ATCHUNG! Collaborate and Listen

[ResIspaLoquitor]

Bismark is the most under appreciated leader in the game. Period.

.!

UA is really no joke. Sure people may say around medieval age his UA might be worthless.

But if start with raging barbarians and spend your time farming Barbarian Huts, you can build yourself quite an army to fend off early aggressive AI's which is crucial at high difficulty level games and thus allowing to focus on building an empire.

 

[budweiser]

I'm on my third game as Bis. This time on King and its 620 AD and I only need 3 more caps to win.

I am hesitant to play any other civ because I know they can't raise any kind of army even close to what Germany can do.

 

[Dizzy75]

It's "Achtung."

I appreciate Bismarck It's just that on King and above, the AI clears out barbarians so much faster than you do that it's hard to really take advantage unless you purposely set Raging Barbs, I think.

 

[SuperJay]

if start with raging barbarians

That, to me, is the problem with his UA. If a UA is only effective when you enable a non-standard game option, IMO it's not that effective at all.

While you could liken his UA to someone like England (+2 naval move), which is obviously most useful on archipelago maps, I guess I don't tend to think of map types as 'non-standard' like I do the Raging Barbarians setting.

(But you do get +10 Pepsi Points for the thread title, hehe)

 

[Russiophile]

It's "Achtung."

Gesundheit.

 

[filorux]

So I thought I'd give China a try. Not sure how many turns into the game I was, but here's an idea - I had 1 worker, monument, 2 warrior, 1 scout, and paper maker on the way. Bismark steamrolled me with like 4 archers, 6 warriors, and whatever units (I didn't get to see all of them) creamed my scout near his city. Emperor difficulty. I wondered why I wasn't finding any barb camps. He opened borders and the minute I actually decided to enter them with my scout he went crazy. (Yeah, he declared, so it was mutual open borders.) Just really took me by surprise how much he had, so soon. Guess I'll try him next, heh. I could have probably had roughly as many units as he had at my gates in that amount of time...but I would have had to have been producing only them from turn one. That says nothing for the reinforcements he could have had on the way, plus the infrastructure he likely had in his cap. Oh well, it wasn't a great start geographically...and at least he didn't make me play for like an hour and then have wasted it.

 

[SomethingWitty]

Gesundheit.

In song, it's "alright stop, collaborate for listen."

Achtung is German for "attention." Commonly shouted at troops, as attention is here in the states (or ten-hut depending on the drawl of the stereotypical drill sargeant).

 

[Celevin]

Raging barbarians only seem to add more barbarians, not barbarian huts.

Yes the German's ability can be used, and you can see benefit. But it has to compete with the other civ's abilities. Can it compare, to say, 3x gold from pillaging? How about +20% strength for great generals and more great generals? The only ones it really beats out is the Ottomans, and the Americans.

 

[Chibiabos]

Free military units is VERY useful. Even before bonuses, it is much cheaper to upgrade than buy military units, and it helps free up your cities to build buildings (which all are overly tough to build) and your City-state bribery to not have to worry too much about military units (though granted, its useful to have modern units -- but those aren't exactly free). If someone thought it was too weak, imagine 50% chance of getting 25 gold + converting ANY barb unit you get the killing shot on. Heck, it'd still be immensely powerful if they made it 25%!

 

[Celevin]

Free military units is VERY useful. Even before bonuses, it is much cheaper to upgrade than buy military units, and it helps free up your cities to build buildings (which all are overly tough to build) and your City-state bribery to not have to worry too much about military units (though granted, its useful to have modern units -- but those aren't exactly free). If someone thought it was too weak, imagine 50% chance of getting 25 gold + converting ANY barb unit you get the killing shot on. Heck, it'd still be immensely powerful if they made it 25%!

Yes it's very useful. But does it compare with any ability other than the Ottomans and America? You're going to have to name an ability that it's comparable to.

Using something and being competitive with something are two different things. So far, out of the games I've heard and played as as Germany, it's been a blitz and an early game or a feeling of a total handicap.

 

[rune42]

Yes it's very useful. But does it compare with any ability other than the Ottomans and America?

The German UA saves time by not having to build an army. All you need is 1 converted barbarian and you'll have have gained 3-5 turns that you can use on something else other than military. The gold is just a bonus.

Even if barbarians were plentiful in the mid or late game, it wouldn't matter. You'd have multiple cities and there's a good chance one of them will probably be sitting around either researching or building units to delete anyways, which means you wouldn't gain any turns at all. The effect is similar to France's early culture bonus that disappears in the mid game, but nowhere near as transparent.

If you're going to knock on the Germans, knock on their panzer, which comes too late to matter. Or their landschnekts, which still get their asses handed to them by the very thing they're supposed to counter.

 

[Celevin]

I do knock on those things as well. But my point was that you can't just say "the German ability is strong for these reasons", anyone playing the game knows how the German ability is used. My point was that you have to compare its strength with OTHER civs, because the OP's original argument was that it's underappreciated, in other words he's comparing it to other civs.

 

[Show]

Bismark is the most under appreciated leader in the game. Period.

.!

UA is really no joke. Sure people may say around medieval age his UA might be worthless.

But if start with raging barbarians and spend your time farming Barbarian Huts, you can build yourself quite an army to fend off early aggressive AI's which is crucial at high difficulty level games and thus allowing to focus on building an empire.

Well, Have you tried deity ? AIs basically spawn with such a ridiculous amount of scouts that barbarians become a rare find pretty quickly. This is personally why I have never tried it.

 

[Buccaneer]

I do knock on those things as well. But my point was that you can't just say "the German ability is strong for these reasons", anyone playing the game knows how the German ability is used. My point was that you have to compare its strength with OTHER civs, because the OP's original argument was that it's underappreciated, in other words he's comparing it to other civs.

Especially giving oneself a head start.

 

[rune42]

I do knock on those things as well. But my point was that you can't just say "the German ability is strong for these reasons", anyone playing the game knows how the German ability is used. My point was that you have to compare its strength with OTHER civs, because the OP's original argument was that it's underappreciated, in other words he's comparing it to other civs.

You can't compare an UA meant to be used in war with an UA meant for something else, like America.

So, from a domination perspective, it compares with China and Japan's UA(debatable which of the 3 is better, although i'd rank it Japan > China > Germany simply for the fact that it scales poorly with difficulty settings) Its better than England, Aztec, and Ottomons. All 6 civs have an UA that requires you to be at war to get the full effect.

The above doesn't take into account UB and UU, obviously.

Oh, speaking of difficulty settings, theres a modifier per difficulty setting for the rate at which barbarians spawn. Its set to be the same across difficulties. I recall difficulty in Civ4 affected barbarian spawn rates. I'm surprised the devs changed it, especially since Civ5 introduces abilities that rely on barbarians.

 

[ilikepies]

I'd agree with China>Japan>Germany for military, but here's the thing: neither China nor Japan has a UA that also has major benefits in other areas. Germany's UA gives them more gold and makes it so they don't even need to worry about building an army early game, which saves plenty of gold and production and allows them to maintain a strong army and robust economy. I think Germany is one of the strongest civs in the game at this point, especially when you throw in the Panzer, which is a really good UU.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Raging barbarians only seem to add more barbarians, not barbarian huts.

Yes the German's ability can be used, and you can see benefit. But it has to compete with the other civ's abilities. Can it compare, to say, 3x gold from pillaging? How about +20% strength for great generals and more great generals? The only ones it really beats out is the Ottomans, and the Americans.

I think Germany's UA scales with your game speed and map size.

On larger maps with slower speed, the rate of settling and unit building that AI can do is limited compared to how many barbarian huts that pop out, that Germany can have about 10 units while AI is still fumbing around with 4 or 5. And you get to focus your city's production purely on non military matter.

But of course the downside is that this game favors few elite units than a horde, so this UA could scale really poorly because all this does is give you horde of cheap units. But the scaling is worth thinking about imo.

 

[ResIspaLoquitor]

I normally play Pangea, standard, marathon.

Perfect for rolling with Hans and Gunter.

Although other civs on paper may seem like better UAs, my point was not to discount Bismark.

I never said he was the best. I suggested that he was not underpowered but if played with the right goals, powerful.

Right now, ill go with the warrior worker settler build. I have both warriors scout around the landmass for areas that look "rich" with barbs. You know the areas, small penisulas very little reasource tiles that can stay in the fog of war, dark but not clouded, part of the map. Then i pretty much set up a farm. On raging barbarians, i find that huts, especially on marathon, pop more with it ticked off.

Anyways, a long story short, in my current game, by the time the Japs decided to "Pearl Harbor" me, I had easily amassed a force of 5-6 archers and 4-5 warriors. Once iron working popped, upgraded brutes and went to town.

Landschreks are also not a bad investment, they make amazing meatshields. In marathon games, if I am capped out on buildings I want to build and dont have civil service, i build spearsmen.

Spearsmen are only 10g to upgrade to landschrek.

Sorry for typos, its very late, but kinda the way i play my early game.

 

[Grimo]

It's far harder to defeat a barbarian sitting the barbarian hut at higher difficulties. The huts spawn barbarians so fast that you need to produce a specialized force (2 units or more) to take them down. Plus the 50% chance is a hogwash. So instead of creating a military force from nothing, you need to create a military force just to create a little bit more military force.

The UA is far less useful than you might think at higher difficulties. It sucks.


The UU however, could be really great.

 

[pi-r8]

UA- depends on luck, costs you a lot of maintence for weak brutes, won't be enough to kill an AI on immortal or deity

landsknecht- pikemen are a weak unit, so having them half price is rather useless

Panzer-any tank is obselete by the time you can build one (you can research modern armor faster than you can build a tank)

On the plus side, picking bismarck prevents facing him as an opponent, and he is often the strongest AI.