A comprehensive UU guide (the updated thread)

you forgot to add that if doen right its easy to get city gar 1-2-3 redcoats and with west point you can get it pinch or combat1
 
how much of this you choose to use is entirely up to you...

England: Redcoat (Rifleman)

How can you conquer the world? Let me count the ways. One of them is by using Redcoats. Well, at least in Civ4 vanilla. . . On Warlords, it's not so easy.
In both flavors of the game, the Redcoat is well timed. Banks and Universities are coming online and the English economy is revving up - a great time for some military expansion. In Warlords, the English get the Stock Exchange (an even better Bank), so this is even more so.

In Warlords the Strength of the Redcoat is now the same as any other Rifleman, so they are more vulnerable to Grenadiers - but they do keep the +25% vs Gunpowder units, so they fare better than you might think. No unit in the period is better as an open field attacker: The Rifleman gets +25% vs Grenadiers, Riflemen, and Cavalry and Cannons are only Strength 12. Redcoats defend well, except against Grenadiers. Stack them with Combat promoted Cannon, Grenadiers, and Cavalry and those troops absorb the enemy attacks

Grenadiers (or Cannon) will probably still be your primary city attackers (at least the ones you upgraded from earlier era City Raider melee troops) unless you bring lots of Cannon and plan carefully.

Longbows, Crossbows and Muskets upgrade to Redcoats, none of which get City Raider promotions. This means that most players tend to build very few of these troops, except as city defenders. This is the primary reason most people don't like the 'nerfed' Redcoat: they had to build 'useful' Redcoats from scratch as there aren't any veterans suitable for upgrading to the Redcoats new, offensive role. But the vanilla version came out of the barracks pretty buff, picked up some Combat promotions, and raised heck. While Warlords reduced the Redcoats Strength, they did increase the effectiveness of the Drill promotion, which Gunpowder units don't normally get. This, in turn increases the value of suitably promoted Archery units, and that is where the planning comes in.

The Warlords version of Drill does two things that the vanilla version doesn't, both of which help the Redcoat:
1) Drill now counts as a prerequisite promotion towards Cover, Formation, Charge, and other "vs unit type" promotions. This means that units taking Drill are not hamstringing themselves by not taking Combat. Pinch in particular, is great for addressing the Redcoats defensive vulnerabilty to Grenadiers while simultaneously improving its offensive capabilities.
2) Drill II-IV each provide a 20% reduction in the amount of collateral damage taken. This makes your Redcoats in stacks more durable.

First Strikes are rare in the Gunpowder era, and Immunity to First Strikes is even rarer. Knights have it, but Cavalry don't. Drill IV Redcoats are terrifying. Really, really terrifying. First Strikes are most effective when you already have the advantage and attacking Redcoats almost always have the advantage. They are either naturally stronger than the other unit, get a bonus against it, or both. Drill ends fights sooner and gives the opponent less opportunity to inflict damage. Your Redcoats will be less damaged and recover more quickly. Your offensives are less likely to stall while you wait for your healing troops.

Build more Archery units with the goal of eventually upgrading them to Redcoats. Give them Drill or Combat promotions. Let them cherry pick xp from wounded opponents to gain promotions. They will be ready to upgrade and you can have veteran Redcoats in the field shortly after you discover Rifling. Try Drill (even in vanilla) and the increased effectiveness of your Redcoats, both offensively and defensively, will surprise you.

On Warlords, you must consider the Churchill factor as well. The new English leader is Charismatic and Protective, making his gunpowder units especially effective. They start with City Garrison I and Drill I and can get promoted more easily. As city defenders, Churchill's Redcoats are certainly a force to be reckoned with. They are also better on the offensive, since Drill helps in any combat situation and, thanks to the free City Garrison, you can better defend newly captured cities against enemy counterattacks. Some players even consider Churchill part of the reason why Redcoats had to be nerfed.
Yes, Churchill works this better than the other English Leaders, but only to a degree. Any English leader can take advantage of these changes, though Churchill does get a head start.
 
Thanks, Thyrwyn. A few things you said seem to repeat what is already written in the entry, but you made excellent points about Drill :goodjob:

There's one point I need to clarify, though. You seem to say that melee units can't upgrade to rifles. I've done that before, even on Warlords, to get CR rifles. Did the patch change that?
 
Added the entry on Chukonus. This one was quite difficult to write. The next one is on the Quechua.

The Quechua is a fantastic unit for opportunistic early city raiding, and while it is additionally useful for fighting off barbs and pillaging, relegating them to this role really denies them most of their effectiveness. Used right, they have a surprisingly long shelf life too. On the other hand, you need to base your entire opening gambit on them at the expense of everything else.
Their advantages are: they are cheap as chips - 15 hammers each is less than half an axeman - so you can churn them out at an absurd pace, and you never really need to care about them dying en masse.
Nonetheless, they come surprisingly close to axemen in terms of city-raiding potential, particularly since they come that much earlier.
They are available right from the start, and don't require any additional expenditure on any special tech or resources.
Even though Huayna is no longer aggressive in Warlords, they still come with Combat I, which is important.
They are melee so they can get cover and city raider promotions.
They look immensely cool.

Others may disagree, but I have found the most success (mostly on monarch) with Quechuas by starting worker-barracks-(probably)second worker-quechuas until infinity, while researching mining-bronze working-the wheel. Two workers and a barracks are VERY expensive at this time (especially with warlords), so why make them?

One worker improves food resources (more people for whippin'), builds mines and chops LOTS of forests. The second ASAP starts building roads towards the nearest neighbour.
The workers are needed to accelerate your Quechua production so that by the end of your quechua rushing period, you've recovered the cost of them and the barracks in pure quechua (via production/population/more whipping/chopping/less settlers). They also accelerate your later quechuas towards your borders by building roads (which also connects your copper quicker too), and overall they ensure that your rush accelerates rather than just petering out.
The barracks lets your quechuas get Cover straight out of the gate. Against fully-fortified archers in flatland cities, this takes their victory odds from 25% to a whopping 62.5%(!). Every quechua you build now from that city more than doubles their chances of winning for any battle against archers. Instead of losing 3 or 4 quechuas per easy city, you might only lose one or even none. That is huge - and every quechua that survives such a battle is then immediately eligible for City Raider I as well to become even more of a beast! It's not uncommon for me to end up with a number of level 4 CombatI/Cover/CRI/CRII quechuas, who are deadlier than any axeman.
The first city attack comes a bit later, but the delay to every subsequent city attack is considerably shorter. Plus, that bit of waiting means that the enemy has probably got more second (or third) cities to pop 2 so you can easily capture (with a worker or two inside and a bit of development) rather than destroying. Means you never need to waste hammers on an early settler too. And you can attack much hardier cities - there's no reason to be afraid of 20% defense or hilltops. A capital on a hill is pretty much the only thing they will seriously struggle with, and you've got the numbers to pillage away a huge amount of development very quickly.
So your quechuas have a MUCH longer lifespan and stay useful much longer too. It's very possible to net five early cities with promoted quechuas alone. And since one of these is overwhelmingly likely to be a copper city, you can easily segue into an axeman rush. Your axeman rush will be immensely more powerful because you've already got a huge number of cheap, promoted, fantastic quechuas to help out and do all the softening and often a lot of the heavy lifting too. I believe that's half the strength of quechuas - to add to an axe rush and make it twice as long and twice as deadly.
And when that's over, you've got masses of good units to fortify and fight barbs etc.
If you've done it right, you've probably completely destroyed or totally emasculated at least two civs by this point and you can sit back and start your builder game in earnest with heaps of good cities and a massive land area to backfill (thanks terraces!) and create a massive, financially overwhelming empire with very little local competition!

Without barracks/workers, you will have a lethal large very early force that might raze a couple of cities but you'll lose so many that they dwindle out along with your economy, which keeps up only a slow quechua production and is otherwise pretty anemic. You will also be almost completely unable to take anything but flatlands/non-capital cities. With the barracks, I've been constantly astonished at how long quechuas' usefulness as (at least auxiliary) city raiders lasts - really for as long as axemen! They're often worth still building once you've got axes too, as cheap but effective softeners and pillagers.

Weaknesses:
Warlords nerfs this strategy fairly significantly, by removing Huayna's cheap barracks and making tree chopping less powerful, but I only discovered the joy of quechua rushing post-Warlords, so I can only imagine the pure ferocity of a vanilla quechua rush.
You obviously need fairly close neighbours for this to work, so their usefulness is considerably reduced on very large/islands maps or quick speed.
They are atrocious against axes, so keep them the hell away from them! This would make them far less effective against a decent human player - though sheer numbers early and a copper-denial-and-pillaging strategy (and shock promotions instead of cover - bless that combat I!) may keep them weak (with no chance of archery as a counter) until your axes can overrun them. Probably better to attack nearby AIs though, if possible.
Spamming warriors in response is probably the best defense, but an opponent is unlikely to have a barracks up, so shock promos may level the field, pillaging will give you the production advantage, and when axes come they'll be ripe for the plucking.
Raging barbs is fairly neutral to this strategy (easy promos and little danger) though you need to be VERY careful with your defences once their barbarian axes start coming out en masse. Terraces help a lot too here!
Same weaknesses as with an axe rush:
Protective civs/Mansa Musa are pretty much off-limits except for pillaging or very weak cities.
Chariots/war chariots/immortals will also stop them pretty well if they're lucky enough to find and connect horses before you overwhelm them. Egypt and Persia may require extra special early attention.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the mighty quechua, probably my vote for the most powerful UU.
 
As Chemistry is faster to get than Rifling, many people end up upgrading their veteran melee troops to grens. That's why veteran melee troops are rarely promoted to rifles.

Regarding fs immunity, remember that cavs can have Flanking II as well, getting the immunity. As rifles have natural bonus against them, it's not really that big a deal though - cavs are the counter to grens, not rifles.
 
First Strikes are rare in the Gunpowder era, and Immunity to First Strikes is even rarer. Knights have it, but Cavalry don't. Drill IV Redcoats are terrifying. Really, really terrifying. First Strikes are most effective when you already have the advantage and attacking Redcoats almost always have the advantage. They are either naturally stronger than the other unit, get a bonus against it, or both. Drill ends fights sooner and gives the opponent less opportunity to inflict damage. Your Redcoats will be less damaged and recover more quickly. Your offensives are less likely to stall while you wait for your healing troops.

Build more Archery units with the goal of eventually upgrading them to Redcoats. Give them Drill or Combat promotions. Let them cherry pick xp from wounded opponents to gain promotions. They will be ready to upgrade and you can have veteran Redcoats in the field shortly after you discover Rifling. Try Drill (even in vanilla) and the increased effectiveness of your Redcoats, both offensively and defensively, will surprise you.

Yes, Churchill works this better than the other English Leaders, but only to a degree. Any English leader can take advantage of these changes, though Churchill does get a head start.
I like this idea of upgrading drill promoted archery units for riflemen and Redcoats in particular very much :). A Drill 4 Redcoat is obscene :ar15: getting a total of 5 first strikes and a chance of another, and +10% versus mounted in addition to normal Redcoat bonusses against mounted and gunpowder troops. The 60% reduction in collateral damage from Drill 4 makes him a great attacker or defender.

Churchill is much better than any other leader in pulling this off. He's Protective (Drill 1 free) and Charismatic (level 4 costs 8 exp), so a Drill4 Longbowman can be built in a city with barracks, and a combination of Military advisors and running Vassalage / Theocracy. Other (non protective) leaders need to get a level 5 archery unit for Drill 4 which is harder to get. It should be fairly easy to get a few protected longbows or crossbows promoted to 8 exp (or even 17 exp) by following your main attacking stack and finishing off weakened defenders. Merging a great general to a longbow, crossbow or even archer with decent experience is another way to get a late Drill 4 rifleman and the upgrades come for free.
 
I need ideas on the Cossack and the Panzer. Nobody has said anything about them yet.

Just a couple thoughts I came up with, by no means concise.


Cossacks

Str 15, 50% against cannon AND mounted units. They also have a respectable 30% withdraw. After the nerf, they are cavalry that excel in killing other cavalry. This makes them excellent pillagers. Their weakness is riflemen, but its not as bad as you think. By this time in the game Stalin and especially Catherine will have a couple cities with military advisors. Toss in barracks, stables, and West Point (unlocked by the same tech that unlocks Cossacks, Military tradition) and you'll be able to build Cossacks with Pinch (or for an interesting twist give them another flanking). Suddenly Cossacks have no equal. Another great thing about giving Cossacks pinch is that it makes their next evolution that much stronger. Gunships are upgraded cavaly that rule armored units. With pinch they can more then handle infantry, marines, and give mech inf. a run for their money.

Also Cossacks dont need rifiling. So you can go to military tradition and not feel like you have a gap in your offense. Have barracks+stable in a couple military cities with a couple advisors and military acadamies. Use theocracy and/or vassalage until West Point is built. Your Cossack army will be extremely tough to stop.

Its also worth noting that if you are the first to liberalism, one of the free techs you can choose is often (if not always) nationalism (the prereq to military tradition), making a quick way to Cossacks, especially if you are Peter and use some gs to lightbulb education.



Panzer

First you have to remember you need two tech from two different paths to build Panzers, Combustion (to build oil wells) and Industrializaton. Panzers at str 28 get 50% against armored units, making them 42 against 28 tanks. They can also attack twice in one turn, thanks to their inherent promotion of blitz. Their nemesis, gunships, are a couple techs off from Panzers, giving you a solid window attack without an equal. The best an opposing civ has to fight you is Marines. If possible, use the speed (movement 2) and strength of Panzers to fight your way to their oil supply and take out the improvement. Or better yet, capture the city. Now the ai cant build gunships. You could also pillage cottages to slow down his teching, and make an effort to take out any cavalry before they are upgraded into gunships.

Panzers, I believe, are also worthy of the pinch upgrade. With it, you'll have a unit that is stronger then mech inf (35-32) AND modern armor (42-40). So if you are strapped for money you can leave your panzers un-unpgraded and still have an advantage against future units. Upgrading them would give you a lead over gunships (50-48), but if you upgrade little to none of them you really arent losing that much. Panzers stand the test of time.

Panzers also have some synergy with Frederick. Frederick is Organized, which is faster factories. The German ub is the assembly plant, which can be built 50% faster with coal. Basically, Frederick can build REALLY fast assembly plants. My last game with him I could build assembly plants faster then FORGES in my new cities. I remember one city I was able to build an Assembly plant in three(!!!) turns. Quick assembly plants also means you can build Iron Works quicker. Assembly plants also lets you assign four engineer specialists (regular factory is two) for more production and to get a ge for iron works, three gorges, whatever. What does this all mean for Panzers? With those much-too-quick assembly plants, you should be able to build panzers extremely fast...definately before your enemy can have factories, even organized ai's. Same as Cossacks...get your first couple assembly plants up and running in your military cities, throw on pinch, and rule your era. Then keep them around to show the modern era that the German Tank is more then a match for them.
 
Panzers, I believe, are also worthy of the pinch upgrade. With it, you'll have a unit that is stronger then mech inf (35-32) AND modern armor (42-40). So if you are strapped for money you can leave your panzers un-unpgraded and still have an advantage against future units. Upgrading them would give you a lead over gunships (50-48), but if you upgrade little to none of them you really arent losing that much. Panzers stand the test of time.

Mech infantry is gunpowder unit, not armored unit, thus it's strength 28 versus mechs 32.

Otherwise nice post.
 
To me, the real advantage of the Cossack (as Mr. Civ indicates but only eluded to Cossacks) is fielding a Gren/Cossack army very early. This gives you a significant advantage. Stalin and Peter particularly benefit from this. Cathy probably does as well, but not sure how her traits synergize here as I don't play Russians much.
 
Just a couple thoughts I came up with, by no means concise.

First you have to remember you need two tech from two different paths to build Panzers, Combustion (to build oil wells) and Industrializaton. Panzers at str 28 get 50% against armored units, making them 42 against 28 tanks.

i thought the modifier was applied to the opponent.. having 50% against armored units makes it 28str panzers vs. 14str tanks.
 
The modifiers (except Combat) are counted on the defender, but not so that +50% against a unit would make it -50%, rather divided by 1.5 so -33%. Thus, Pantzer vs. Tank (unpromoted, on the green fields) would be 28 vs (28 / (1+0.5)) so 28 vs 18.7. A slaughter still :)

What would happen if the defender ended up with -100% in case the bonuses were counted just like that? Zero strength? Or even more interesting, make it -150% for negative strength. Nope - those would be /2.0 and /2.5 rather.
 
Thanks for the ideas and discussion, guys. I think we're almost done.

We have Quechua, Fast Worker, Navy SEAL, Praetorian, Janissary, Samurai, Cossack and Panzer left. Did I forget anything?
 
lol.. yea..you are right. otherwise CR3 with Cover will make archers 0 strength.
 
Navy Seals start with Amphibious and March. Starting with March means that Medic III is a lot more important here. Normally when a unit has attacked and is wounded, that means it must do nothing for the next turn to be eligible for healing. Marching your Medic III unit along with your Navy Seals means that as soon as your Navy Seals have attacked, they are eligible for the 30% healing the next turn (5% from enemy territory and 25% from Medic III). So as long as your Seals are at or above 16.8/24strength, they will be back to full health the next turn.

Therefore having Navy Seals means blitzkrieg; it's much better than the blitz promotion that tanks and panzers get. Tanks will have to stop to heal, even though they can attack many times a turn. Besides, although Tanks have a movement of two, if you are escorting artilleries along, most likely they are only using a movement of 1 in enemy territory. And if enemy territory is plagued by hills, you can't even move 2 spaces in one turn.

Navy Seals are early blitz troops, and they are arguably better than Tank :)
 
I like this idea of upgrading drill promoted archery units for riflemen and Redcoats in particular very much :). A Drill 4 Redcoat is obscene :ar15: getting a total of 5 first strikes and a chance of another, and +10% versus mounted in addition to normal Redcoat bonusses against mounted and gunpowder troops. The 60% reduction in collateral damage from Drill 4 makes him a great attacker or defender.

Churchill is much better than any other leader in pulling this off. He's Protective (Drill 1 free) and Charismatic (level 4 costs 8 exp), so a Drill4 Longbowman can be built in a city with barracks, and a combination of Military advisors and running Vassalage / Theocracy. Other (non protective) leaders need to get a level 5 archery unit for Drill 4 which is harder to get. It should be fairly easy to get a few protected longbows or crossbows promoted to 8 exp (or even 17 exp) by following your main attacking stack and finishing off weakened defenders. Merging a great general to a longbow, crossbow or even archer with decent experience is another way to get a late Drill 4 rifleman and the upgrades come for free.

what what if there was drill5 (50% more first stickes)i cant spell.
 
I'm no expert on these things, but the Praetorian article seems to be so easy, I might as well type one out.

Praetorians (replacing swordsman) are a blunt instrument which make the Romans the rulers of the early battlefield. They require only iron working and a supply of iron. They can receive the city raider promotion, which you will certainly want for most of them. You will want to build barracks first if at all possible, to give the Praetorians that 20 percent vs. cities advantage from the city raider I promotion.

Praetorians easily take out enemy archers defending cities, even culturally developed cities, with odds so favorable that they'll likely not suffer losses. They may have some losses if the enemy city is on a hill and the defender has city defense promotions, but the odds will still favor them most of the time.

Because of their higher strength, Praetorians can hold their own against axeman, even though the axemen have a bonus against melee units. Nevertheless, if you expect your enemy to have axemen, it may be best to build one or two axemen (with combat I and then shock promotions) of your own to travel with the Praetorians. Praetorians will also pound mounted units of the same era, though if your enemy has many of these you may wish to build some spearman, so that the Praetorians can turn their attention to the more important matter of taking cities.

The Roman player will want to take advantage of the Praetorian as soon as possible, so he should try to get iron working as soon as possible. You may want to have a settler and some workers ready to exploit any iron deposit you see as soon as iron working is finished.

After the enemy develops longbowmen, the Praetorian is still useful without requiring upgrading, although you will probably want to support them with catapults.

One problem with the Praetorian is that the Roman player may become a victim of his own success. Because it is easy for him to expand quickly with the Praetorians, he may soon find that he has too many cities to manage his economy efficiently. One solution is raze cities rather than keep them, unless they are very close, are holy cities, or have wonders. In the meantime, the Roman player will want to make sure his home cities are developing economicly, probably with plentiful cottages. You may find that after their useful era you have many well-promoted Praetorians left over, in which case it will probably be worth the expense of upgrading them.
 
Navy Seals start with Amphibious and March. Starting with March means that Medic III is a lot more important here. Normally when a unit has attacked and is wounded, that means it must do nothing for the next turn to be eligible for healing. Marching your Medic III unit along with your Navy Seals means that as soon as your Navy Seals have attacked, they are eligible for the 30% healing the next turn (5% from enemy territory and 25% from Medic III). So as long as your Seals are at or above 16.8/24strength, they will be back to full health the next turn.

I doubt it works this way. I don't think March stacks with effects of Medic. Can anyone confirm it?
 
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