.

[Charles 22]

Same, never went past 6 promotions (cossack with 2 stars, +25 vs gunpowder, heal, zone heal and heal in movement).

I find it a nice tactic to have a sneaker healer in your stack : an unit that only attacks at the end, when fight is always a win, and then takes easy promotion, and let it be the "doc" of your army.

I've acquired the habit of keeping some very weak units, for the express purpose of being medics, and station them in frontline cities. To upgarde these units would be a tragedy. The whole point is to keep them a weak unit, because in their being weak, they are guaranteed, in most circumstances, to be the unit which is attacked last, which means that each and every turn they are healing the other units. If your medic promotions are few, in my case so far, no more than 4 units, making them a strong unit insures their death.

This means, that the best healer unit you can use, would be either the warrior or the scout. I'm not sure if either of these units has the medic promotion in their list. The scouts may not. Actually the scouts aren't that good a unit for medic, because it's going to take a long time to get a medic promotion, even just the first one, since those units can't attack.

If they can do it too, the galley would make an even better medic unit (since it can't be attacked while in port), but could be helpful only for ports.

The key for keeping any weak medic unit would be to have them very active in the opening stages of the game, when there's more weak units to attack.

 

[surb]

The trick for creating healing units that never get attacked - build scouts/explorers in a city that gives them +5XP out of the gate for the Combat I + Medic I improvements. An aggressive Civ only needs +2XP, or just build them in your Red Cross city.

 

[Charles 22]

I very rarely play with an aggressive trait though. I'm not too sure I've seen medic come up on scouts, but I'm usually giving them the first two woodsmen upgrades so they can at least survive in the woods to do my recon. If they can do medic they're definitely the ultimate unit for a low level medic. Their having good speed just adds to the value, should you have very few of them to race about.

Explorers OTOH, wouldn't have that much difficulty getting promotions because of the higher defensive value, but, then again, it's higher values I don't want for the medic role. Having four defense, simply in terms of their likelihood to get attacked in a city is a bit too high for me, as I can see a number of units getting down to the 2's and 3's in strength from a continuous attack. If the unit is really low on strength, from the start, like a warrior or scout, there's almost no way they get attacked until they're the last man.

 

[Thalassicus]

Explorers make great medics: by the time you get them you usually have Theocracy or Vassalage, so you can bring them out at 6xp. They cost almost nil to produce, have two moves, and ignore terrain costs. 4 strength is very low compared to other units of the era (macemen are 8, knights 10); if they ever defend the stack is likely dead anyways. They're ideal medics in any army short of Gunships, since they can keep up even with tanks or modern armor.

With my scouts I often go for Combat I as the first promotion. If one reaches 5 xp I hightail it back to my capital with Medic and use them if I go to war in the ancient or classical era. Scouts can keep up with horse archers, unlike warriors

 

[BCLG100]

Havnt had any 'major' units in civ4 however did have one of 'them' spearmen in civ3

 

[seasmath]

Regardless of actual experience totals, there can be no argument: the single most uber unit you can have in the game is a blitz-enabled gunship. If there is anything more fun than taking out massive stacks of armor with a couple of quick bomber strikes and a massive gunship-blitz, I don't know what it is.

Agreed. Especially now that blitz-enabled Gunships can capture cities.

 

[Riggler]

Strange I see players talking about keeping units out of hard fights to earn promotions.

While if I have a unit (wihtou upgrades or few) available for attack that can easily beat a defender I'll use him. But I don't see what the point is in having all these promotions on a unit if he never gets in a fight that isn't a sure slaughter.

 

[Efexeye]

Strange I see players talking about keeping units out of hard fights to earn promotions.

While if I have a unit (wihtou upgrades or few) available for attack that can easily beat a defender I'll use him. But I don't see what the point is in having all these promotions on a unit if he never gets in a fight that isn't a sure slaughter.

I think they just want to make sure the units stay alive long enough to use their promotions.

 

[Thalassicus]

I use new, expendable units on the offense when things might go badly, and experienced units on the defense where I can control the battles. Blitz units also make great defenders, since they can attack multiple invaders per turn