As I said, they need no iron so if you just look at spreadsheets and do not play then you get things wrong. The in game civilopaedia and the wiki both say no resources and I
play them
O pla playing them from, you stack the toa galley, now if you played the navy game well you would then know the enemy would be -5 and the galley +2 for flanking and support. The fact that a Toa is faster than an enemy galley means you can block its path and the +10 the embarked unit gets makes it as strong as a galley.
A UU survives better and gets good XP, the point is your variety gets useless when pikes come and the enemy now does make pikes.
I’ll build the army with Autocracy, get my tier 2 government building with classic republic then swap to Oligarchy, I have said that in another thread so am not making it up just for you. This gives me the best of all worlds.
Varu are +4 against cities as opposed to a toa yes and that is important, I will update the post, at least I own up to mistakes Note I am not saying a Toa is better here, I respect your choice, just saying we have to be accurate. However this +4 against walls is only there until a Toa gets Oligarchy so is a small thing.
This naval thing is not small by the way. The Maori can build quads from turn 1, they can dominate the sea early and when Toas come along sea invasions are so fast, my troops are not moving 1 tile across rough ground, they are moving 4 at sea.
Here my civ has no iron but I can build a Toa. This is because they have not specified what resource the Toa needs. and therefore thats is the state of the unit. The fact that the Maori's had not discovered iron and the Toas still beat muskets means it is a shame their intent is to include this resource but it is not there.