Hybrid Affinity Unique Units

[Promethian]

So what is everybody's opinion on the new units. I just finished a game where I deliberately spread my affinity all over the place so I could unlock and experiment with these units. So I am finally ready to share my opinions. Yes I know games are even faster now with even less opportunity to actually use these units and now that its acknowledged lets stick to the spirit of the thread.


Harmony/Supremacy

Nanohive: Invisible unit that after setting up deals 10 damage per turn to enemies within 2 tiles. The upgrade available to all 3 upgrade paths (the "common" upgrade) increases this damage by another 10.

I find this unit to be fantastic. Cities apparently cannot see invisible 2 tiles out. I tested this by moving a Nanohive to be the only unit within 2 tiles of an enemy city and it never got bombarded. The Nanohive is easy damage that the AI doesn't know how to deal with at all and human players will have difficulty dealing with because they must get a unit adjacent to it to attack it, if they even notice its there.

Also it appears you can actually damage units you aren't at war with with a Nanohive without declaring war. I'm mentioning this separately because I doubt it is intended.

Geliopod: Invisible melee unit with 3 movement. The common upgrade is the Geliopod gets +70% combat strength for any turn in which it started the turn undetected.

MELEE ASSASSIN! Geliopod is nuts, especially after its upgrade. There is of course the obvious benefit of your opponent not knowing exactly how many units you have or where they are. This also comes with another major benefit though: your opponent cannot target Geliopods with air or orbital attacks without first finding them.

Now another fun trick with Geliopods is the fall back defense. They have zone of control so units can't just rush past them. So have your enemy attack a fortified Geliopod (getting the 70% combat bonus), fall back a step into invis again and fortify again. You can force your enemy to expend a great deal more effort on the Geliopod than the usual unit and it makes Geliopod great as a unit you park further out to watch for an invading force.

Aquilon: Flying ranged attacker that the basic air unit can base on. The common upgrade is +1 capacity for basing air units.

So who likes Carriers? I love Carriers. Whats that? You are saying I can have a flying Carrier with 2 capacity (with upgrade) that also has a ranged attack of 72 power (with upgrade)? SIGN ME UP! The only downside to this unit is it is a lot of eggs in one basket. Kill the Aquilon and the Needlejets die with it. Still it is also a lot of killing power in a single package so use it wisely.


Purity/Harmony

Immortal: Powerful 2 movespeed melee unit ("Soldier" type). Higher raw combat power than the Battlesuit/CNDR/Xenoswarm. Its common upgrade is +15 heal per turn. The Purity heavy upgrade is 30% when attacking. The Harmony heavy is 40% in Miasma. The 50/50 upgrade is 40% when not adjacent to a friendly unit.

The Immortal is pretty basic. Its another in a long line of "Soldier" type units that has different upgrade bonuses and from what I can tell it is the "Soldier" type unit with the highest raw combat power.

Architect: Ranged unit that has two special abilities. The first targets friendly units and increases their combat power for a turn. The second targets enemy units and reduces their combat power for a turn. The common upgrade is to double the effectiveness of the Architect's special abilities. The Harmony heavy upgrade makes the enemy target special also do damage. The Purity heavy upgrade makes the friendly target special also heal. The half and half upgrade makes the Architect specials only use a move instead of a full action so you can act on two units per turn.

I love what this unit does for the game. One of the biggest issues with 1UPT is units are crammed into a bit too small of a space. This unit allows us to fit more combat power into these smaller spaces by having Architects in the back buffing units without moving into the combat area themselves.

Throne: Ranged unit that has two special abilities. These special abilities are duplicates of the Architect ability but with larger numbers. The upgrades are the same except the 50/50 upgrade. Instead of being able to buff twice Throne gets +1 range when at full health.

More buffing power crammed into a single unit. The extra range is interesting in that you can buff from further away thus better alleviating the 1UPT/space issue.


Purity/Supremacy

Drone Cage: Melee unit that can set up to heal adjacent units every turn. Common upgrade increases the heal per turn of the heal when set up.

At first glance this unit doesn't seem that great. Its heal range is adjacent only and it only heals after setting up and can't move afterwards. The thing is though it has 60 combat power after upgrading. On the defense park it on a node with buddies and watch the healing numbers pour in. On offense you can give some extra staying power to your other units and the Drone Cage itself acts as a beefy target on top.

Autosled: Melee unit with 3 moves ("Rover" type) with higher power. Upgrade options are all standard for "Rover" types: flanking bonus, +1 move, bonus under sat coverage, bonus against unfortified.

Bigger "Rover" types are less common than the bigger "Soldier" types so this is more welcome to me than the Immortal. Not much more to say unfortunately.

Golem: Melee unit that when fortified acts as blocking terrain for ranged attacks. Common upgrade is 10% combat power per unused movement. Supremacy heavy upgrade is 30% power on defense. Purity heavy upgrade is to do 15 splash damage to adjacent enemies on attack. 50/50 upgrade is 50% power when attacking a city.

The Golem along with the Drone Cage is clearly intended to provide a method of combat designed around using units that are much harder to kill and to simply outlast your opponent instead of just smashing against each other in a direct comparison on numbers. With the change of cities not being able to shoot over blocking terrain by default this means the Golem can park next to a city, get a Drone Cage buddy to help keep it alive and your ranged units can safely shoot at the city from behind the Golem. I haven't gotten to try this in a real situation where my opponent can actually stop me from steamrolling their city so I can't say how effective it will be. However I like the idea.

 

[MadDjinn]

Golems make great supremacy VC fodder. That's about it. Aside from the purity splash damage bonus, I rarely use them because they are too far from a useful tech.

 

[MAMoob]

Tbh the only one I find useful is the autosled. It's an earlygame hovertank (getting your rovers there often takes more time, as you need the last upgrade, so 8/8 or 12 in affinities) with great combat power. Otherwise I just use navy and hovertanks for offense with maybe some carriers and planes as I find most land units too slow for offense. Aquilon is not that great compared to regular carrier too because of 2 vs 4 speed. Aquilons might be still useful if you want to siege something too far from coast but that rarely happens. That goes for the most new hybrid units as well. Drone cages with rangers can make a decent defensive army I guess but I rarely need to defend.

 

[Promethian]

Nanohives I am finding I use a lot after more games. They are on a leaf to a tech most people get early (ahem Cognition) so the opportunity cost is very low for them and their usefulness is definitely real. That free stealthed damage is great and I didn't notice the high combat power on them in my initial analysis so they are hard to kill when found.

Immortals just devastate whatever they fight with their high power. They also have a low opportunity cost as they are on a tech a lot of folks pick up.

Geliopod if you are willing to go out of your way for it is also stupidly powerful. No lev but they are base 3 move so they still can keep up well enough. Its a melee unit that I don't have to worry about being killed before I can use it to take a city.

 

[MAMoob]

AI is pretty terrible at dealing with invisible units, I'd give that. It's the only reason subs are worth building at all. 3 move without terrain penalty negation is stil too slow in my book though. It might take like 10+ turns to only get to the enemy position. And +70% attack from invis kinda looks powerful, but say redeemers get the same 70% while flanking standing next to each other or some other unit, and it works all the time, with 4 move and hovering on top of that. I just really never found use for slow ground units outside of defense, especially in RT where there seems to be more water on most maps.

 

[Promethian]

The Geliopod 70% is more reliable to me than Redeemer flanking bonuses. It is very easy to end turns out of detection and I can reliably ensure the Geliopod kills when it attacks.

 

[Roxlimn]

I only employ ground units for close range codices it when I have the road or maglev infrastructure to bring them to the front. If I have to walk them through an empty continent to get to the conflict, I use ships or not fight at all. Hover is nice, but by that time, I'm either ending it ASAP or I have the tech muscle to swing Phasal Transporters, in which case the logistical moving speed is immaterial.

Immortals are very nice for taking out nests in rough terrain, and for attacking strong points through Hill and Forest. Easy to get at 3/3. Nanohives are an easy pickup, too.

Geliopods are for sniping. If I'm planning a war or suspect one, planting a pair of these is usually enough to take out a weak city - good for taking out resources or cutting off reinforcement. The AI won't defend against them since they're invisible.

Autosleds are stronger, earlier hover tanks. Nuff said. I found the Architects superfluous. I rarely need more than two ranks, and if I did, I use air. They're great for keeping the LEV Destroyer topped up for the max range perk.

Drone cages are great defensively. Like a node that walks and stacks on nodes.

 

[bruntfca]

Thanks for posting this. Despite a few games, I've never really got to try these units. Most cities now seem to be coast based or sea based. It's so much easier and faster to build, Melee ships, ranged ships, and maybe carriers. Sea movement is not hindered by terrain.

Since everyone gets free trade for coast cities, I rarely find myself bothering to build roads anymore either, I notices they AI hardly does as either. I sometimes fantasize about using phasal transporters but my frigates have nearly always done the job by then!

 

[Promethian]

Thanks for posting this. Despite a few games, I've never really got to try these units. Most cities now seem to be coast based or sea based. It's so much easier and faster to build, Melee ships, ranged ships, and maybe carriers. Sea movement is not hindered by terrain.

Since everyone gets free trade for coast cities, I rarely find myself bothering to build roads anymore either, I notices they AI hardly does as either. I sometimes fantasize about using phasal transporters but my frigates have nearly always done the job by then!

I've started making myself build an extra worker with the primary job of running roads. At first I just wanted to see how often I would put the roads to use and now I do it because I realized that I definitely do use the roads a lot. Just my workers alone slash a huge number of turns moving around with a road network not to mention military units. There is almost always a war with my closest neighbor.

 

[Roxlimn]

I just got a bunch more time with the units. They really come into their own once they get upgraded, though 30 Strength Immortals when your normals are 24 (plus the movement bonus) are no slouches. They're pretty much what I'd hoped the Battlesuits would be.

After upgrading they're straight up better than most of your basic units.

The thing that's not so obvious is that they're also stronger variants of your basic units. So a First Throne isn't just a support unit, it's also a 70 strength range 3 Hovertank that also reduces enemy defenses or boosts ally strength (melee only). A Drone Cage boosts healing when you deploy its Aid Drones, but it's also a 60 Strength melee unit with a 50% bonus vs Ranged.

 

[sugerdady87]

I'm playing a domination game now with 2-3 golems (+30% defense upgrade), 7-8 rangers and 2 fighter jets for defense per army (I have 2 separate armies in war on two fronts with different civs). I have to say, I'm having a lot of fun; golems are great. Just need to use phasal transporters to travel great distances.

 

[MAMoob]

Yeah, but you should normally win by the time you have the transporters (unless you're very spy heavy anyway).

Also, no affinity units are better than boats .

 

[sugerdady87]

Yeah, but you should normally win by the time you have the transporters (unless you're very spy heavy anyway).

Also, no affinity units are better than boats .

Yeah I'm ARC but I'm not trying to win super fast.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think it depends on how fast your science is and what your affinity is. With hybrid affinities and a decent science clip, it can be trivial to go down Cybernetics and Autogyros for the Supremacy XP before you build Emancipation. Then you just build your Phasal Transporters and go have a blast.

The Immortals continue to be solid units - no terrain movement penalty, insane healing ability, straight up strong. And they cost 1 Xenomass, which is crazy abundant.

They're also on a branch tech that includes Mass Digesters, so on a recent Barre game, I went Purity/Harmony to upgrade the Immortals after I got the Mass Digesters. Playing as Barre, you absolutely don't need Academies - just go straight for Xenonurseries, Institutes, and Nanopastures.

The Architects are harder to get, though. They really do represent a detour and their ability to deal damage from range isn't that hot. It's better to still go down to Autogyros for the Phasals and Orbital Lasers, because both of those are game-changing military units.

Battlesuits need some kind of identity. Immortals are stronger than they are, now, and better in every way, once they both upgrade at about the same time. Battlesuits also need Titanium, which I need for my Satellites.

Nanohives turn out to be excellent City Defenders, especially if you have a Node or two healing your own units. So long as the City can stand for a few turns, the Nanohive inside dealing 20 damage per turn really takes a toll on the attacking forces.

Autosleds continue to be Better Hovertanks Than Hovertanks.

Geliopods are outstanding city takers if the terrain is favorable and the AI army is engaged elsewhere. Two can definitely take out a poorly defended city in one turn and if that city has the Strategics fueling the enemy's special units, it can really deal a blow to the enemy army.

 

[MAMoob]

I've tried rushing for phasal transporters, and got there by turn 102 with ARC. Problem is, I would be finishing conquering the map (or would already win with all coastal starts and some luck with positioning) if I used navy. And if you go for emancipation why even bother with transporters if there are cheaper affinity techs to grab (we're talking optimal, not for fun play here).

I don't think ground forces have a chance to shine on standard map vs AI. I've recently played small map with no water (just few lakes, planet type is called 82 something I think) and it was much more intense in terms of ground action. i still mostly used rangers for early defence and lategame rovers for offence but a few immortals I've thrown in for tanking were doing pretty well.

 

[Martin_K]

i didn't use all of the new hybrid units yet. i got some use out of autosleds and drone cages, since they are unlocked by techs that i'll often get for economic reasons anyway.

what i really don't like about all of the new units is the fact that there are NO unique naval units.

in all my games (except for that one game where i played the "land only" map script [eridani 82 or something?]) AI expand into the water right away. on normal continents maps, the interior of the contients is often empty and (almost) all the cities are coastal or aquatic. so i find myself playing with mostly patrol boats, gun boats and maybe a few subs. and tac jets if i get the sky chitin artifact thingy that makes them competitive.

a unique naval unit for every pure and hybrid affinity would have been much more useful than 9 new land units that are compeltely redundant in many (most?) games.