Welcome to My Gran Columbia review everyone! Let me know what you think about how strong or weak you believe Gran Columbia to be! Gran Columbia looks to be a dominant domination civ, but how strong are they compared to the civs already in the game?
Leader Ability: Campana Admirable; earn a Comandante General every time the game enters a new era.
This ability is extremely strong as it gives you a unique great general every era. Along with the passive bonuses these great generals also give you unique retire bonuses. Looking at the video some of these bonuses appear to be: extra combat strength for units, a unit upgrade, along with other undisclosed abilities. A unique general in classical era warfare is extremely helpful and a MASSIVE boost so going to war in the classical era is a great option, however there is another thing you can save these generals for as I will reveal later...... Overall 8/10, great generals are important, great generals with impressive bonuses and every era could be game changing, especially classical era.
Civ Ability: Ejercito Patriota; +1 movement speed to ALL units. Promoting a unit does not end its turn.
Another great ability. Horsemen early game have 5 movement speed, they also ignore zone of control, so with a great general, they can cause extreme havoc during the classical era. You can theoretically pillage, move, pillage, promote all in the same turn with a horseman! Not only that, but it seems that naval and civilian units also get this ability which allows you to explore, settle, and build faster than usual which is a helpful bonus. Overall 8/10; movement speed is key early game and moving after promoting can allow you to turn a losing fight into a decisive win even more than a promotion usually would.
Unique Unit: Llanero: Cavalry replacement, when Comandante general is expended restore to full health. +4 combat strength for every adjacent Llanero.
Wow..... Not only does this unit benefit from increased movement speed and movement after promoting, it also gets 4 combat strength for every adjacent Llanero unit. You can easily achieve 8 combat strength in almost any situation, and the synergy with the unique general is incredible. You can heal from a promotion, move, attack, and heal from the Comandante general again. With this blazing movement speed you can blaze through enemy cities taking them so fast that even the mongols will tell you to slow down. Now here is what I think the optimal strategy for Gran Columbia can be: save all your generals until you beeline the Llanero unique unit. Then upgrade from horsemen to the Llanero (your unique improvement will help with that). Then with about 5-6 Llanero and maybe 2 generals per army, send one army to each civilization. Time this right and you can win a domination victory within one wave of wars. You will be an era ahead because of beelining, the UU gets bonus combat strength when adjacent to each other. And promotions and generals help keep your army fresh and healthy. Overall: 10/10 the synergies just work perfectly with everything else Gran Columbia has. This unit puts them over the top making an already strong cavalry unit, even stronger.
:
Unique Improvement: Hacienda
This UI works really well towards what Simon wants to do. Gold and production help with producing and maintaining units across all eras. According to the civ release video it can be spam built on plain and grasslands, along with hill tiles without forests. This is great, chop down forests and plant these bois up. They also give some food when adjacent to plantations and 1 housing per improvement. Allowing you to grow and support a higher population for more production and gold! The one thing this UI is "missing" from helping out with a domination victory is Science! Aside from that everything else is there. Overall: 6/10. It is a good supporting UI but it isn't going to carry a game all by itself, it synergies well with a domination play style so it is definitely one of the better UI's around.
Overall Simon Bolivar deserves a 8.5/10. Obviously we can't know for sure what tier he belongs to until we play him ourselves, but Simon seems strong in domination victories, and Hacienda can lend itself to science victories (more production and housing). I predict he will be high A/S tier. He has the potential to be really good, especially with a few simple strategies, he can win you a domination victory extremely easily.
For a more in depth review, check out the video I just posted on Gran Columbia: