Are mechanos not as nuts as I thought they were? You just ignore everything else they have except for their siege weapons, and the second you get a Great Engineer to buff them up a group of three of them and a guard means an enemy city full of defenders is just gone. Like seriously, the thopters suck, the gunners, I just think suck but never used. They got next to nothing for melee. All they need is some cannons, and later game some dirigibles.
Quite the opposite. At least in the stable version the Mechanos are easily my favorite civ to play.
Their melee line is unremarkable. That is true. But it is NOT bad. It's just unremarkable. You don't get haste or any of the magical buffs but you don't lose any of the units either. It's just that everything else overshadows them.
Their ranged line on the other hand is fantastic. I have conquered continents using the basic ranged units alone. Their combination of simple combat power, bonuses and the ability to bombard makes them easily the best archers in the game.
The standard longbow replacement, the handgunner does 1 extra ranged damage, and if that weren't enough has collateral damage. And their Archebus replacement is even better. So yea. Use them. Love them.
Their siege weapons are again, great. Especially with their special affinity. But I honestly don't rely on them too much because again, the ranged units. But a mixed stack of those and riflemen can easily take continents.
My preferred method is to have stacks of 8 riflemen, 1-2 cannon and a general if I can get one.
As far as thoters go the regular kind are not amazing but the Aquilian Thopter is just hands down great if you use them right. Put simply, thopters are your scouts, flying caravels that let you map the world. But the Aquilian Thopter is raiding/skirmish cavalry that your enemy can NOT catch.
Move them into a good position like on top a mountain or into water, somewhere where your enemy can't get to them easily and every turn just walk down, fire off how ever many ranged attacks your highly promoted blitz + mobility unit can dish out and watch those stacks or garrisons melt away.
Than just unload a stack of units from your equally untouchable dirigibles sitting on the same mountain top and take the weakened city.
As far as the rest go, Feris is a sniper hero which I am not terribly fond off. But Lenora and Goliath make up for it. Their cavalry line is basically average. And the Steam tanks are questionable in that I can't find a use for them given how strong my stacks of riflemen can get by the time I get it. But overall no huge complaints.
Really the only downside to the Mechanos is the lack of variety in the late game where you are basically Napoleon marching your armies of riflemen up and down the continent beating down anyone who resists.
used as well as tech availability spamming handgunners always made more sense to me. Sure, the organ gun comes in slightly earlier on the tech tree, but hammer vise you still have to supply infantry to go along with it to take stuff. And that (in my mind at least) adds up to more than just rushing bowyers to get handgunners. So to me artillery only gets really bloody good at howitzers. And than by the time I get to them I typically have a core of rather elite infantry to call on that basically outshines it. But I definitively do try and put as many of those in my stacks as I can build late game simply for the fun of it.
