"Converting Barbarian" UA's

[Teagen]

These seem really weird and out of place compared to the other UA's....pertaining to the Ottoman and German UA's.

Is it really possible to make this "as good as" the others? Barbarians kinda lose their significance sometime during the medival era with better defenses and bigger armies and more of the map explored....how can the UA possibly keep up with any of the other ones? particularly things like egypt's 20% wonder production and "Glory of Rome" which basically benefits from start to finish.

I just really dislike the feel of both Ottoman and German UA's...they need a major overhaul or something added in to them.

 

[PRCouture]

I've never bothered with Germany or the Ottomans. Although they may have bad UA's, hell i'd take the Germans just because of the Panzer tanks.

 

[TPQ]

Germany's UA is great for early war machine. Brutes and archers make a fine city capturing force in significant enough numbers.

I've used Germany's UA to kill 5 Civs and one city state before turn 300 on marathon/large/emperor and have a big, experienced army left afterwards. ~95% of this conquering was done without siege and ~70% without iron; just sheer weight of numbers.

If you plan to capitalise on Germany's UA from the start, you can carve out a massive empire, with loads of luxuries and a powerful army quite quickly and that massive empire will see you through to the end of the game and the inevitable win that results from more science, gold, production and military than anybody else.

This makes Germany's UA as good as the others, but only if you plan to make full use of it from the start.

As for the Ottoman UA. Isn't that one converting barb ships? I have to agree that this is a pretty weak UA, unless you're on an archipelago map where a big navy really matters. Then it could be a big advantage.

 

[Bibor]

Is it really possible to make this "as good as" the others? Barbarians kinda lose their significance sometime during the medival era with better defenses and bigger armies and more of the map explored....how can the UA possibly keep up with any of the other ones? particularly things like egypt's 20% wonder production and "Glory of Rome" which basically benefits from start to finish.

I just really dislike the feel of both Ottoman and German UA's...they need a major overhaul or something added in to them.

Try playing on a large or huge map, especially epic or marathon speeds and you'll quickly notice that barbarians remain almost a constant threat throughout the game.

Some UAs were not designed to work very well with normal/small maps.

 

[Strategist83]

Germany is all about getting a large army - large as in, large quantity of units. This is supported by the inexpensive Landsknecht. Later you'll then be upgrading all these Brutes and Landsknechts into modern units. This in turn potentially allows you to develop into nazi Germany with autocracy and an enormous army. I think that is at least one of the play styles they intended for Germany players. Germany is, because it will always have a large army, one of the civs that will benefit the most from autocracy. They also get their second unique unit at this time, allowing you to turn Bismarck into Hitler and start a terrible world war. IMO they've very much tried to make it likely that the civs will develop and play out the role they had in real life - Germany being no exception, for good and bad.

I think they intended balance to work the way that you are not expected to gain a huge amount of barbarians throughout the game - mostly just in the beginning. Whether it then is truly balanced with the other UA's of other civilizations is an open question.

The Ottomans seem more problematic to me. Germany immediately strikes me as 'pretty good' with the powerful synergy of their UA and UU.

 

[aatami]

The Ottomans look like Firaxis tried to make another naval civ, but didn't succeed that well.
I think the Ottomans should, in addition to their current UA, get a small bonus in great person growth (by their UA). Or something of the sort. It would also make them more unique.