ATCHUNG! Collaborate and Listen

[Slowpoke]

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.

There's two reasons I like it anyways:

A) Go honor as first SP and you don't need a hardened force

B) Build two warriors and you no longer have to build military on high levels (which you are otherwise forced to do to survive the inevitable early DOW)

The 50% chance does blow, though, due to inconsistency. IMO they should've eliminated the gold and made it 100% chance. Or better yet, allow you to use 25 gold to bribe them to your side.

Edit: Also as for needing a hardened force, you're sorta doing it wrong. If you fortify on a hill barbarian spawns will ignore your unit. Wait for it to leave and then smash the encampment. Rest a turn if needed. As well, if there is an A.I. next to the encampment, and their frequently is, simply let it attack first, then finish it off.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

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

For their era they aren't particularly weak. With abit of bombardment to assist them they'll sort out many units for you and or if they're fortified near a great general they'll perform great service in defense.

The key factor is they are cheap and quantity has a quality of its own.

 

[Celevin]

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.

Yeah, I've looked at that, and that's a good point. The problem is no matter the map size, due to the way happiness is operating, I will take up a good portion of the map with one of my empires. I think Civ5 was designed to have some fog of war even in the Medieval era, but due to the way things worked out, you just don't see it on Emperpor/Immortal/Deity.

My problem is this: I've had games where I don't see more than two barbarian encampments. Do I want to play a civ where I might not even get to use their UA?

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.

If China>Japan>Germany for their UAs, it just brings my point even further. I think Japan definitely has better UUs. And I think China's at least close, and with one of the best UBs on top, it beats out Germany by a mile.

I've got China ranked as one of the top civs and Germany as one of the weakest. China has practically an entire early game built around their UB! They are also one of the only civs to get a high number of golden ages with a very large empire (ie when golden ages matter) because of the increased great general spawn time.