not so good. A 3/3/1 unit could be used for both defense and offence and it would actually be extremely difficult (unless of course the AI gets a bad start) to defeat a post Emperor AI in the AA. They'd be walking all over you even before you realize on a small /standard map.
 
3/3/1 would be really overpowering. Even immortals and mounted warrior are not so good. A 3/3/1 unit could be used for both defense and offence and it would actually be extremely difficult (unless of course the AI gets a bad start) to defeat a post Emperor AI in the AA. They'd be walking all over you even before you realize on a small /standard map.

Like the Roman legionary, in fact.
 
I have the Greek Hoplite set on 2/3/1 with two bonus hit points, so as to make if hard for a legionary to take one out easily.
 
Aren't the Iroquois stated in the blurb somewhere here to be representative of all the native north American tribes? In that case the MW is surely OK.

If it is so stated, then that blurb is very wrong. The Iroquois represent the Iroquois Confederacy, a confederation of originally five, and later six tribes, and one of a number of confederacies of North American tribes that have formed and disbanded over the centuries.
 
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