Irony of aggressive civs?

I think it's kind of ironic (and sucky) that the aggressive civs have such mediocre UUs: phalanx, keshik, quechua, jaguar, musketeer, samurai.

Kinda hard to be **aggressive** with these units!!! Musketeer, jaguar, and phalanx are defensive units, the keshik requires you to research two deadend techs (hbriding, archery), quechua has such a short period of use and is of questionable usefulness, which leaves only the samurai. The samurai is debatable, but I have found that they lack the punch you would like to face longbowmen at that point in the game.

I dunno, does anyone else have any thoughts on this? I started out really wanting to go with an aggressive civ, but because of the UUs, I've started playing with other civs and finding much more success.

edit: I wonder if this is consequently why conquest seems so much harder than the other victory conditions? Imo the 4 best conquest civs on paper would be: napoleon, genghis, huayna, montezuma. This is because of synergy of traits and UUs "in theory". But since their respective UUs actually suck conquest is made more difficult since you can't leverage your UUs. What do you think?

The only aggressive civ I've played as so far is Japan, and I can assure you, samurais rock.
In most games, the first big aggression phase is with axemen, and the second starts when macers come along. Of course you need catapults by then to soften up city defenses, but you'll need those with any other unit, too.
The two first strikes don't make them overpowered, but they certainly provide a nice advantage compared to what you'd have otherwise - normal macers. A really nice thing is the free combat I promotion, so you can pick a bonus vs melee or archery units right out of the barracks, or go the city raider route and be happy about an extra 0.8 strength.

Maybe someone else can say something about the other UUs...I know I had a very good time with samurai!

Some people regard Samurai as overpowered, same with Keshiks.'Nuff said.

Keshiks are good but it sucks that the aggressive leader bonus doesn't apply to them.

Why yes, I have thought about it a little
The power of Aggressive isn't in the UUs- a lot of non-Aggressive tribes have bad ones as well- but in the flexibility you get when it comes to war. That extra promotion at the start allows you to tailor units to situations without much concern. You only need to win one combat (or run Vassalage/Theocracy) to get a City Raider II unit, or an all around unit with Cover and Shock. All your Gunpowder units can start with Pinch if you want, and an extra 25% is nothing to sneeze at if you have a large army.
Broadly stated, Aggressive repays a certain style of micromanagement. Whether you want to play that way or not, I can't say; I know it gets hard to keep track of both cities and war at times.

I like the Phalanx, if used early enough. In one game, my nearest neighbor only had archers. Since I had the agressive trait, any unit created in a city with a barracks could get Cover instantly, giving them an extra 25% bonus against the archers. Worked very, very well. And once the phalanx were in the cities they had taken, they were very hard to get rid of.

The useful of UUs though depends alot on the technology of your neighbors. If their military isn't up to yours, the UUs can give you an extra advantage and make those cities fall a lot faster.

Regular Horse Archers are a darn fine unit. Keshiks are definitely a very good unit. With the Keshik's strenght of 6 and First Strike, they can even hold up against Spearmen. And it's not like you won't pillage every metal source before attacking, so the enemy won't be able to build more spears.

You can call Horseback Riding and Archery "dead end" techs but I think that's a bad way of thinking about them. Regardless of whether their tech path continues past them, they are extremely useful for a long time. Archery is useful for good, cheap defenders and Horseback Riding is great for offensive units up through Cav.


There was a thread a while back featuring strats for unpopular civs/leaders that had a good discussion of Alexander and Phalanxes. Basically, a split of Phalanxes and Axemen will be much more durable and pack more offense than a typical Axe stack +1-2 Spears. With the higher base strength they remain dominant against all mounted units until Knights and even then are pretty good.


I'm a big fan of fast moving armies, so the Musketeer works great for me. They can be readily assimilated into a mounted-unit army and as the first gunpowder unit on the scene they nicely avoid units with specialty bonuses against them for quite a while. They are definitley not overpowered, but they are a nice unit compared to the near-worthless Musketman.


Samurai work well if your entire tech research path is geared towards getting them as soon as possible. If done properly, an early Samurai stack can dominate for quite a while, taking cities without the need for Catapults.


Jaguars I will agree on. I've tried but I just can't make them work so I have to agree. They are indefensible. Even with a beeline to Iron, they are just mediocre. Their +10% city attack is paltry compared to the Axe bonus and their lower strength means they are crushed by Axes where normal swords at least have a slim chance. For the same production cost, I'll take Axes every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

The Combat I promotion for gunpowder and melee units as well as the cheap barracks production is really a considerable advantage to these civs. With the Theology-Vassalage holy alliance, this means you get well-promoted units straight off the conveyor belt. This is usually enough to fuel a healthy war machine, it just requires the player to use these strengths properly.

I agree with you that their UUs are rather weak, but having a wide-ranging boost to their military really makes up for this.

EDIT: I've just seen what uncarved block has written, I was writing this message when he posted it. He gets the credit for saying it first.

The thing about aggressive civs is that they don't need a special unit to be aggressive, the free combat I makes just about any melee/gunpowder unit a minor UU.

On some of the units: How can you have so trouble with samurai against longbowmen? With other civs, I use city raider macemen against longbows with little problem, the +2 first strikes can only help out. I haven't played Toka very much (got massively outteched last time I tried), but I can't see how his UU is weak when it's a better version of what I usually use as the backbone of my medieval armies.

Jaguars are clearly there for when you don't have the choice between them and axemen; they're only worth building if you have a start with no metals. If you do though, they're a whole lot easier to get than cats and a lot tougher than archers. They're going to seem useless if you guarantee yourself bronze/iron through reloads, worldbuilder, or map settings. They're not as good as something just plain sick like praetorians, but they're not a bad unit.

Keshiks, I can take or leave. Ignoring terrain can be nice sometimes, but they're just hard to use on higher difficulty levels because it's hard to get a horse rush going before you opponent has plenty of spears. They're also poorly designed IMO, historically the Keshiks were a threat to medieval technology units, but in the game they're pretty useless against medieval units.

balthamael said:

Some people regard Samurai as overpowered

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Samuri may be overpowered against stupid AI, though not nearly as much as praets.

But they are clearly a very weak UU against any human who knows how to build crossbows.

to give jaguars a chance they should be avialiable from the start or at least with bronze working researched or give them 2 movement.

i never thought the aggresive trait was that good anyway 1 strenth for only melee units should be boosted to 4xp so that in city with a barracks they get 2 promotions strait off. it should also apply to all units except naval, air and siege

I wonder why they decided not to make Aggressive a combat1 for all units...doesn't seem like it would be very overopowered to me.

I'm in complete agreement with the Keshik. It's lame that they don't get a combat1 bonus and I'm much more likely to build Axemen with barracks that are combat 1 + 25% vs something (5.5 + 25% = 6.875 if you think of it that way) instead of a Keshik that is just combat 1 (6.6).

Phalanx +25% hill defense is one of the stupedest unit abilities in the game IMO.

Mahatmajon said:

Phalanx +25% hill defense is one of the stupedest unit abilities in the game IMO.

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And the Archer and Longbowman +25% hill defense isn't? ....

The main usefulness of the Phalanx is that it is strength 5.

In my experience, Samurai actually hold up pretty well against crossbowmen, considering that they're supposed to be the counter. After all, an unpromoted crossbowmen has a strength of 9 against melee, with one first strike. You're unlikely to find units that aren't promoted, so let's say our crossbowmen has Combat 1 and Shock, with a first strike against macemen. Samurai come with Combat 1 already, and if you use your civics right, come out with two promotions. Let's say you give him Cover and Shock. Keep in mind that the Samurai gets a first strike, as it has two to the crossbow's one. Certainly way better off than macemen, and your opponent is toast in a war if he's relying upon crossbowmen. They aren't exactly great offensively, unless we're talking the Cho-ko-nu, and even then, if they're really looking to capture cities, they're going to be packing vanilla macemen, which samurai absolutely murder. In short, if the Samurai is underpowered,than macemen are absolute crap.....

sand said:

i never thought the aggresive trait was that good anyway 1 strenth for only melee units should be boosted to 4xp so that in city with a barracks they get 2 promotions strait off. it should also apply to all units except naval, air and siege

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This would make aggressive much weaker. As it is, they get free combat 1, plus one more promotion from the barracks. They get their next promotion after 1 XP, the promotion after that is 6 XP away and the one after that is 13 XP away.

With your proposal, they would get 2 promotions to start (instead of combat 1 and another promotion). They would get their next promotion after 2 XP (instead of 1), the promotion after that would be 9 XP away (instead of 6) and the one after that would be 18 XP away (instead of 13).

Making it apply to ranged, mounted and armored units would help aleviate this, but i'm not sure it would be enough. Besides, ranged units are for defense, not for aggressive civs. Mounted units are there to pillage, which is something you do when you're not strong enough to conquer cities, so again no all that good for aggressive civs. As for armored units, any aggressive leader worth his trait should have won the game before reaching the required tech to make them.

Mahatmajon said:

I wonder why they decided not to make Aggressive a combat1 for all units...doesn't seem like it would be very overopowered to me.

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It would be absolutely overwhelmingly overpowered, even more so than financial. Aggressive is already one of the best traits out there, no need to improve it in any way.

Some people just don't realize how good a FREE promotion is. The best part about it is that you still start at 0 XP, which means all further promotions are easier to get to. For instance, getting to combat 5, or any other promotion that requires combat 4, only takes 17 XP with the aggressive trait, while it takes 26 XP without it.

I'm willing to change my opinion on samurais, but I dunno about the rest so far...Also, I agree that agressive is great, but what I'm saying is that conquest is harder than it could be with these civs since you can't also leverage your UUs...

How can you say Quecha is underpowered? Have you SEEN what people do with that unit?

Mahatmajon said:

Phalanx +25% hill defense is one of the stupedest unit abilities in the game IMO.

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Gherald said:

And the Archer and Longbowman +25% hill defense isn't? ....

The main usefulness of the Phalanx is that it is strength 5.

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Um. Archer and longbowman can get city defense promotions. They are good as defensive units in your cities. Having cities on hills for added defense makes these units even better city defenders.

Phalanx can't get city defender. Therefore it is an offensive unit. Having +25% hill defense on an offensive unit is "one of the stupedest unit abilities in the game IMO".

Zombie69 said:

It would be absolutely overwhelmingly overpowered, even more so than financial. Aggressive is already one of the best traits out there, no need to improve it in any way.

Some people just don't realize how good a FREE promotion is. The best part about it is that you still start at 0 XP, which means all further promotions are easier to get to. For instance, getting to combat 5, or any other promotion that requires combat 4, only takes 17 XP with the aggressive trait, while it takes 26 XP without it.

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Yah, I agree now that I think about it more. You're definately right that the biggest advantage to aggressive is that units get a FREE promotion and are still at 0XP. I still want the Keshik changed though...it's lame.