What is the most useless unique unit?

Play always war as Hammi. Bowmen are nearly longgbows and cities imlossible to take by enemy while keeping only one spear and two or three archers. Bowmen saved my game many times. The fact you dont use them actively doesnt mean they are weak

I wouldn't consider Bowmen for the "most useless" title because they can realistically save your bacon.
They are a contender for "most embarrasingly overshadowed" because Skirmishers.

The Bowman is far from useless, because it excels at what the base unit is used for.

In general we would all prefer never have to build archers, but if you do, it's because you're under attack (or sometimes because you can't find an anti-barb resource). The Bowman is very strong at stopping the Shakas and Montys from finishing your game prematurely.

The Bowman is nothing special as UUs go, but it can be decent when you need it.

Boingle said:

omg I can't believe people are voting Navy SEAL for most useless unit.. that thing rocks if you actually get to that point in the game. It's definitely not useless.

I had to vote for the Aztec Jaguar, because I really hate using them. In almost all cases, when I'm Montezuma I actually wish I just had generic Swordsman. The difference between 6 strength and 5 strength is a big deal when attacking archers which is the main scenario. The Woodsman bonus to me is pretty laughable, okay you can do some guerrilla war stealing workers stuff, but what about attacking cities? Not good.

Basically the Aztec Jaguar is like 99% worse than building an Axeman when I play Aztec, since at least the Axeman won't get rolled by enemy Axeman. I want to be aggressive Aztec and use these cool looking Jaguars to dominate my lands like the real Aztecs, but nooooo I have to use this inferior Swordsman with 5 strength who can't kill archers on hills. Lame

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I actually like jags, but I don't compare them to swords, I compare them to axes.

If you bee-line IW, you'll get it before you could find copper, settle a city beside it, and hook it up. Therefore, jags come out around the same time as axes, they certainly come earlier than swords.

As an aggressive leader hoping to go to early war, one is usually dependent on the RNG gods... what if you have no metals nearby? With Monty, this isn't an issue. You know that you are guaranteed a powerful unit very early in the game if you want it.

You can infiltrate your target and pillage any metal mines, if necessary, so that you will only face archers, and then you attack. Can jags take a capital city with walls? Probably not, but then basically all units have trouble doing this, except for prats perhaps. You can take all of your victim's other cities and whittle him down to just his capital.

When attacking cities with jags, compare them to axes. A CR axe will be str 5 with 20% city attack. Your jag, which costs less than a normal sword btw, is str 5.5 with 30% city attack. In fact, it's almost as strong as a normal sword, due to Monty's aggressive trait.

People don't usually use swords because by the time you can field them the enemy has axemen. With Monty's jags, you can easily get into enemy territory and pillage any metal mines before he builds anymore than 1-2 axes. Swords are really powerful if you get them early, when they face only archers and chariots.

Kallikrates said:

Yes, but that means that it is the only ancient unit without a "counter". With a little promo and/or defense bonus it does not have to be afraid of anything before elephants and xbows. You can have a stack of them without also taking spears along (granted, that's not such a big deal, but it is a certain advantage). Still, I liked the vanilla spear-phalanx better

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No, the phalanx is still absolutely worthless. It's not even really that good at defending against chariots... they both have a 100% bonus so it gets negated, and then it's 4 attacking 5, still fairly close, there's a good chance (35-40%) your phalanx dies to a chariot. In light of that, I would never dream of just marching on my enemy with phalanxes when he is fielding chariots, I would always bring a spear or two along, thus this unit is an epic failure and proof that Firaxis didn't care much about UU balance.

As others have pointed out, the vanilla version of the Greek phalanx was much better - a strength 5 spearman with guerilla. Nice to have when facing mounted units.

Regarding Jaguars: Besides rushing, harassment and super-medics, they also mean you can wage effective catapult-driven wars without strategic resources.

Regarding units without a counter: That crown belongs to Skirmishers, Phalanxes aren't even close. Earliest unit to counter Skirmishers once you consider cost? Knight.

@Iranon: immortals and quechas are decent vs skirmishers.

Fast Workers being able to move onto a forest and chop the same turn means that - as long as your chopping route is correct - you have nearly a 25% bonus to the speed at which you can chop something out. That something could be a stack of Axemen or Horse Archers, which in my opinion makes Fast Worker one of the best offensive UUs in the game

I vote Panzer. I've never played a game that came down to tank vs. tank warfare in the field, not once.

ohjames said:

Fast Workers being able to move onto a forest and chop the same turn means that - as long as your chopping route is correct - you have nearly a 25% bonus to the speed at which you can chop something out. That something could be a stack of Axemen or Horse Archers, which in my opinion makes Fast Worker one of the best offensive UUs in the game

I vote Panzer. I've never played a game that came down to tank vs. tank warfare in the field, not once.

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Have to second that. Panzer is the worst. I have played Germany to the late game on a couple of occasions, and on none of those did tank v tank happen. I mean, I guess I have a defensive bonus vs their tanks when I'm walking around, but I don't tend to let my opponents just have tanks running around everywhere. Lategame is nukes, and if not nukes for some reason, airforce. I will pass over Industrialism for Flight any day, and either of them for fission, and the panzer UU would not alter that decision.

^^ Just thought I'd mention I play Kmod, which is a mod that makes mostly subtle changes to the game, unlike most of the mods out there. Basically it's just like playing normal Civ but with some of the terrible things changed, the Panzer being one of them. In Kmod the panzer is a decent unit, it gets a couple of first strikes on top of its vs armour bonus. You might want to check it out.

I'm discovering that units which have no advantage other than being resources are usually pointless because I nearly always find the resource (s). I suppose they might be useful in an island scenario when you're on a jungle island.

I assume you meant units that don't require resources.

sydhe if you reroll all the time then resourceless units are pointless, sure. I don't reroll and I used to play MP, in that case resourceless units are amazing

bhavv said:

No, swords arent bad because of UUs, they're bad because of axemen, and also HAs are much better for offense due to their mobility.

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Axes are really only a soft-counter to swords, though. They get a +50% bonus, yeah, but its still 5 str vs 6, and the sword will get a city raider bonus most likely to make up for it. swordsmen vs axeman is only like 30:70. You'll probably lose, like, one sword attacking the axe and then the next sword will kill it easy... Pure sword armies are legit, and as long as there's not more than one axe per city, they have no prob taken it. Horse archers are another option but they get owned by spearmen and their tech is much harder to trade for. (really easy in my experience to trade math to the AI for iron working as soon as I tech or trade for math... but they'll never trade me horsebackriding until really late... it's always "We don't want to start trading this tech away just yet")

Anyway, I agree that aztek jaguar are the worst unique unit, not because they're useless but because they have less uses than swords. the fact that azteks cant' build regular swordsmen really hurts, especially for an aggressive civ where swordsmen are very strong.

I think Navy SEALS are very useful.

Chrysheight said:

I think Navy SEALS are very useful.

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I share that opinion , moreso on naval maps