Best synergy based on leader/UB/UU?

[simishag]

I've read the UU and UB guides on the War Academy and they are very helpful. But I'm wondering what people think about the best overall synergy of leader/UB/UU. There are a lot of different considerations that go into this, including leader traits (cheaper buildings, bonuses, etc), the tech paths required to get to the UB/UU, and the useful lifetime of the UB/UU. I generally try to prioritize the techs required for the UB/UU, as I feel like it's best to get my unique advantage as soon as possible. But maybe this isn't the best strategy for all civs; it doesn't seem like it would work as well for America or Germany since their UB/UU come so late in the game.

Anyway it's a big topic with a lot of possibilities. My personal favorite is Mehmed of the Ottomans. He gets a ton of cheap buildings and many of them come in the early to mid game. The Hammam (Aqueduct with +2 ) comes fairly early and will almost certainly be built in every city, maximizing its advantage. The Janissary (Musketman with some nifty bonuses) can mop the floor with older civs and is a cheap upgrade to Rifleman once you're ready to move on. I have won 3 easy cultural victories with Mehmed while still maintaining a pretty good sized army.

 

[Supp]

JC Synergizes crap with crap with IMBA.

 

[lymond]

Although I rarely play as him, I think Shaka has one of the best synergies in the game. An aggressive leader whose traits actually give him a faster UB. I think there are few Leaders whose traits increase the speed of their UB. Furthermore, the UB is a barrack (no prereq) and also lowers maintenance costs of cities pre-courthouse. And it never becomes obsolete. You can't beat that. You can build Impi's that start with Combat I plus another promotion like CR or Cover very quickly. They can be quite effective early on.

The Hamman is definitely one of the best UBs. The Janissary is questionable IMO. It's fine for it's era but that era is brief. If you make a play for it though it can be effective for a time. I like the Oromo better though.

 

[killmeplease]

Gengis Khan

 

[Nilmerf]

Vikings - Bigtime synergy with all things sea based, plus UU gets Combat I.

 

[Bostock]

Romans - crap with crap? Not sure on that, at least for Julius. Capitols are the best site for wonderspam, and capitols tend to get marketplace. So the forum goes well in IND wonderspam Julius games. It doesn't always make sense to kick out the jams with Prats, and mass grab bag GPP is a decent plan B.

 

[Fleme]

^ Surely you mean Augustus. Julius is all about praetrexing and recovering from it.

With that said, the traits of both the Caesars are lacking in terms of a peaceful game but they're far from the worst combinations and praets alone would make them both playable.

Ragnar, as mentioned, is a good match of traits and UU/UB but whether that combo is something great, is a whole other thing.

Frederick is technically a good match since ORG+Coal+Assembly Plant is as much synergy as an UB would ever get but then there's the Panzer so it won't do either. I do like my late engineers though.

Mehmed is good but there's no actual synergy between the traits, the UB nor the UU. Still very solid though.

My personal favorite would have to be Darius. The UU comes in early and is beyond any help from traits so that point is moot. It simply allows you to double up early on and that's a huge boon for anyone - even more so for someone who can afford all that land and make the best of it with support from both Organized and Financial. To top it all off, I find health to be more of an issue when growing cities or industrializing than happiness so every little bit helps. Nothing quite like a 6 health apothecary if you happen to get all the resources. Heck, even at the base of 2 it's still a solid building and takes priority over aqueducts.

 

[madscientist]

Best Synergy to me

Agustus: For a wonder building empire, the UB fits in extremely well with this and all you need is one. Prats assure you can either expand in peace or take what you want durign the early wonder building period.

Genghis: 2 extra XP for the UU with the ability to get GGs faster. Add the agressive melee units and it is very difficult to stop this leader early on.

Pericles: Fast libraries from creative with the philosphical trait has always seamed broken, especially since he can ignore alot of the religious tree with the extra happiness from the UB (beeline constuction over Monarchy). The UB is the ultimate early game defensive unit as it has no counter other than another axeman.

Sitting Bull: Protective leader with an extra 3 XP from the UB, plus a resourceless axeman!

Shaka: As mention above.

 

[Fleme]

I don't understand why people value the forum as much as they do. Sure, wonders generate GPP and that augments it but really, it's nothing more than a quarter of philosophical or NE. I'm almost willing to wager that you won't get more than one great persons worth out of the building the entire game - and that's talking with a city that has a bunch of wonders and/or specialists. I don't know how to do the math but until someone shows me otherwise, the forum to me will remain a weak building.

 

[McThomas]

Justinian I: due to his horse mongering: The Hippodome is a solid building and with his Spiritual trait he can swap to Slavery and whip an army of Cataphracts due to the happyness from the Hippodome, and his Imperialistic trait makes a fine Religion REX and GG machine...

 

[madscientist]

The power of the Roman Forum is that is SPEEDS up the next Great Person, not get's an extra one by the end of the day. That allows the Romans a better chance at nabbing Philosophy first and wining the Liberalism race. +25% GP rate people complain about yet noone says the Mint (+10% gold) or Scwechan (+10% science) is bad. You also have a better chance at getting a Great Person in time to found corps.

In this thread the idea of using an Industrious wonderspammer like Agustus makes the Forum alot stronger.

 

[Fleme]

A valid point about the other UB's. However, let's take into consideration something about wonders and the point about Liberalism race. Before I even start I'll apologize if my numbers come off strange (as I'm not an expert in this field by any means)

Say your average classic age wonderspammy capital would have the following wonders:

The Great Wall, 2 Spy
The Pyramids, 2 Engineer
The Temple of Artemis, 2 Merchant , 3 Priest
The Great Library 8 Scientist
Totaling at 17 /turn
Add a National Epic, 1 Artist , totaling at 36
Add a Forum it comes to 21,25 /turn without NE or 40,5 with it.

here would be divided 44% towards Scientist, 17% towards a Priest 11% towards Spy, Engineer and Merchant and the remaining 6% towards an Artist

Now, I'll give you that with 4 wonders in the city it does act as 2 additional wonders (or roughly 1,5 specialists) but considering how weak wonders are in producing , that's not saying a lot and is already taking into consideration that you'd have 4 early wonders, 2 of which the best producers.

For the sake of argumentation, if you were your average Philosophical leader and lost on the Great Wall and The Temple of Artemis, you'd have this:

The Pyramids, 2 engineer
The Great Library, 8 Scientist
Add Philosophical, Totaling at 20 /turn
Add National Epic, 1 Artist , Totaling at 33 /turn
With the GPP divided roughly 73% towards a Scientist, 18% towards an Engineer and the remaining 9% towards an Artist

So what we're looking at is while you'd probably be able to score all of the 4 mentioned wonders in your capital with an IND leader and adding a forum you'd be scot free outproducing the Philosophical guy in terms of raw , you'd still be looking at a much less desirable pool with all kinds of taints in it whereas the Philosophical leader can almost rest assured that he'll get a beneficial great person out of his wonders.

If we'd complicate the math by adding 2 scientist specialists to each pool, the Philosophical leader would rise to 45 /turn while Augustus would be at 54 /turn.

Furthermore, let's consider that in order to even get a Forum up and running, Augustus will have to detour to Currency instead of pursuing the Aesthetics/Literature line where all the wonders are and which are actually pretty much the key factors in a succesful and fast Philo/Edu/Liberalism beeline. Add on top the fact that you will need 150 to get the benefit of the Forum which in turn is yet another detour for a wonderspammer and hardly worth the extra hassle.

I'm still not seeing anything fantastic about the Forum, but please do enlighten me.

 

[vicawoo]

Pure synergy (different from having traits/UU/UB which make him a strong overall leader):
Genghis Khan. All 3 help
Kublai Khan. All 3 help, maybe more so since mounted don't get free combat 1.
Ramses. UB helps industrious, spiritual helps industrious moderately. No UU synergy
Ragnar: Naval strength
Churchill: Trait, UU. UB at least comes in the same era.
Montezuma: aggressive helps UU in becoming less terrible and pushes it towards a woodsman 3, medic 1 or woodsmen 3 medic 3 combo. UB synergizes with aggressive in multiple ways (better conquest, more affordable conquest, and it's cheaper), spiritual helps with temporary caste system switches.
Qin: Protective CKN, with discount oracle metal casting. No UU
Gilgamesh: UU/UB with mild trait assistance.
Darius, Boudica, Julius Caesar: Traits/UU
Huayna: UU UB, no traits.
And tons of financial leaders have UB synergies, with no UU synergies. Aggressive/charismatic often have UU synergies.

Sitting Bull: UU anti-synergy. Competes with UB and traits.
Hammurabi: UU anti-synergy.

 

[lymond]

I think a good question is how many leaders have traits that speed production of their UB?

 

[duckstab]

Justinian I: due to his horse mongering: The Hippodome is a solid building and with his Spiritual trait he can swap to Slavery and whip an army of Cataphracts due to the happyness from the Hippodome, and his Imperialistic trait makes a fine Religion REX and GG machine...

Agreed, if you have Horse. Byzantium without Horse is in sad shape indeed.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Pericles: Fast libraries from creative with the philosphical trait has always seamed broken, especially since he can ignore alot of the religious tree with the extra happiness from the UB (beeline constuction over Monarchy). The UB is the ultimate early game defensive unit as it has no counter other than another axeman.

I have to agree with this; Pericles has to have one of the strongest trait/unique synergies in the game. Fast libraries has strong synergy with the philosophical trait, and he gets a production bonus for his unique building. Between the creative trait, fast library, and fast odeon, he gets a massive +7/turn and four specialist slots in every city for a paltry investment of 85 hammers. That's got to give him a leg up in expansion, and he has the versatile phalanx to defend himself with.

 

[madscientist]

Leaders that get a bonus for their UBs

Shaka
Fred (get's another benefit if you have coal)
Pericles

I think that's it, just to list them.

 

[mirthadir]

Kublai owns Ghengis for synergy. Creative = faster shot to Keshisk with 2 pop whip libs and faster recovery during/after war to currency also from two pop whipped libs. Also Cre makes settling much easier as you can more easily do double duty with cities (e.g. get the Horses AND block another AI or get the horses AND the wheat in 5 turns). Agg makes the rax cheaper, color me unimpressed by that.

Churchill is also insanely high up there. Pro/Cha is ownage with the redcoat, but the UB is also good if we elect to run a rushbuy economy with Churchill. Pre-Kremlin you can't compete with drafting redcoats, but with rushbuy you can run vassal, get to top out those 1 7 "production" powerhouses early and be able to instantly dial up science on a whim. Once we get him steel, mil trad, or the Kremlin we can better leverage rushbuy (draft the Redcoats and rushbuy the cav/cannons).

 

[lymond]

This is a great discussion. yall have brought up scenarios that I have never considered. Playing to the strengths of a leader and these intricacies with there synergistic traits/UU/UB is something less experience folk don't realize or expoit.

 

[jihe]

Pericles.... just play him and you'll see.....