forts, airbases, musketman, serfdom and other useless stuff

[Nicol.Bolas]

So I was thinking about some of the stuff I never (not even situationaly) use in civ 4 and this is what I came with:

forts
musketman
serfdom
airships

has anyone found any use for these?
what other stuff do you never use?

 

[nerdfighter13]

I use serfdom if I recently took over an empire so I can improve it quickly. I use musketmen during war sometimes, especially if I am the French. I never seem to have a use for vassalage or castles.

 

[Robert FIN]

Fort sucks, Air units are awful, I've used serdom cuz I'm noob but its not worth it, musketmans are nice ecpesially if you are playing as Zara

 

[King Pluto]

Forts are great! Use them to make canals for boats to get through strips of land or on unused tiles (desert majorly, though sometimes enemy lands flipped during war) to hold Airships. Airships are a big help to support Cavs when your enemy just got magic rifles.

You can also put a Fort on a resource to allow access. Put Forts on desert Oil when you reach SM and you won't have to improve it to use it immediately when you hit Combustion.

Musketeers are pretty good for defense in a mounted stack, but other than that I rarely use Muskets.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Serfdom: Atrocious in the base game. Consider it in later-era starts only, but even then it's questionable/situational.

Airships: Very good actually. The scouting and range is incredible, they detect subs, and they're not useless attackers in their era since none of the pre-dating units can intercept. No reason not to make use of these guys at least as scouts, should you have physics.

Forts: Within your culture, they allow ships to enter as long as adjacent to a water tile. This means they can act as a gate through peninsulas. They can also be useful in the rare event that you have a good hill choke. Finally, since they provide access to resources they can grab off-continent resources in your culture and metals/whatever outside of a BFC (easier to protect than otherwise...more relevant in MP). They're not amazing but they beat the "never" usage and are clearly above serfdom.

Muskets: Stock muskets are pretty bad. Musket UU carry more usage (especially oromos). Usually you'd only use muskets in a defensive emergency (IE drafting them) or as cover in a medieval stack as you push into renaissance. This is not a unit you'd generally build with the intention of attacking someone in most games but similar to forts it can be useful in the right situation, especially because you can draft them.

Let's add a few:

Ironclads: Only for seafood defense, and only if you expect you need that in their era...and only if you have steel. You don't see these often.

Explorer: A crappy unit, you might build it for making a GG medic if you don't have a leftover scout. It's inferior in its original intended purpose since it dies easily on terra type scripts whereas a spy or stronger unit can explore with impunity.

Tanks: One of the more overrated units in terms of utility. Tanks are nothing without extremely powerful air support...but if you have that you'd be better served using paratroopers, which are faster and kill damaged units just as easily. If you're relying on artillery, or ships, then might as well just use infantry/marines/whatever.

Triremes: Useful in the rare MP game where galley warfare is a threat, but otherwise lackluster. You'd think these would be good vs barb galleys, but the rules of the game dictate that you're better served using workboats and warriors to defeat barb galley spawns; barb galleys come too soon to realistically get MC on a consistent basis. Wars in the galley/trireme era are rare and when they do happen, often enough you can just insta-shuttle forces between 2 cities without exposing the galleys anyway. They have occasional uses but not often. I use airships considerably more often than triremes.

Future era units: These have absolutely nothing on tac nukes, and thus won't be given serious consideration over nuke/para unless nukes aren't available.

 

[Ghpstage]

I'll also add to the things that have been said.

On Forts-
They act as airbases for up to 4 aircraft,
As they allow ships to enter in your territory they can be used to load missiles into boats and exted the inland range of carrier fighters a little.
Due to sea ice being counted as water tiles very long canals can often be constructed through the frozen north/south of continents.

On Airships-
Lol why are these on the list?

 

[traius]

So I was thinking about some of the stuff I never (not even situationaly) use in civ 4 and this is what I came with:

forts
musketman
serfdom
airships

has anyone found any use for these?
what other stuff do you never use?

While I pretty much agree with your assessment, Airships are in fact incredibly useful. The main use for them is to do some damage before the cannons attack, but they always help when trying to roll over longbows, no matter your stack type. They greatly increase the survivability of your cannons, and despite having a separate scout icon, they in fact scout at the same time as attacking if you attack (though that is true of all air units). Since they can always scout, and even find subs (other air units can't), they never stop being useful. As long as your opponent is technologically backwards (ie no rifles, and moreover, you should be picking weak civs as your targets generally!) airships + cavalry >> rifles and cannons.

 

[Nicol.Bolas]

well I was mentioning airships, becouse AI ussually has crapload of them , and they don´t do me any harm - so when I see a city full of airships i rejoice, since it could have been more cavs or muskets.

but I will consider them some game and give them a chance again based on this feedback



tanks are an interesting mention...
In my last game I did more damage with infantry/artillery stack, tanks didn't play a major role.
they are not useless, they are just not as gambreaking as one would expect.

they are good for blitzkrieg though

 

[traius]

well I was mentioning airships, becouse AI ussually has crapload of them , and they don´t do me any harm - so when I see a city full of airships i rejoice, since it could have been more cavs or muskets.

Hmm, yeah, I see where you are coming from there. The AI is down-right terrible at using airpower in every game (EDIT: of CIV4!) I've played so far, so any hammers they spend on air units are pretty much a complete waste. I guess I should rejoice too, except I play a lot of watery games, and I actually curse when they get airships, because then they weaken my privateers (why didn't they just build another gimme galleon?!, lol)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

they are good for blitzkrieg though

Against pre-infantry units maybe. If you're attacking CG infantry with tanks while cities still have defensive bonuses, you're getting terrible odds against an opponent who has a MUCH cheaper unit than you. That attrition is lollerbad.

But how do you drop the defenses? If you can drop defenses, that means you're doing one of these things:

1. Artillery ---> just use 1 move units that are better on d
2. Air power ---> paratroopers! Which you can reach faster, too.
3. Nukes ---> paratroopers, or hell muskets. Whatever.
4. Naval ---> Marines are better until 10 xp and cost less
5. Spies ---> only case tanks are better, but only slightly and they still have losing odds against some defenders due to hills, CG, or presence of anti-tanks.

Tanks just aren't that good. You can use them, sure. However, they're so rarely optimal it's a little silly.

 

[damerell]

But how do you drop the defenses? If you can drop defenses, that means you're doing one of these things:
1. Artillery ---> just use 1 move units that are better on d

Even with 1-move arty, it's nice to have 2-move tanks. Retreat back when damaged faster, get back into the fight faster, spot of pillaging on the way, swat the AI's units when they shuffle them around between cities, kill two things when the opportunity presents...

2. Air power ---> paratroopers! Which you can reach faster, too.

But with fewer combat factors.

4. Naval ---> Marines are better until 10 xp and cost less

Naval bombardment doesn't actually oblige you to make an amphibious assault. "But I want to take the city before the enemy brings up defenders". Well, maybe - on the other hand, if my main way of reducing defences is naval and the AI has a mix of coastal and non-coastal cities, I may well encourage them to slot more units into a coastal city where they can be easily killed.

 

[jarhead_leif]

@Bolas
I only agree with "serfdom", nothing more.

Others, they're very useful to me.

 

[Rusty Edge]

Forts have been covered.

Besides the musket UUs, I will build muskets to put on Carracks. They can capture and defend barb cities on a previously undiscovered continent or island . More useful than Explorers, who can't attack.

Serfdom, Pacifism and Enviromentalism have no place in my games.

Airships have been covered. I think of them as counterless numidian cavalry.

I have used ironclads for bombardment in the rare games when there was an enemy within reach by the time I could build them. TMIT is right though, ironclads and triremes are high on the useless scale. I mostly build triremes because I play mods, and workboat exploration seems cheesy to me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Even with 1-move arty, it's nice to have 2-move tanks. Retreat back when damaged faster, get back into the fight faster, spot of pillaging on the way, swat the AI's units when they shuffle them around between cities, kill two things when the opportunity presents...

Yes, the ability to attack twice by default is very helpful. They probably don't belong in this list of "useless" things honestly...they're certainly far ahead of serfdom. But people generally do overbuild them; they're terrible defenders and need a lot of babying. They are used like cavalry but they don't stomp previous era units anything like cavalry do to medieval .

But with fewer combat factors.

Perhaps...but with air power you're looking to dominate with the air power, and you most certainly can. Which units attacks the enemies at 50% str barely matters, and if you have air power anyway you can shoot down any interceptors. Paras tend to be better than tanks in practice if you have this kind of approach...but honestly if I'm not nuking I'd rather just flatten absolutely everything with ease using CR II or CR III artillery + chain vassals.

Naval bombardment doesn't actually oblige you to make an amphibious assault. "But I want to take the city before the enemy brings up defenders". Well, maybe - on the other hand, if my main way of reducing defences is naval and the AI has a mix of coastal and non-coastal cities, I may well encourage them to slot more units into a coastal city where they can be easily killed.

Depends on your goal. If you are willing to cap said AI you probably want to just take the city and then either burn it or turn it + 1 more city into a colony (lol). That way, you get war success against the AI and the AI can't get any from retaking the city from you (its war success against your junk colony doesn't count, and the fact that you colony has 8 tiles of shared border with the AI makes it more likely to cap in the mechanics trololololol). You can use this to repeatedly farm war success and weaken the target until it caps, which usually isn't long.

Naval air power is limited to fighters, though you can have a ton. With jet fighters you can bombard/damage inland targets easily too, though on many maps fighters will suffice. Marines win over tanks in these cases regardless, because even though tanks can move inland faster, they're weaker on initial attack and are inferior defenders. A mix might be useful, but you wouldn't want to just spam tanks there either and in most cases pushing inland is costly and unnecessary; you force cap and load right back up for the next target.

If you really want to take and hold land on a new continent though, better to just establish a foothold and then either ship or airlift in there. I like to ship because it's less micro intensive (since cities can't auto-airlift using waypoints for some annoying reason). One fun trick is to take a city, then unload some junky leftover units like chariots to pillage flatlands + guerrilla II whatever to pillage hills. Get rid of roads/rails and land stacks can't counter-attack the next turn lol. In fact, they'll put their nice big stack of "collateral me" right next to the city and let you mop it.

Of course, you could always just take a hill city and put 20 machine guns or so there too .

 

[Archon_Wing]

Airships as with other aircraft are borderline OP, as with air units. But the thing about airships is that contemporary counters are nonexistent and their range is massive. These things are why cavalry remain powerful for the longest time. Pinch Cav + Airships can threaten infantry on open ground.

Forts are useful for the same reason air units are good. More planes in an area= more power. If you're caring for a military win, then the additional yields from an ordinary tile isn't worth much and you can also build forts in desert.

Muskets are bad and only used as cannon fodder to save your siege. Nuff said.

Serfdom theoretically could be used in short spurts by a SPI civ, but I've never really tried. By the time you get feudalism, you should have developed most of your good land anyways.

Explorers: Pathetic.

Trireme: Would be good if they didn't require such an expensive tech
Ironclad: A more advanced Trieme

 

[Culture Bomb]

I might go on the attack with muskets + trebuchets to conquer the iron/horses I need to build better attackers.

Longbows are cheaper, but with 50% higher base strength muskets have a better chance to defend (especially vs knights if I can't build pikemen.) This also makes the muskets better city attackers.

 

[jarhead_leif]

Yes, another importance of muskets is that they ignore city walls.
Airships, allows additional bombing support without the risk of losing them, not until fighters.
And forts, are always useful for naval and aerial purposes, too.

 

[damerell]

Muskets are bad and only used as cannon fodder to save your siege.

OCC can very likely find itself building Muskets; that's the main use. It is very satisfying when they all grow up into Riflemen and administer a good kicking.

Serfdom theoretically could be used in short spurts by a SPI civ, but I've never really tried. By the time you get feudalism, you should have developed most of your good land anyways.

Depends if you're nicking any land off anyone else, especially if you pillaged first to damage the enemy's economy. A SPI civ should have an eye on Serfdom, just in case.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Depends if you're nicking any land off anyone else, especially if you pillaged first to damage the enemy's economy. A SPI civ should have an eye on Serfdom, just in case.

It sounds good, but in practice it's rarely if ever worth giving up even 5 turns of massed specialists (GPP) or the ability to whip (production) to get tile improvements faster on ancient starts. Especially if you've taken land, if anything your worker count has increased (captured) and your own land will be largely improved during the era where serfdom is available.

That's the problem with serfdom; by the time you get it, you want to have built enough workers to easily improve tiles in a timely fashion without it (note that getting tile improvements faster is only of material worth if you grow fast enough to require them to be available sooner than you can otherwise make them with current work force...thus the marginal yield difference from serfdom is often quite small). Even if you pillage somewhat against a target, if you have enough workers for 6 cities and capture 6 more, you can just micro what you have + what you capture + build improvements as you conquer. To win out, serfdom has to be more than just "useful" in this situation, it has to beat the opportunity cost of the other 2 civics likely to be available. That's a tall order.

Unless, of course, you literally start medieval or something. At that point serfdom has appeal that wouldn't otherwise exist, because you don't have to commit as much to the improvements and you can set them up faster no matter what. You still might want caste (fast great person to bulb something important) or slavery, but rather than having mostly marginal land left to improve and few chops left you instead literally have all improvements to do still.

 

[Yudishtira]

So I was thinking about some of the stuff I never (not even situationaly) use in civ 4 and this is what I came with:

forts
musketman
serfdom
airships

has anyone found any use for these?
what other stuff do you never use?

I particularly like forts because you can build them right next to the enemy city before you've DoW'd. Of course it helps if the terrain is rubbish or it is outside the BFCs of all your cities.

Yes and as others have said, I get if anything more use out of airships than other air units, because they have a larger window of opportunity for use.

Personally I've never yet got much use out of Swordsmen...