First Look Persia

[magha77]

The Immortal just seems like an archer that has a strong defense against melee and ranged units. So why have it as swordsman replacement as opposed to an archer replacement? It's not like there is an option to use its melee strength when attacking an archer or horse archer for example.

 

[DemonMaster]

Immortals get the +7 bonus when they shoot melee or ranged units (it doesn't matter what type of attack it is, the promotion counts anyway).

 

[magha77]

Immortals get the +7 bonus when they shoot melee or ranged units (it doesn't matter what type of attack it is, the promotion counts anyway).

You're right, but it's incredibly weak against a city. And after playing for 4 hours last night with them as the main force in my "army" and seeing how the AI just takes its units and garrisons them as opposed to units in the field or even attacking from the city itself, sieges that should have taken a few turns at best took several. Made the game quite tedious. When I saw the first look I had thought we would be seeing the Zulu type UU from Civ 5 with ranged first strike followed by a melee attack. Would have been cool to see in the gameplay/animation as well...but oh well, the game is much more compelling now with the patch and having Cyrus and Alexander is great.

 

[Zaarin]

The pairidaeza and trade route bonuses actually make Persia a strong player even if you don't use Cyrus's aggressive abilities. In fact, I'm tempted to call the pairidaeza one of the strongest UIs in the game. I haven't been at war once in my current game, and my only real setback is that I started on the wrong continent...(I'm going for a culture victory, but Pericles has a major lead on me because I started alone on a continent with Germany. By the time I realized that, it was too late to change course.)

 

[Ceskari]

I just retired a game with Cyrus, because the Immortals couldn´t take a city. It´s supposed to be a swordsman, yet it cannot invade a city. I had to train warriors to get Voronezh and St. Petersburg, this took so much time that my people started a revolt. I had more than 10 Immortals, with promotions, a lot of catapults and archer units, they dwindled into nothing. When I made peace with Peter, Alexander and Teddy attacked me with units still disappearing off the map. The war weariness really sucked here. So: Why cannot the Immortal take a city???

 

[Leyrann]

I just retired a game with Cyrus, because the Immortals couldn´t take a city. It´s supposed to be a swordsman, yet it cannot invade a city. I had to train warriors to get Voronezh and St. Petersburg, this took so much time that my people started a revolt. I had more than 10 Immortals, with promotions, a lot of catapults and archer units, they dwindled into nothing. When I made peace with Peter, Alexander and Teddy attacked me with units still disappearing off the map. The war weariness really sucked here. So: Why cannot the Immortal take a city???

Because it's a ranged unit.

 

[magha77]

I just retired a game with Cyrus, because the Immortals couldn´t take a city. It´s supposed to be a swordsman, yet it cannot invade a city. I had to train warriors to get Voronezh and St. Petersburg, this took so much time that my people started a revolt. I had more than 10 Immortals, with promotions, a lot of catapults and archer units, they dwindled into nothing. When I made peace with Peter, Alexander and Teddy attacked me with units still disappearing off the map. The war weariness really sucked here. So: Why cannot the Immortal take a city???

I know. It stinks and isn’t really historically accurate but it is what it is. The Persian army of that era was very archer dependent and the idea of the immortal having a ranged attack is great. My preference would’ve been to have it as an archer replacement as opposed to a swordsman with a different upgrade path or to have it like the Civ 5 Zulu unit, where you have a ranged first strike and then regular melee attack without archer penalty against cities. Your options are to always have a horseman or spearman with a couple Immortals when taking a city or using MOAR Units modpack that includes a great cataphract unit.

 

[Victoria]

People thought scaling cliffs was a bad promotion but immortals can also benefit from no negative modifier when shooting over rivers.

 

[Photi]

it's true immortals produce legion envy, and then you can't even have swordsmen. but once you are prepared for this, they are a tough archer unit that exercises ZOC without any upgrades, and has the melee unit promotions. immortals with tortoise then battlecry are no slouches. pair them up with a few heavy chariots and a ram and taking cities is cake. you don't need a resource until knights and muskets, so any iron or horses can be traded for some useful early gold. i like to go straight for early empire with persia so i can lay down one or two pairidaezas and use the 50% settler card for my earliest expansion and to maximize chops to help swiftly bang out the first campus which comes in handy to get to ironworking as i find that 2 out of 3 times i don't have the eureka yet (iron mine). classical rushes give you better pre-built cities than do ancient rushes, so unless my nearest neighbor is annoyingly near, i wait until then. and since you aren't depending on any resources, you can plan on it from the get go.