Jaguars suck!

Yeah, yeah, it's been said before ad nauseum. However I just need to repeat it. Even after the patch with the decreased hammers cost, they still suck. 25% defense in the jungle? They're replacing swordsmen who are mainly attackers, why the heck would you increase defense? And I don't care if they don't need Iron, very few games do you not have Copper OR Iron and Axemen are much better (same cost, 50% melee versus 10% city attack, disregard jungle defense). I hope they actually fix the problem in the next patch. There are a lot of cool and powerful unique units in this game. The Jaguars just look cool, but are severely UNDERpowered. Even if they cost 30 hammers, I'd still build Axemen for 35.

as axemen are know to be a bit overpowered (cf. all threads that talk about using lots of axemen tactic) they maybe should be nerfed a bit in da next patch?
rising axeman cost to 45 or something like that...

I was thinking of lowering the melee bonus to just 25%.

I would understand the logic behind Jaguar Warriors if they received the Woodsman I upgrade instead of +25% in Jungles that they get now. Their current special ability is far too constrained to be of much use. Mind you, I did have one game where I got to use Jaguar Warriors in their natural habitat and even besiege and attack cities from the depths of jungle! I almost felt proud being an Aztec then.

If they got the Woodsman I bonus, then with only one upgrade you could make them Woodsmen II with speed of 2 and very good defensive bonuses in forests! Now that would be worth the loss of one point of Strength and make it possible to use really nice guerrilla tactics..

"Oh but there ain't any forests in Mesoamerica, just jungle all around."

- If the RL Aztecs had "spawned their first settler" somewhere else, then perhaps the Jaguars would have been Wolves or whatnot and been apt at fighting in other sorts of terrain, such as needleleaf forests.

Yet another Jags suck thread :Warp shakes head:

Firaxis doesn't feel they are a problem as they've all played against Friedrich Psitalon (the leader of the MP session team on Civ4) and he is just scary using the Aztecs.

I'd have to agree that they do have their benefit. While I only play on the lower levels, I am using the Jags for the first time in my current game. With a quick batch of them from barracks-laden cities, I quickly took out one of two very close neighbors and am now stretching to take out the second before their defense gets much better than archers.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Do what I did, go into the unit.xml flie and mod jaguar strength from "5" to "6" (to be fair I also bumped their cost back up to 40 hammers). Now they are as good as regular swordsman but are good in jungle and dont need iron, a worthy UU in my opinion.

While I don't see Jags as being too bad, they aren't quite up to par with other UUs. For some reason I almost always start next to them and they've never given me the least bit of trouble. Axes eat the poor things for breakfast, and I've only rarely seen a horse archer lose to them nevermind the beating they recieved when going up against Keshiks or Praetorians.

The only time they really become an issue is when you grab theocracy early and pump them out with WoodsmanII to start with. Damn near impossible to kill in forests and can take out enemy resources with little risk, but even that wouldn't be worth much in MP as there are so few forests left by the end of the chop rush phase.

Jaguars combine two ideas that I consider "bad ideas for a UU":

1) Lower strength. It's simply puzzling that they decided to make Jaguars as weak as Axemen, when Axemen already get the huge +50% vs. melee bonus.

2) Don't-need-a-resource. Yes, one can come across the occasional game where this is a useful ability. I still feel it's a bad thing to give a UU, though, because:

- (a) a UU is the one thing you can plan for from the start. If you're playing Romans, you bloody well know that you need to find Iron.

- (b) If you have the resource in question, you suddenly have a UU whose main bonus is worthless. It's one thing for that to happen with a regular unit - if they wanted to have a "stone axeman" who didn't take metal, but had lower strength, that'd be fine - but it's not appropriate for a UU.

DSChapin said:

- (b) If you have the resource in question, you suddenly have a UU whose main bonus is worthless. It's one thing for that to happen with a regular unit - if they wanted to have a "stone axeman" who didn't take metal, but had lower strength, that'd be fine - but it's not appropriate for a UU.

Click to expand...

The few times I've played the Aztecs, I've had the same beef.

It wouldn't be so bad if the UU was in addition to, rather than replacing, a unit. Let me build regular Swordsmen if I have iron!

warpstorm said:

Yet another Jags suck thread :Warp shakes head:

Firaxis doesn't feel they are a problem as they've all played against Friedrich Psitalon (the leader of the MP session team on Civ4) and he is just scary using the Aztecs.

Click to expand...

Well Montezuma does have nice traits. Agressive for war and Spritual for switching between war and peace with different civics. He starts with Mysticism and can easily get early religions. It's just that Jaguars are handicaps if you do get iron. A UU shouldn't be a handicap.

Jaguars are not strength 5. They are strength 5.5. They start with combat 1 for free since Monty is aggresive.

Unless you compare Monty's Jaguars to the Swordsmen of an Aggressive civ...

Anyway... How would I mod my Jaguars to be Woodsmen I from the start and remove the jungle bonus? I'd love to give it a try.

I really think that the woodsman I promotion is a good idea. However, I also find the jaguar to be an immensely useful, even overpowered unit in multiplayer. On the other hand, I don't think I've built a single swordsman in any of my multiplayer games......

warpstorm said:

Yet another Jags suck thread :Warp shakes head:

Firaxis doesn't feel they are a problem as they've all played against Friedrich Psitalon (the leader of the MP session team on Civ4) and he is just scary using the Aztecs.

Click to expand...

A great human player will scare people with any leader. David can use a sling and stone to beat Goliath doesn't make sling and stone a powerful weapon when compared with a crossbow.

Juguar does have its niche, that is, to rush your neighbours without the need for metal resources, but this niche is very limited and depends on a lot of luck factors. You need the neighbour to be close enough, and hasn't built a significant number of axemen (which most MP players will do whenever possible), and your backside is not exposed to tons of barbarians. Once you miss this window of opportunities, trying to remain competitive using an aggressive and spiritual leader requires painstaking micromanaging.

Jaguars don't suck, they just aren't impressive.

View the Aztecs as a civ that is a challenge and needs some skill to play.

OK, without any modding or programming experience at all, I tried modding the Jaguar to Woodsman I and removing the Jungle bonus. This is how I did it:

I went to Civ 4/assets/xml/units/

and saved CIV4UnitInfos.xml in a newly created folder called "Originals".

I then opened CIV4UnitInfos.xml in Notepad.

Then I used Find to locate Explorer (second Explorer in the file) in search of the command line giving the Woodsman promotion. I then scrolled down to where it says <FreePromotions> and copied the Woodsman I entry from there:

<FreePromotion>
<PromotionType>PROMOTION_WOODSMAN1</PromotionType>
<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
</FreePromotion>

I then used Find again to locate Aztec_Jaguar and pasted the above on top of the </Freepromotion> entry of Aztec_Jaguar.

Therefore, I should now have a Jaguar that has the Woodsman I promotion.

Now we have to get rid of the +25% Jungle bonus:

I scrolled up a few lines and removed the contents of the <FeatureDefense> entry. I left both <FeatureDefense> and </FeatureDefense> in the file just in case.

The part I removed is here for reference:
<FeatureType>FEATURE_JUNGLE</FeatureType>
<iFeatureDefense>25</iFeatureDefense>

Yep. That should be the 25% bonus.

OK. Anything else? Tweaking strength? Nope. This is what the Aztec Jaguar should have been like on release. I will now try it and report to you whether my sad "modding" attempt was successful or not.

Save/Exit.

OK. Some error messages appeared, so apparently I need to change something. I scanned another Unit Entry for clues and found this on a unit, which did not have Feature Defenses.

<FeatureDefenses/>

So. I removed what ever I have left of my cut/paste attempts on the FeatureDefenses of the Aztec warrior and pasted the above in its stead. The Feature Defenses area now contains only the one line.

Okay. Then I had to tweak the lines of the Free Promotion as well. This is what I pasted in stead of the old lines:

<FreePromotions>
<FreePromotion>
<PromotionType>PROMOTION_GUERILLA1</PromotionType>
<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
</FreePromotion>
<FreePromotion>
<PromotionType>PROMOTION_WOODSMAN1</PromotionType>
<bFreePromotion>1</bFreePromotion>
</FreePromotion>
</FreePromotions>

I then went back and removed PROMOTION_GUERILLA1 completely (all the way to </freepromotion> and dressed the lines to match the others.

And voilá! It works - at least in the Civilopedia!

If you get any error messages when you start the game, there are some extra lines you need to erase or add. The </blahblah> seems to be especially important as well as the <blahblah/> if the unit has no abilities of the blahblah type.

Now I'll go try whether my new Jaguar works in the game as well. At least the game now starts without error messages and the Jaguar boasts his new Woodsman I promotion in the civilopedia! Woo hoo etc.

http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/4210/woodsmanjaguar7vl.jpg

Success!

OK, I quickly tried the game, and the new Jaguar feels immensely powerful in the forests. It may not be as good at attacking cities as a Swordsman, but there's nothing that can beat it in the jungle/forest. I really enjoyed using the forests to my advantage and lurking in ambush.

Once you get it off the production line, just give the Jaguar Woodsman II and it will be your ultimate guerrilla warrior. I had a lot of fun destroying Louis' supply lines, roads, and improvements and hiding in the forests from his archers. I managed to cut the Copper and Iron roads, after which Louis was a piece of cake. But then that he would have been with Axemen and/or Swordsmen (let alone other ancient UUs!) too, so I don't think I made the Jaguar too powerful.

My next project is to see how the computer Monty succeeds with his new units. I'm sure he'll eat somebody for breakfast, lunch AND dinner with his new, feral troops! No more sad excuses for the Azteca! A new era has begun!