When warlords came out i bought it right away and I was thrilled about the imperialist trait. The very first games I played were with imperialist civs because the GG unit really interested me, and with imperialistic you get more. Sadly, I noticed that my warlords kept dying before they did anything useful for me. I thought that I was just being careless, sending them into battle when the odds were'nt good enough. Then, I thought about the math involved and realized that warlords are near useless units. It's sad that Firaxis hasn't even fixed this yet, since Warlords was released a while ago. Think about it - if you say that you're only going to use your warlord when the odds are at least 80%, that means that statistically speaking you're unit has a 51.2% chance of surviving 3 battles. A whole whopping 3 battles. So what good is that unit? It wins you 3 battles that were easy battles to begin with, and then it dies. Sure, it could last 5 or 6, but it could also die after 1 or 2. 3 battles is enough to win maybe one promotion. So then I thought that perhaps the thing to do with the warlord unit would be to protect it for a long time, let it only fight when the odds are at least 95% and let it get to a really high level. However, even if it only fights at 95%, that means it has roughly a 50% chance of surviving 14 battles. So let's say it dies after 15 battles, when good has it done you? It's won 14 battles, sure, but they were battles at 95% odds, which means you only let it fight after the battle had already been won (when the enemy had only a few really injured units left). I don't know about everyone else, but this isn't exactly as thrilling as I expected the warlords to be. Not only that, but if you can only use your warlord unit to fight a battle when the odds are extremely in your favour, what is the point of the unit?
So, the only use I can see coming from a warlord unit is giving it something like the medic 3 promotion, and then not letting it fight at all. That way, it will stay alive and it will provide some use while not fighting. This is very unfortunate as that ability from the Great General unit is useless.
This also made me realize just how pathetic the imperialist trait is. If the GG unit's only useful abilities are to build a war academy and to settle in a city for an extra 2 XP, that is pathetic compared to the charismatic and aggressive traits. I think to save the concept of the warlord and to make the imperialist trait actually useful for something, Firaxis should have allowed the player to revive their warlord unit - think Warcraft 3. If you lost a warlord unit in battle, you would have to wait a few turns (maybe a turn per level of the unit) and then you could pay a certain amount of gold to revive it. I think this would really add to the game. What it would mean is that warlord units would essentially stick around for the duration of the game, and the ones that were created early would start to become very powerful later on in the game. Now, when I say very powerful, it's not as if your one unit would be a one-unit army. Even a unit with combat 6 and drill 4 would die if it was ganged up 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
I think warfare would become more interesting with this rule, as the warlords would be involved in the most crucial fights. If you invaded a neighbour, your stack would roll up to their city, spearheaded by 4 warlords, but in their city defending they would have 3 warlords of their own. The warlords would then actually fight each other, as I think Firaxis intended them to. This would also have the effect of possibly saving the imperialist trait, as an imperialist civ would have more warlords than a non imperliast one. Would this ruin game balance? I don't think so. Keep in mind that EVERYONE gets warlords, not just imperialist civs. Would it tip the balance more in favour of warfare? Again, I don't think so, because you would need to spend a significant amount of gold to revive the warlord unit - meaning you would need to spend resources to revive it, resources that could have been spent doing something else. I could be wrong, but I don't think such a rule would harm the game, I just think it would make warfare more interesting. Obviously Firaxis pictured wars between civs involving warlord units, that is why they added the concept in the first expansion pack. I just think that the Firaxis team didn't do enough math and testing. As it stands right now, the warlord is useless (except for medic 3).
Well that was my 1st beef. Now to my second - colonies. What is the freakin point?? If you control your own cities on another landmass, they generate commerce and producting for you. They speed up research like any other city and you can build things in them. With BTS and its colonial expense system, you cannot build too many cities on another land mass (I like to play the Terra map, so this has totally changed the game). What you can do instead is make colonies. Now, this might be an interesting twist to the game if colonies actually benefitted the player that made them. What I find, though, is that you spend a lot of resources setting up cities on another continet, turn them into a colony, and it doesn't directly benefit you at all.
First of all, you obviously do not get any commerce, research, or production when the cities are controlled by another civ. So there has to be some benefit, right? Well I remember reading that in BTS trade routes are more important, especially with the new custom house building and privateers and naval blockades, etc. But...again, I don't know what they were doing at Firaxis but they didn't play test this enough. First of all, I find that 90% of the time I make a colony it runs mercantalism, the other 10% of the time it runs state property. I have no idea why, this applies to any civ. Well if your colony is running mercantalism, then trade routes aren't doing you any good, are they? And if it's running either merc or SP, then you can't spam it with corporations (another possible way the colony could benefit you). So, I find that in games where I have created a colony I spend a lot of time engaging that colony in diplo and bribing it to change civics every 10 turns. Eventually I run out of things with which to bribe it.
But it gets worse - even if the colony did run free market, you aren't the only one to benefit! Any civ could trade with it, any civ could win those lucrative overseas trade routes, and any civ can plant a corporation in your colony. So, essentially, if you build a colony and it runs free market what you have done is helped out all of your rivals. Setting up a colony takes a lot of resources and if it helps everyone out just as much as you, I can't understand the point. One thing they kept mentioning at Firaxis was "you can use it to grab a resource". Okay...if all I wanted to do was get access to a plot of oil or aluminum on another continent, I could just build a bloody city there. 1 city won't incur colonial expenses. Thus, I see colonies as a massive investment of production, population, and time, that doesn't really pay off. The game needs to make the colony actually benefit its master.
On a related topic - I generally have the same beef with vassal states. They don't really do a whole lot for their master. They don't provide you with extra commerce or research. However, I have found that I often vassalize civs now in my games, simply because war weariness makes it very difficult to totally kill a civ, and so I vassalize them and move on to the next target when I'm playing a military game. It makes the game end sooner. You can win sooner because rather than having to totally kill a civ, you can just take about half its cities and then it will capitulate. Also, if the vassal is on your home continent and you share that continent with an enemy, the vassal can actually be quite useful. In fact, that's probably the number 1 most useful aspect of a vassal - they are a wartime ally that cannot back out. Interestingly enough, that's historically accurate - the whole point of vassalization in feudal times was military. Anyway, so yes, a vassal state can sometimes be useful for a war ally. But not a colony. A colony is a weak collection of very small cities on another continent. How could it really help you out in wartime? It can't. Thus, I think the whole colony aspect of the game is broken. They serve no purpose. But, I didn't write this thread to just complain, I actually would like it if someone out there could prove me wrong. It's sad if warlords and colonies are useless aspects of the game. Has anyone figured out how to get substantial benefits from either of these things? I would love to know!
So, the only use I can see coming from a warlord unit is giving it something like the medic 3 promotion, and then not letting it fight at all. That way, it will stay alive and it will provide some use while not fighting. This is very unfortunate as that ability from the Great General unit is useless.
This also made me realize just how pathetic the imperialist trait is. If the GG unit's only useful abilities are to build a war academy and to settle in a city for an extra 2 XP, that is pathetic compared to the charismatic and aggressive traits. I think to save the concept of the warlord and to make the imperialist trait actually useful for something, Firaxis should have allowed the player to revive their warlord unit - think Warcraft 3. If you lost a warlord unit in battle, you would have to wait a few turns (maybe a turn per level of the unit) and then you could pay a certain amount of gold to revive it. I think this would really add to the game. What it would mean is that warlord units would essentially stick around for the duration of the game, and the ones that were created early would start to become very powerful later on in the game. Now, when I say very powerful, it's not as if your one unit would be a one-unit army. Even a unit with combat 6 and drill 4 would die if it was ganged up 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
I think warfare would become more interesting with this rule, as the warlords would be involved in the most crucial fights. If you invaded a neighbour, your stack would roll up to their city, spearheaded by 4 warlords, but in their city defending they would have 3 warlords of their own. The warlords would then actually fight each other, as I think Firaxis intended them to. This would also have the effect of possibly saving the imperialist trait, as an imperialist civ would have more warlords than a non imperliast one. Would this ruin game balance? I don't think so. Keep in mind that EVERYONE gets warlords, not just imperialist civs. Would it tip the balance more in favour of warfare? Again, I don't think so, because you would need to spend a significant amount of gold to revive the warlord unit - meaning you would need to spend resources to revive it, resources that could have been spent doing something else. I could be wrong, but I don't think such a rule would harm the game, I just think it would make warfare more interesting. Obviously Firaxis pictured wars between civs involving warlord units, that is why they added the concept in the first expansion pack. I just think that the Firaxis team didn't do enough math and testing. As it stands right now, the warlord is useless (except for medic 3).
Well that was my 1st beef. Now to my second - colonies. What is the freakin point?? If you control your own cities on another landmass, they generate commerce and producting for you. They speed up research like any other city and you can build things in them. With BTS and its colonial expense system, you cannot build too many cities on another land mass (I like to play the Terra map, so this has totally changed the game). What you can do instead is make colonies. Now, this might be an interesting twist to the game if colonies actually benefitted the player that made them. What I find, though, is that you spend a lot of resources setting up cities on another continet, turn them into a colony, and it doesn't directly benefit you at all.
First of all, you obviously do not get any commerce, research, or production when the cities are controlled by another civ. So there has to be some benefit, right? Well I remember reading that in BTS trade routes are more important, especially with the new custom house building and privateers and naval blockades, etc. But...again, I don't know what they were doing at Firaxis but they didn't play test this enough. First of all, I find that 90% of the time I make a colony it runs mercantalism, the other 10% of the time it runs state property. I have no idea why, this applies to any civ. Well if your colony is running mercantalism, then trade routes aren't doing you any good, are they? And if it's running either merc or SP, then you can't spam it with corporations (another possible way the colony could benefit you). So, I find that in games where I have created a colony I spend a lot of time engaging that colony in diplo and bribing it to change civics every 10 turns. Eventually I run out of things with which to bribe it.
But it gets worse - even if the colony did run free market, you aren't the only one to benefit! Any civ could trade with it, any civ could win those lucrative overseas trade routes, and any civ can plant a corporation in your colony. So, essentially, if you build a colony and it runs free market what you have done is helped out all of your rivals. Setting up a colony takes a lot of resources and if it helps everyone out just as much as you, I can't understand the point. One thing they kept mentioning at Firaxis was "you can use it to grab a resource". Okay...if all I wanted to do was get access to a plot of oil or aluminum on another continent, I could just build a bloody city there. 1 city won't incur colonial expenses. Thus, I see colonies as a massive investment of production, population, and time, that doesn't really pay off. The game needs to make the colony actually benefit its master.
On a related topic - I generally have the same beef with vassal states. They don't really do a whole lot for their master. They don't provide you with extra commerce or research. However, I have found that I often vassalize civs now in my games, simply because war weariness makes it very difficult to totally kill a civ, and so I vassalize them and move on to the next target when I'm playing a military game. It makes the game end sooner. You can win sooner because rather than having to totally kill a civ, you can just take about half its cities and then it will capitulate. Also, if the vassal is on your home continent and you share that continent with an enemy, the vassal can actually be quite useful. In fact, that's probably the number 1 most useful aspect of a vassal - they are a wartime ally that cannot back out. Interestingly enough, that's historically accurate - the whole point of vassalization in feudal times was military. Anyway, so yes, a vassal state can sometimes be useful for a war ally. But not a colony. A colony is a weak collection of very small cities on another continent. How could it really help you out in wartime? It can't. Thus, I think the whole colony aspect of the game is broken. They serve no purpose. But, I didn't write this thread to just complain, I actually would like it if someone out there could prove me wrong. It's sad if warlords and colonies are useless aspects of the game. Has anyone figured out how to get substantial benefits from either of these things? I would love to know!
Though I think the quechua is another contender for best UU.
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