Best Unique Unit

[dankok8]

Camel archers are certainly not bad. 15% inherent withdrawal chance + no resource requirements. In MP, no resource bonus is more important because it getting your strategic resources pillaged won't hinder your war effort significantly. In SP, it is only relevant where you don't have at least one of Horses or Iron (happens sometimes). Camel archers are the best contemporary killers of longbows in cities.

All UU's are useful in some situations, even the weak ones. Heck even ballista elephants are useful if you are attacking a stack near your city from a bunch of mounted units and siege escorted by pikemen. Your ballistas will allow you to selectively kill the mounted units which allows your other units to mop up the low strength siege and pikemen. Regular elephants would get creamed by the pikemen if they attacked the stack. To make the ballista stronger, they should have made it resourceless. This would allow the Khmer to always be able to build them.

Another weak UU in BTS - Cossack. They should have made these cheaper than regular cavalry to boost them - 100h instead of 120h.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Camel archers are certainly not bad. 15% inherent withdrawal chance + no resource requirements. In MP, no resource bonus is more important because it getting your strategic resources pillaged won't hinder your war effort significantly. In SP, it is only relevant where you don't have at least one of Horses or Iron (happens sometimes). Camel archers are the best contemporary killers of longbows in cities.

All UU's are useful in some situations, even the weak ones. Heck even ballista elephants are useful if you are attacking a stack near your city from a bunch of mounted units and siege escorted by pikemen. Your ballistas will allow you to selectively kill the mounted units which allows your other units to mop up the low strength siege and pikemen. Regular elephants would get creamed by the pikemen if they attacked the stack. To make the ballista stronger, they should have made it resourceless. This would allow the Khmer to always be able to build them.

Another weak UU in BTS - Cossack. They should have made these cheaper than regular cavalry to boost them - 100h instead of 120h.

My my, how the cossack has fallen .

In vanilla, these guys had EIGHTEEN str and were available with the same techs that currently unlock cuirassers!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy bejeesus that's absurd. They're just OK now - I'd like to see them maybe get 1 STR back or something but eh...stock cavalry itself is pretty powerful. It's hard to base a UU on a really strong unit and keep it balanced (just like the ballista elephant - regular elephants might as well be a UU on their own in terms of the field impact, the difficulty is getting the resource)

I wouldn't rate Camel Archers a top UU, but they're no joke. I love withdraw chances and it makes them one of the better city attackers you can get in their era for dealing with those strong longbow defenders.

 

[Roxlimn]

Ballista Elephants just as resourceless would be a Praetorian-class unit. They would be unlocked with latter techs, but be boosted by the Stable, be immune from the ubiquitous Axemen, and their counter - Spearmen - it's as effective.

Making them both resourceless and selectively targetting would make them absurdly powerful. I know because I've already played a game like that.

 

[BurnEmDown]

Making them resourceless would be pretty weird, a country without elephants making elephant-riding-troops? That's like making the war chariot require no horses.

 

[hecubus]

You could call them covered wagons a la the Oregon trail.

Improved settlers would be super powerful though, so the improvement would have to be minor at best. For instance, cost less hammers would definitely be unfair. Starting with size 2 cities would probably also be unfair (you'd have to ask a power gamer though).

1 extra movement probably isn't unbalancing though. Maybe something like your city still grows while you make them? That is probably too powerful as well though.

Maybe a free improvement in the new city instead. Something basic like a free granary. That's pretty powerful but maybe not unbalancing.

Perhaps a settler with the ability to defend itself? No worries early game about sending them out without an escort at first. Edit: I see someone else suggested this as well.

Personal favorites:

Cho-Ko-Nu. I love anything with collateral damage. Unrestricted leaders, Churchill of China. Build Pyramids, Oracle Metal Casting and bulb Machinery, go nuts.

Impi, one of the best for out-of-the-gate speed. Not extraordinarily powerful, but cheap. Build gobs of them. War Chariot gets marks here as well.

Would like to see: unique Paratrooper unit.

 

[digitCruncher]

I think that a settler-like replacement for the explorer would be a good idea...

I mean... you can remove the "Ignores Terrain Costs", and then you have a 4 strength settler, which can defend rather well, and colonise the new world in the age of Optics, but unlike the Portuguese UU, you won't be able to transport re-inforcements... so you would have a rather large problem, unless you can find a way to rush some decent defenders quickly, or you could use more of these Explorer UU's.

[Edit]Obviously, the cities will need to be on hills, and the units promoted to Guerrila II, otherwise it would be a tough defence. A Guerrilla II unit, fully fortified would have 8 strength... A difficult fight to fight against macemen, but against anything prior to that... You could probably even give it a small (+20% ish) city defence bonus![/Edit]

 

[Terrance888]

Maybe a New Unit: Colonial

STR 4, 2 move on land 4 move on sea. Builds a city with 2 pop, forge, and a Granary if built on land or a light house if built next to sea.

 

[Iranon]

This would probably need to cost upwards of 500 hammers to be balanced, and such an unusual unit would feel rather strange...

 

[Terrance888]

Actually, it stimulates real Colonials. They established strong colonies with enough production to be an accet to the mother country.

Also, it would be an upgrade from a settler after a tech. Perhaps 50 Gold + 100 Hammer/food

 

[killz67]

(this is for civ vinilla btw)

I'm not great at this game but I have found that Redcoats can be awesome, because if you get rifling researched early, they last un.obsolete for a long time, and are great for invading other people, also, fast workers ofc, are the best option if playing a dilpomatic game where you don't intend to be warring much.

Also Keshik rock, I used them to capture the whole of Egypt really early on but then I was naive and didnt realise about maintenence costs, but eventually I managed to get my economy back on track somehow.

 

[Iranon]

I didn't notice until very recently that mounted units can now flank siege units of previous ages...

I believe this pushes the Conquistador over the top. They were always worth a hard beeline, and needing to retain a few knights to abuse medieval siege was very irritating. Now spain only needs siege units and conquistadors... they defend well, they attack well, they kill enemy siege and they allow FAST conquest before an opponent can get Rifles.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I didn't notice until very recently that mounted units can now flank siege units of previous ages...

I believe this pushes the Conquistador over the top. They were always worth a hard beeline, and needing to retain a few knights to abuse medieval siege was very irritating. Now spain only needs siege units and conquistadors... they defend well, they attack well, they kill enemy siege and they allow FAST conquest before an opponent can get Rifles.

Cuirassers are a top regular unit, no doubt. The UU based on them is indeed scary. I like them a lot too.

 

[Roxlimn]

Wow. So I'm not insane after all. I've always liked the Conquistadors. Of course, now they're more obviously over the top, but back when they were a knight replacement, who bothered?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's a little harder to hit guilds early in a timeframe where it mattered, and back then cavalry were downright dirty...the UU definitely got a lift with its BTS change.

 

[Roxlimn]

Well, it got a lift relatively speaking, since back then, nearly any Knight UU (and the Knight unit itself) was overshadowed by Cavalry.

That said, it wasn't hard at all for me to hit Guilds early with the right bulb/tech path. futurehermit discusses strategy to get Guilds early and rightly concludes that it can be done early enough to preempt Pikemen. Even WITH Pikemen, Conquistador having 12 Str and the Shock promotion is a beating. It was good before, just not insane-broken like the Cavalry unit.

It's less good now, actually, but the fact that the Cavalry are sane now makes it a little more obvious how good it really is.

 

[DroopyTofu]

Actually, it stimulates real Colonials. They established strong colonies with enough production to be an accet to the mother country.

Also, it would be an upgrade from a settler after a tech. Perhaps 50 Gold + 100 Hammer/food

That would make since. I would like to propose Nationhood for as the pre-req. That would stop it from being an early game breaker, but not be so late that it is unusable. One thing; when you say 50 gold, do you mean to upgrade an existing Settler, or it cost + / to build? I don't think making it the only unit that requires to build would be a good idea.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, it got a lift relatively speaking, since back then, nearly any Knight UU (and the Knight unit itself) was overshadowed by Cavalry.

That said, it wasn't hard at all for me to hit Guilds early with the right bulb/tech path. futurehermit discusses strategy to get Guilds early and rightly concludes that it can be done early enough to preempt Pikemen. Even WITH Pikemen, Conquistador having 12 Str and the Shock promotion is a beating. It was good before, just not insane-broken like the Cavalry unit.

It's less good now, actually, but the fact that the Cavalry are sane now makes it a little more obvious how good it really is.

I guess my problem with guilds and medieval in general is that you can hit liberalism in the 400-800 AD range to take nationalism somewhat frequently, and it's not far to cuirassers from there. If you get the pyramids on a good map it's easily possible to be FIELDING cuirassers in numbers by 800 AD or earlier (though that's just a little outside my skill level, not much). Knights can be had sooner, but how much sooner given the trade value given up by not going the "lib path"?

I don't like the way it's balanced as I like medieval warfare, but it's hard for me to justify medieval warfare so often now because I'm a few bulbs away from an utterly dominant unit (and medieval war is slow, making it only viable on marathon or epic at high difficulties where the AI will tech to parity and spam to slow you down very quickly).

 

[hockeyrox38]

i'm still on the demo, but in civ iii it would be cossacks or immortals. for america, i liked the f-15 or something as their unique

 

[Roxlimn]

TheMeInTeam:

I understand that completely, but Guilds isn't all that hard, if you can tech that quickly. If you have a Cuirasser-strength Conquistador at Guilds, that's worth teching to, isn't it?

 

[Mupetti]

Cossacks rule at least on higher levels (I mostly play on emperor). The AI loves cavalry and it's not unusual that if end up warring against bigger opponent, you'll be facing insane amounts of cavalry (50+), some cannons and 10-20 riflemen & grenadiers (biggest cavalryspam i've seen is somewhere around 150-200). Just send your cossacks with combat I and pinch, and you can feast over your victory.

There are other obvious answers for best unit, but none is as good against (midgame) stack-of-dooms as cossacks.