Babylon Bowmen

[kamex]

According to the strategy text in the civlopedia, their higher ranged and combat strength means they can 'stand up as front line troops'

Anybody experimented with them? Can you rush with them.


(on another n00b note, can you even capture cities with ranged units if they can't melee attack?)

 

[bobshiznit]

Apparently ranged units can capture cities. The bowman are a mean unit. They defend like warriors and attack better than archers.
I use the bowman to choke off enemies, if you bring a warrior you can enslave their workers. Set them on hills near the enemies borders and shoot away at anything trying to leave. Kill the enemy unit with the bowman and use you warrior to enslave the worker/settler. When you want to conquer the enemies land you will need a few swords or a few horses. You can rush with them but you cannot capture cities with them alone.

 

[kamex]

This sounds fun. Can they handle Spearmen?

 

[alpaca]

If you get a couple of them they can handle spears. You can rush with them, just make sure you don't lose your initial warrior who you will need to capture a city. A word of caution, though: Bowmen will die to horsemen or swordsmen. Pikemen are also a problem, so the time where they are strong enough to be really good is short. If successfully pulled off a rush against two civs with them on Immortal difficulty, and the tech cost is a lot lower than with swords or horses.

So, yes, you can rush and it is even a nice strategy, provided you only want to take out one or two civs at the max. I'm not quite sure if it works on deity but I don't see why not if you get two or three bowmen ready quickly enough.

 

[fed1943]

Bowmen are very good as a support or defensive unit.
They can also attack, but less good at.
And yes on defense they can usually defeat spears because the minor strengh is offset by the
range attack.

 

[jorissimo]

Ranged units CAN capture workers and they CAN capture cities, just by moving on top of them.

 

[bobshiznit]

Bowman capture cities, try it.

 

[Slowpoke]

Well ranged units can capture workers, so I'm guessing they can nab cities too. You do need to manually click on the move button and then click rather than right click alone, however.

But it's sort of a moot point anyways, since you start with a warrior. Just don't get him killed

 

[rtfischbeck]

I've had some mixed success with a 2 warrior 3 bowmen on deity, it's not bad if the closet opponent has a lot of rough terrain near their cities. However, it really doesn't feel any stronger than flat out warrior rushing and i've never been able to take out more than one opponent w/o getting swords.

 

[bobshiznit]

You may need to build an extra warrior/scout to defend the capital if you are building improvements that you would like to keep. Not a big deal but an additional cost.

You can get workers with bowman but you may need another unit nearby for when there is a unit guarding the worker. Unlike with melee units, when you kill the unit guarding the worker, you haven't captured the worker yet.

On immortal the bowman rush has worked great for me, 3 bows 1 warrior. I haven't tried it on diety yet. You end up with quite a few workers and a capital or two (if you build a couple more bows) and you shouldn't lose any units. With a warror rush alone I usually end up losing a few units.

However, a warrior rush has the benefit of being able to upgrade the units into a new attack force along the sword/longsword line. The bows end up as defenders once enemies have swords or horsemen.

If your trying to dominate a pangea map the bows aren't going to make a difference. If you are trying to clear space so your can tech into space, the bows are very cost effective.

 

[Scarpa]

You can only get the city down to 1 not 0, so you can't nab cities. Try it before you assume so.

Have you ever tried it? I've got a game right now that has an army of Keshiks capping cities without issues, and I've also used archers, chu-ko-nu and gunship units to do the same in past games. All you have to do is knock the city down to 1 and then move onto the city. Right-clicking won't do it and if it's a unit that can move after attack you need to have an attack available.

I suppose Babylonian bowmen could be the exception but I doubt it. I also suppose this will get patched away someday when Firaxis notices it, since the anti-promotion icon/tooltip on all the units I mention above say it can't be done.

 

[Slowpoke]

OOoo burned!

Also, I agree, lacking a classical era upgrade really hits the babylonians hard. Perhaps there should be some sort of middle era bowman, like composite bowmen. Although then it wouldn't be much of an upgrade from a UU would it

 

[bobshiznit]

Maybe I did something wrong.

 

[bobshiznit]

I did do something wrong. My bad. I tried it again and it worked. I think what I saw before was there was a unit garrisoning the city so I couldn't enter. The next time I tried it there was no unit garrisoning the city and I could take the city. Maybe that was was the issue or maybe I was clicking stupidly.

 

[alpaca]

I think that this is a bug and shouldn't be used, to be honest.

 

[jorissimo]

Why should ranged units not be able to capture cities?

 

[bryanw1995]

b/c they can't melee attack. it's a known issue, helicopters aren't supposed to be able to capture cities either but they haven't figured out how to code it correctly yet. hopefully it will get included with the patch.

 

[kamex]

Did you know helicopters can happily sit on ice burgs?

Embark a gunship, move it onto an ice burg (ignores terrain costs)

 

[elthrasher]

Did you know helicopters can happily sit on ice burgs?

Embark a gunship, move it onto an ice burg (ignores terrain costs)

I noticed that helicopters need boats to cross water. I suppose that is to be expected in a game where sometimes you need horses to make elephants and sometimes you don't need horses to make elephants but what you never, ever need to make elephants are elephants.

 

[gt9953b]

I noticed that helicopters need boats to cross water. I suppose that is to be expected in a game where sometimes you need horses to make elephants and sometimes you don't need horses to make elephants but what you never, ever need to make elephants are elephants.

Per the manual, helicopter gunships can move onto coastal tiles but have to embark to cross ocean tiles. Never used a gunship to try it though...