Are these units really useless?

[hugojackson18]

After a few good weeks Civ 6 now and multiple games, I find myself NEVER using some units. I never feel the need for them. Is it just me or you can totally do without some of them?

I'm talking about:

• Millitary Engineers - Why would you use them to create roads when traders do this so much better now?
• Medics - I see the point of them but never justified losing the turns to get one compared to getting an extra military unit
• Frigates - Why get Frigates when for the same price you get Privateers that are so much better?

Do you guys have some strategies where you find using them a lot?

 

[Lord_Azazel]

MEngineers can create forts and airstrips as well, can be quite useful.
Medics really speed up the healing rate of adjacent units, and if you're sieging a city, having a medic or 2 stationed with your units let's them heal much faster. I think they heal for 15 instead of 5 each turn when sieging, this can make a big difference in a long siege.
Frigates, haven't checked this out, are the privateers really so much better?
Frigates also upgrade to Battleships which are powerful AF.

 

[Aedn]

you need military engineers to build silos, and fortifications, other then that they are not that useful. Frigates turn into battleships with 4 range, which makes them superior to most other naval units. privateers turn into subs, which are worthless, and nuclear subs which are nice but largely a toy.

 

[Mustakrakish]

First 2 I've never even built. I see no point in that whatsoever.

Frigates are definitely worth it. Better spam them and then upgrade to battleships than building battleships later from scratch.

 

[kampori]

Have never built a medic, likewise I don't see the point. My artillery will always get the +defending upgrade, and with enough of them fortifications will be destroyed before they get killed (or use a balloon for the range). Melee units during a siege stand at the gates and fortify, and will heal enough to not get killed anyway (the AI is quite good at ignoring melee units and bombarding siege/range first anyway)

Frigates are powerful, and upgrade to battleships, which are very powerful. I've never once built a privateer, but then again, I never build a large navy. Just a few frigates/battleships/missile cruisers to bombard.

Military Engineers I only use for building silos. Never need them for forts, but they could be useful in that regard, if you're laying siege to a city with strong defenses. They are very useful for silos though. As for roads, likewise I've never seen the point. 2 charges to build 2 sections of road, really doesn't seem worth it for anything.

 

[Dicemechanic]

I built one military engineer, not realising only built 2 sections of road. Given roads don't have the trading or economy benefits they once did, seems like a pointless limitation really. Would love to see this lifted (or at least raised to 5+) in future patch.

Frigates are great. If you can get them early, they can be devastating. Managed to quickly end major war with Cleopatra just by holding off her land forces and reducing a coastal city to 0 walls/defence with a single Frigate (of course, being odd-ball Cleo, she then immediately declared friendship and asked for an alliance)

 

[Promethian]

Did you mod out 1upt? I can think of a great deal of situations where a medic, which moves on a different layer than military units, is worth more to me than another unit.

 

[GIO888]

Military Engineer - no point - 2 roads? Agree with above!

Medic saved my bacon in a very long siege against Saladin, where his pesky Mamluks just would not die and kept degrading my bombards - but then I've never used Siege towers either, maybe I should.

Frigates I build - 2 of those with a privateer can bash the botty of any size coastal city to a bright red hue! I reduced Saladin's 2nd city to a gory mess from about a 12 pop, tried to give it to Trajan who had a different religion, to cause a bit of friction, Trajan actually said "no thanks" !

When oh when will we get the Sentry option back? Just sayin'.......

 

[Lord_Azazel]

you need military engineers to build silos, and fortifications, other then that they are not that useful. Frigates turn into battleships with 4 range, which makes them superior to most other naval units. privateers turn into subs, which are worthless, and nuclear subs which are nice but largely a toy.

Have never built a medic, likewise I don't see the point. My artillery will always get the +defending upgrade, and with enough of them fortifications will be destroyed before they get killed (or use a balloon for the range). Melee units during a siege stand at the gates and fortify, and will heal enough to not get killed anyway (the AI is quite good at ignoring melee units and bombarding siege/range first anyway)

Frigates are powerful, and upgrade to battleships, which are very powerful. I've never once built a privateer, but then again, I never build a large navy. Just a few frigates/battleships/missile cruisers to bombard.

Military Engineers I only use for building silos. Never need them for forts, but they could be useful in that regard, if you're laying siege to a city with strong defenses. They are very useful for silos though. As for roads, likewise I've never seen the point. 2 charges to build 2 sections of road, really doesn't seem worth it for anything.

Silos?
Have I missed something or are you guys referring to airstrips as silos?
If so, how come?

Edit: nvm, I just recalled reading something about missile silos a bit back. I've only gotten this late in one game this far and only built one nuke, so I didn't remember that there was a fourth thing they could build. :/

 

[zagosya]

On naval maps I would also prefer frigates over privateers because they are cheaper (upgrade from quadriremes) and it's faster to beeline the tech. My culture rate is often lower than science and Mercantilism (privateer tech) is expensive
On pangea both units are not necessary

 

[Aldor]

Engineers are quite useful, for airstrips and missile silos

I like frigates, for all the reasons named above. However, privateers are also cool, they upgrade to submarines iirc. I am not quite sure if cities can actually see them at 2 range, at least in the situations I used them, I had a battleship along as well, and the submarine never got hit by the city. If they're actually invisible at 2 range for cities, they may be superior to frigs/battleships for whittling down a city from range.

 

[Mahasona]

Silos are for nukes.

Boom!

 

[NukeAJS]

The airstrip is a quick way to be able to move air units inland from carriers. Aerodromes take time to build, sometimes quite a long time. Airstrips ensure that you can have some air-protection/bombing ability once you've pressed beyond the range of the planes sitting on a carrier.

Forts, like Civ5, are great on a one or two-tile chokepoint. They're less effective than Civ5 forts except as soon as you get engineers because they give a raw strength increase (+10) instead of a percentage increase (in Civ5 it was +25% on top of whatever the tile gave).

Roads, well, I think the 2 charge limit needs to be revisited when it comes to military engineers. Two roads doesn't justify the cost unless you're swimming in money. Dunno if it's possible, but a 1/2 or even a 1/3 charge for a road could help justify the cost.

Silos, never built nuclear weapons so I dunno what's going on. I'm guessing that cities can't hold nuclear weapons so you need somewhere to put them like a carrier, nuke-sub, missile cruiser, or silo? If that's the case, the silo is the only option that isn't a ship (IE- on water)

 

[kampori]

Silos, never built nuclear weapons so I dunno what's going on. I'm guessing that cities can't hold nuclear weapons so you need somewhere to put them like a carrier, nuke-sub, missile cruiser, or silo? If that's the case, the silo is the only option that isn't a ship (IE- on water)

Indeed, nukes can no longer be housed in a city. They count as a resource, and are stockpiled in an inventory. Any unit/district that can house WMDs can launch them, however many you have. You don't need to move them about.

Silos are the districts that can house them. Can only be built be MEs on flat land, and I think only in your borders. Good for edge cities though. Bomber planes can house nukes, and can launch them however far the plane's range is. Also can put them on carrier ships. And some subs and/or missile cruisers can launch them, can't remember which.

 

[hugojackson18]

I see your points about the Frigates upgrading into Battleships. I just think I was a bit disappointed of the size of the battleships compares to what they used to be in previous Civs (MASSIVE), and was quite shocked when they upgraded into tiny Missile Cruisers! I think my problem is more about naval in generals. In previous civs, I always used to have massive navies, but in Civ 6, I won my first game without even making one single boat which sadden me.

Millitary Engineers, have got their uses now! I built silos with a great general and didn't even know Millitary Engineers could build them. But I still agree they are useless for roads.

I'll try using Medics and support units generally. I have never built a Siege tower and I built a Balloon once thinking it was some sort of stealth exploration unit haha.

One thing also that bothers me a lot, is when you sneak up on the enemy, and declare a Surprise War, it kicks all your units out of their border! I feel this really break immersion and the point of a surprise war! Is this just me?

 

[hugojackson18]

Dude, no need to be condescending here. Yes people read tooltips but when it's a new version of the game and nearly nothing is explained and the civilopedia is a desert in terms of info, there are obviously things that people are going to miss. And there's no tooltip on an unit you've never built, is it. Now i'll go back randomly clicking on everything and see if I can win a game. Should be fun.

 

[CoconutTank]

I like Frigates, because they eventually upgrade to Battleships, and I usually have Venetian Arsenal and Professional Army in time to make a nice navy for upgrading.

Sea Raider units are still really dang awesome though. Privateers are weaker than Frigates by 5 pts in Str and Range Str, but the invisibility and the coastal raiding make them very useful for dealing with barbs.

 

[Deggial]

Regarding engineers & roads:
One charge per road tile seems indeed too high of a cost. I'll never use this - and if I don't want to build an airstrip or silo, the city's production will be spent on something more useful.

The engineer's roadbuilding migth be considered worthwhile, if they could build 4- or 5-tile-long roads with one command/charge. The downside will be, that we don't have full control about where the road exactly is layed.
Using fractures of their charges might be a more controllable and hence preferable solution. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that Firaxis prefers nice and straight integers and loathes decimal points - at least in the UI - for the sake of easy reading.

Maybe we could possibly mark the five tiles where we want the road to be built at the moment we issue the command and the engineer will simply follow exactly the given route? However, he has to have the intelligence then to stop building when another civil unit is temporarily blocking the next tile he wants to move onto.

 

[spfun]

engineer can get you a couple of eureka's and a inspiration. An airfield in your lands but also on another continent will get you 1 eureka and 1 inspiration, you can then clear the airfield if you like. Not bad for 500ish gold.

I haven't built a privateer yet, as mentioned frigates upgrade into battleships and you only need a quadrireme.

 

[CultureManiac]

Agree that military engineers should be able to build more than two road tiles. However, in a current game I produced one just for that purpose. When I captured some Russian cities, the roads went through a city state. Tried looking for other combinations of trade cities to bypass it, but couldn't find a way to keep the road from cutting into their territory. So I built a military engineer to build a road two tiles through a forest.

They have a use, but in a month of playing I've only needed them twice.