Odeon. 3 extra and 2 extra Artist slots mean that you can culture flip cities and juicy resource tiles at 2 distance (specially of course with Pericles) before the AI can get any cultural resistance up with Drama.
Their better ability is anti-melee (pikes are pretty weak there). No true counter until rifles and even defensive abilities makes them impressive.
They don't have good synergy with the UB though, since with the UB you will want siege and with siege you forgo the powerful 2move advantage of the UU.
I thought the citadel was rated decently but if not then it is underrated too. Even if you blow right by the spanish UU, engineering is easy enough to trade for and with a UB like this one can be tempted to go steel/avoid economics for a long time. CR III siege is strong enough to encourage using it as the primary tool of destruction.
Citadel can be realistically carried until arty/rifle/machine gun quits working (well you COULD go all the way to flight but there's no point as the UB does nothing there). Corp is a pre-req on AL so you'll need it then. I like infantry and factory/power very much so this tech path deviation is hard for me though I'm willing to do it in spain's case.
am I the only one who likes east indiamen? They are rarely even mentioned on these boards, but they are a galleon that fights like a privateer (6 strength), carries as much troops as transports, and can explore rival turf like caravels.
Situational, yes. Map dependant, yes. But you have a nice option of building less ships for the invasion, or building more units to go in the usual number of ships.
And of course being financial and creative with a production boosting UB is nice too.
The additional troop-carrying capacity is nice, but they still get chewed up by frigates and ships of the line. I typically have my maps made by the time galleons come around (after all, that's what caravels are for...so that benefit doesn't help me at all).
The additional troop-carrying capacity is nice, but they still get chewed up by frigates and ships of the line. I typically have my maps made by the time galleons come around (after all, that's what caravels are for...so that benefit doesn't help me at all).
I like the Dutch traits and the UB is pretty solid. If I decide to play the Dutch, it's for other reasons than their UU.
They have a 90% chance of sinking (or NOT being sunk by) galleons and have a 50/50 survival rate vs privateers instead of 10%. Plus their odds against a frigate are 21%, whereas a galleon is >1%; which still probably won't save you, but it really increases the odds of getting lucky with a few. And caravels have a 21% chance of sinking a galleon, >1% of sinking an east indiaman.
If frigates are around, you're probably going to send some escorts of your own, but i've seen some surprisingly large AI frigate stacks (or frigate/caravel stacks usually), so having the odds improved significantly is a nice boost. Even if overmatched, if it can save the next ship (and the units within) it's not a waste, though i admit that by the time you're worrying about this, the invasion has probably failed anyway, but it's nice to get some home.
I agree it's not the reason to pick the dutch, like most underrated UU/UB's, but for no extra hammers, they're certainly nice to have. (even if the explore territory ability is pretty useless)
Yes, they have 20% chance to survive. And a great chance to leave a wounded frigate or ship-of-the-line, unable to sink other ship for some time. In this regard, they work as escort, and if you put the same hammer in your navy you will lose less - less chance per boat, and the first is likely to be empty.
I would add that if you have to sink a bunch of ship-of-the-line, IIRC they are the second best choice : better than frigate for lake of malus, and cheaper than privateer. But that's nitpicking, SotL are among the more useless unit of CivIV
I like East Indiamen. When I play Hemispheres, they are quite useful. I can sail them up to the coast, declare war, then dump my troops.
Using antilogic's example 5 East Indiamen instead of 7 Galleons means you can build 2 more frigates to defend your fleet, which also gives you some extra capacity to bombard city defenses.
If you do beeline Astronomy, you can use East Indiamen to start a sea war, beating up your opponent's Caravels, destroying their fishing boats and blockading their trade routes. As naterator pointed out, there is little they can do to East Indiamen. Makes me wonder how effective it is to beeline Astronomy really early, forgoing the Liberalism beeline altogether. In the end you only need Optics and Calendar. You could severely cripple an opponent's seafood heavy capital for a few centuries.
THIS. Being able to deliver your troops right to the enemies shore BEFORE declaring war gives a great advantage in surprise attacks when the enemy has cities that are not within one turn's sailing of their cultural borders.
Are you sure?Antilogic said:If you declare war with your Indiamen inside the enemy borders, they will be returned outside just like caravels are.
...what? 5 Indiamen instead of 7 galleons? Did I read that right?
I just used the numbers for transport capacity (5 vs 7).This was an example solely to show that using East Indiamen as transports doesn't necessarily save your land armies (or hammers spent on land units) if your transports are attacked by frigates. Either way, you lose about the same number of units. While it is true that with the extra production you could have built frigates, if an enemy navy is attacking your fleet you should have built a proper navy anyway.
Also, I'm pretty sure frigates are more expensive than galleons.
I'd like to see a game where you try to pull off this Astro beeline (literally get Calendar and Optics as soon as possible and then start on Astro, trading for the rest).
My gut feeling says your sea war idea isn't going to do as much damage as you think it will. After all, it requires you to target an AI with a seafood capital and who is behind in technology, the target AI can still trade overland, and you aren't destroying his strategic resources like iron and such so he can still fight effectively on the land.
But you need Chemistry for Privateers, and that's 9 or 10 techs more than a Astronomy beeline.If anything, you will tempt the AI into building masses of useless ships, but you can do that with ordinary privateers.
If you declare war with your Indiamen inside the enemy borders, they will be returned outside just like caravels are.
I just used the numbers for transport capacity (5 vs 7).
Frigates are only slightly more expensive than Galleons/East Indiamen (90 vs 80)
You can bulb Astro if you have Calendar, Optics and Alphabet, and don't have a few other techs.
It will be interestng to try, I don't say it is a massively good allround strategy.
The idea would be mostly useful on an Archipelago map or something similar, that's quite obvious. But you are not going to fight him on the land, just cripple him and reap the gold from the blockade. Or if you are in isolation.
But you need Chemistry for Privateers, and that's 9 or 10 techs more than a Astronomy beeline.
If this is ever true, it's only when you have open borders with an enemy when you declare war (but I didn't test that). Units that can enter another civs territory without open borders are not expelled when you declare war. I just tested this in Worldbuilder, I stuck a Caravel, an Indiamen, and a Privateer inside the cultural borders for another civilization and then declared war. All three remained in place.
Even still, did you gain much over just waiting with your galleons on their sea-border for a turn so you have full maneuverability, and then declaring war and landing on your next turn?
Depends on the map. On a Pangaea map, all coastal cities are probably going to be within the movement range of a Galleon of the cultural border. On a more watery map, it is quite frequent to have a coastal city that is a long way from the borders. Even on a Pangaea with small islands it is possible, as you could build a city on an island off the shore of your city to push your borders further from it.