Most useless units?

[Rickard1977]

I would say:

Horsemen - Can hardly even fight an Archer, worthless against spearmen.

Musketmen - Easily fought by Longbowmen, Medieval Infantry and Knights, even though 4 in defense. Pikemen often have better defense.

Regular tanks - Sometimes they lose against Guerilla and even middle age units.

Flaks - They are seldom able to fight Bombers

 

[Nathiri]

Horseman are decent units and are good when you have a good stack. They have better movement. They are used all the time in MP games. Horseman work the same as Archers against Spearman. I usually use about 8 archers/horseman against 2-3 Spearman. It just depends on the circumstances. I would still use a combination of both though as Archers are useful as they can shoot before an enemy unit attacks your units.

Actually Pikeman have less defense than the Musketman. You can see it in the civilopedia.

Tanks are the best industrial attack unit. Losing to a unit not as good is possible but most of the time it wins, it just depends every time since its random. Also if it's on defense it's more likely for it to lose.

That is true of Flaks but it's better than nothing.

I would say every unit has a use. No unit is necessarily worthless. If you dont have a resource, there is usually a backup unit that you can use, it is just not as good of course.

 

[justanick]

Horsemen - Can hardly even fight an Archer, worthless against spearmen.

They are probably the most useful unit. They allow you to dominate the world ASAP. Considering their low price horsemen are as good as knights, and only less efficient in terms of maintenance and war weariness.

Musketmen - Easily fought by Longbowmen, Medieval Infantry and Knights, even though 4 in defense. Pikemen often have better defense.

Musketmen to pikemen is a bit like knight to horsemen. The more modern units is stronger and better for maintenance and war weariness, but the older units is as shield efficient as the more modern one. Pikemen might even be more shield efficient. But by the time Musketmen become available the needed focus is starting to change from quantity to quality, so clearly musketmen are rather useful.

Regular tanks - Sometimes they lose against Guerilla and even middle age units.

Attacking with anything else available in the timeframe of the regular tank will cause much higher loses than the tank. So tanks are rather useful.

I somewhat dislike the regular tanks because they are slower than cavalry. Playing Germany you donnot need to worry about that. But playing a nation with an earlier UU is usually favourable.

Flaks - They are seldom able to fight Bombers

If a stack containing 4 Flaks is bombarded by 100 Bonbers, than those 4 Flaks will shoot down 31.699 Bombers on average if no less than 4 flaks are part of the stack at all times. Surely the soon available rocket version is much stronger and as long as your enemy has no air power you donnot need any Flak. But if your enemy has air power you donnot, than you will terribly miss Flak.

 

[walletta]

Horseman are decent units and are good when you have a good stack. They have better movement. They are used all the time in MP games. Horseman work the same as Archers against Spearman. I usually use about 8 archers/horseman against 2-3 Spearman. It just depends on the circumstances. I would still use a combination of both though as Archers are useful as they can shoot before an enemy unit attacks your units.

Actually Pikeman have less defense than the Musketman. You can see it in the civilopedia.

Tanks are the best industrial attack unit. Losing to a unit not as good is possible but most of the time it wins, it just depends every time since its random. Also if it's on defense it's more likely for it to lose.

That is true of Flaks but it's better than nothing.

I would say every unit has a use. No unit is necessarily worthless. If you dont have a resource, there is usually a backup unit that you can use, it is just not as good of course.

That's not what the OP suggests. Clearly, each unit has something going for it but the question is: which is at the bottom of the scale. For me, it would be the dirty, rusty old ironclad. I never bother to research the tech. Cruise missiles are down there too and if someone can tell me what helicopters are for I would be obliged.

 

[templar_x]

They are probably the most useful unit. They allow you to dominate the world ASAP. Considering their low price horsemen are as good as knights, and only less efficient in terms of maintenance and war weariness.

i would add "logistics". but yes, the horseman ist probably the most useful military unit in the game.

If a stack containing 4 Flaks is bombarded by 100 Bonbers, than those 4 Flaks will shoot down 31.699 Bombers on average ....

that´s incredible! 4 flaks can shoot down roughly 317 times more bombers than even were there attacking?

t_x

 

[Lanzelot]

that´s incredible! 4 flaks can shoot down roughly 317 times more bombers than even were there attacking?

t_x

I English, the point "." denotes the decimal separator, not the thousands separator...

But back on topic: my vote for the most useless unit would go to the Helicopter.
And another one that used to be quite useful in Vanilla/PTW, but was made quite useless in C3C: the Ironclad! Who would want to research an additional optional tech, if the much more powerful Destroyer is only 4 further techs away...

 

[templar_x]

I English, the point "." denotes the decimal separator, not the thousands separator...

thanks for pointing that out, Cpt Obvious.

Spoiler :

the joke that failed at least on you was that justanick is a German and used the English version of the decimal separator... since it appears quite obvious that it was supposed to be a joke and not a correction of what justanick wrote, I dare to say that they would call you Kantel now over at civforum...

t_x

 

[Fhadhq]

Units I'd deem not useful:


- Chariot
- Horseman

( Those 2 could explore a bit, but generally there is better mounted units available. )


- Paratrooper
- Helicopter

( Weird range... and never found a place for them. )

The worst is the Ironclad.
Its a dead end in research, its not an upgrade, even going for " rule the waves " doesn't involve this unit in any case.
So Why?

 

[Lanzelot]

Units I'd deem not useful:


- Chariot
- Horseman

( Those 2 could explore a bit, but generally there is better mounted units available. )

As justanick already pointed out: the horseman is the most useful military unit of the game (not counting Unique Units). Most, if not all, of the ultra-fast Domination and Conquest victories in the Hall of Fame and the GOTM competition have been achieved with fast horseman rushes.

The worst is the Ironclad.
Its a dead end in research, its not an upgrade

The Ironclad upgrades to Destroyer. (But I agree: it's a pretty useless unit nevertheless...)

 

[Roundman]

Does anyone ever use chariots? I don't think that I've ever built one, and I can't remember the last time I've seen the AI build one.

 

[Kirejara]

I build sometimes chariots for scouting, but the KI is so eager to get to Horseback Riding, that they rarely get them (I have a small wonder that became obsolet with HB Riding. Guess what the KI is often still building, then their other cities are allready building Horsemen? Because of that I have also disabled Horsemen for both Hittities and Egyptian).

A unit what I found rather useless is the AEGIS Cruiser. At the time one can build them Tactical Nukes are allready obsolete by ICBM (so why loading TN into an AEGIS?) and it can do nothing better than a Battleship/Destroyer or Cruiser/Destroyer team.

Needless to say that I pimped the AEGIS for myself too (Bombard range 4 (Battleships 3, Cruiser 2, Destroyer 1) and the ability to carry Cruise Missiles, including an "unmarked" version). And I have also retired the Firaxis model, there are so many nice models by our shipbuilders.

 

[justanick]

A unit what I found rather useless is the AEGIS Cruiser. At the time one can build them Tactical Nukes are allready obsolete by ICBM (so why loading TN into an AEGIS?) and it can do nothing better than a Battleship/Destroyer or Cruiser/Destroyer team.

Since when can AEGIS carry nukes? As Tactical Nukes are 40% cheaper than ICBM they are the better choice when range does suffice, also ICBMs are completely immobile.

AEGIS has air attack 3. Battlership has only 2, all other ships have less. AEGIS is almost as fast a destroyer, they can detect submatines, they have Radar, they have bombardement range 2. If you can build AEGIS there is rather no reason to build destroyer or battleship or not upgrade the slower regular cruiser.

The problem with it is the late availabilty. The same is true for Radar Artillery. This is a superb artillery unit. It does almost twice the HP damage than its predecessor. But of what good is something that will not be researched long after you will have won the game?

 

[Rickard1977]

Does anyone ever use chariots? I don't think that I've ever built one, and I can't remember the last time I've seen the AI build one.

You can build them a short time before discovering Horseback riding. Ive never used one, but the Egyptians have their special-unit war-chariots that they seem to send hordes of when at war.

 

[Nathiri]

Yeah I would say the Chariot, Ironclad, and Helicopter are the least built units in my strategies. Another unit I rarely use is the Paratrooper.

I have never really used too many units in the modern era as the game usually ends before I get there or during the first part. If I got to the modern era, I would usually go for Mech Infantry, and then up to Modern Armour, and then to Stealth Bombers.

 

[Theov]

The Warrior.
Did you hear that joke about the Warrior that took a city?
No me neither.

The Warrior's only use is cheap military police and to upgrade it to the Swordsman.

 

[Nathiri]

Ive taken a city with warriors before.

The Warrior is the most useful unit at the start.

 

[Lanzelot]

If you are not expansionist, then you usually have to rely on the warrior for scouting the vicinity (important for good city placement) and for finding contacts/trade opportunities. => The warrior is very useful.

Also the upgrade to Swordsman makes it very useful. I once used iron-disconnect/connect to produce a big horde of Gallic Swordsmen...

I would also love to use Chariots as upgrade material for a big horde of Horsemen, but somehow that never works out: even though I try to delay the discovery of Horseback Riding to the last possible moment, horses always seem difficult to come by and I end up discovering HB before I manage to hook up horses... So no Chariots for me, unfortunately.

The paratrooper was quite useful in Civ2, but they removed that usefulness in Civ3: in Civ2 you could defeat all defenders of a city with bombers and then drop a paratrooper into the empty city to capture it. In Civ3 the paratrooper just dies when drop on an empty city.

 

[tjs282]

That's not what the OP suggests. Clearly, each unit has something going for it but the question is: which is at the bottom of the scale. For me, it would be the dirty, rusty old ironclad. I never bother to research the tech.

Agree with this -- I used to build them in Vanilla for coastal patrols/defence, 'upgrading' them into Destroyers by disbanding them into the shield-box once I got Combustion, but since I started playing Conquests, I don't even bother.

Cruise missiles are down there too

CMs were useful (in Vanilla) for two reasons, both to do with the fact they were they only non-Nuke units (in Vanilla) with Lethal-Bombardment and preferential targeting vs. military units:

1. With a sufficiently large stack of them (say, 3-4 CMs per defender), you could take down Infs/ MechInfs fortified in enemy cities/metros, without damaging any infrastructure or killing population (unlike Arty- and Bomber-bombardment) -- or you could bombard with Arty/ Bombers/ Radar-Arty (accepting the collateral damage), and then finish the redlined defenders with a single CM each. And then roll in and take the city with a Warrior...
2. They were excellent for coastal defence, if you were going for a late/ 'peaceful' VC, and just wanted to hold your land without further expansion: coupled with a decent rail-network and Arty-stack, you could redline incoming enemy ships, then sink them with 1 CM per ship.

And CMs are easy to build in large quantities in the late-game, from cities that have nothing better to do. Even with core-cities limited to Pop12, getting 60SPT out of the 1st-ringers (= 1 CM per city per turn, if you're not going for Space), or 30SPT out of the 2nd-ringers (if you are going for Space) is usually quite feasible.

However, since C3C gave all bombardment units preferential targeting, and gave (re-usable) Bombers the Lethal-Bombard ability, I agree that CMs have become less useful -- although I think that (unlike Bombers) they're still immune to naval AA-abilities, aren't they?

and if someone can tell me what helicopters are for I would be obliged.

No idea -- I've never built a single one of these. Ever. In 6 years of playing Civ3.

The Warrior's only use is cheap military police and to upgrade it to the Swordsman.

Well that's 2 good uses right there! Plus exploring, plus Barb-busting, plus the small consideration that, for a lot of civs, they're the only mil-units that you can build during the early game!

I would also love to use Chariots as upgrade material for a big horde of Horsemen, but somehow that never works out

If it's any consolation, I did actually manage to pull this trick off (at least in a small way) in the other Emp-Aztecs game that I'm playing at the moment -- the one that I'm currently winning (pretty sure), not the one that you made suggestions for (sorry -- think I've lost that one). So thanks for that idea

The paratrooper was quite useful in Civ2, but they removed that usefulness in Civ3

I've never built any Paratroopers either.

 

[justanick]

Helicopters can transport ground troops 6 tiles far. That sometimes might be useful to transport settlers and workers. On very strange maps it might be required to use helis because other means of transportation are no available. I never used them, tough.

although I think that (unlike Bombers) they're still immune to AA-abilities, aren't they?

As they are considered land units they are not affected by AA.

 

[Kirejara]

Helicopters can transport ground troops 6 tiles far. That sometimes might be useful to transport settlers and workers.

No, you can not do that. Helicopters transports only foot units and both settlers and workers are not marked as foot units (despite their appearence ).

And like paratroopers, the landed units can not move in the same round.

And sorry, you have been right. I checked the AEGIS in my unmodded CIV3 folder, they can not carry TN. That was one of my early attempts to make that think a little bit more worth to build as I do still see no benefit over the normaly existing fleet of Battleships and Destroyers.