Immortals

Playing Persia for the first time, I noticed that their special unit is the "Immortal." 4 attack strength, and 50% against archery units. But wouldn't I be better off building horse archers, which are attack strength 6 and negate first strikes?

 

Horse archer - 50 hammers
Immortal - 25 hammers

I'd rather have two immortals than one horse archer.

 

Yup 1/2 the price and if you get flank 2 your immortals will have a good chance to retreat from battle and not be affected by first strikes.

I just tried a game (Noble lvl) with immortals and they can be extremely powerful in the early game. I started on a continent with the Spanish, Incas and Japanese. I wiped out the Spanish and Inca with ease and then settled down since the expansion was starting to weigh down the economy.

Now I'm in the Classical era, at war with the Japanese and I've got 3 more cities to go before I control the whole continent.
Tech wise I'm second behind Russia and my score is about 1000 points ahead of Russia (my closest competitor).
So a powerful immortal rush war in the early game can pay off big.

 

Yes Immortal is uber effective. I've used em 3 times to great effect. #1 was single player on Noble tiny continents. Ended game in something like 500 AD with 8 cities and ending score of 50k+. #2 was in a 3 ffa duel map, ofcourse the lamers where friends and tired to gangbang me, joke was on them, foudned second city ontop of the horses and totally outmaneuverd the first guy while holding second guy at bay, took two of his cities eh left, took third then there was a long pause before I took second guy out, mostly because he already had longbowmen :/ Last time was a 1 v 1 on a small sized, forget which maybe duel, map. Game in the early was us moving stacks of spearmen/charriots and spearmen Immortals through a frikin jungle playing a game of chess. I bested the enemy thou mostly cause he switched to horseman archers, so I ended up with 2x the numbers of units and was able to caught off all his resources and take one of his cities.

Yes horse archers are good but expensive AND they cant fortify, which Immortal can. I assume that allows it to get terrain bonus, which I dont knwo for sure cause I havent tested it, but if accurate it woudl give you 6 str while defending in forest, effectively makign it a horse archer for soem things.

 

Isn't the Immortal a chariot replacement, not a horse archer replacement?

 

it is a chariot replacement - yes
he just compared the prices

I think he had in mind that immortal is cheap for what he gives - should be 30 hammers or so not 25

 

Yep... immortals are very good. I played a game as persia on noble. I started with America and Russia and wiped them both of the face of the earth and had an entire continent to myself before 500AD. The thing I noticed was that if you eliminated the enemie's sources of copper and iron ( or stopped them from getting them in the first place ) then your immortals would devastate the archers that defend their cities

Immortals rock. maybe not to the same level as in civ 3 but they rock.

 

You cant change a price of UU to be higher than the regular thing. Then it wont be a perk but rather a curse! Yes lets make Indian special unit a tad bit more expensive, lets see who will play as Indian now. Yeah I also think its a good Idea to like increase the price of Skirmishers, so now protecting your cities in the ancient era can be 25% more expenssive.... That's just not gonna work.

 

If they're %50 against archers they would make better early siege units than horse archers because most early cities are protected by archers.

 

Immortals get a terrain bonus that is very effective in choking the enemy and keeping them from hooking up to their iron and bronze resources. Plus you get them after researching the wheel versus horseback riding.

 

Thanks for the comments. I hadn't noticed that they were a chariot replacement (I almost never seem to use chariots) or that they were a lot less expensive to build than horse archers. I've now seen them withdraw from combat a few times, which is handy.

 

ChiefMat, a 50% bonus to a 4 strength would yield 6, which is the same as the horse archer. So that was what I was confused about, they would seem equally effective against archers, but the horse archer is immune to first strikes. But as others pointed out, you get them earlier and they are cheaper to build.

Islandia, what is the terrain bonus that you are referring to?

 

Yeah, you're right, what type of promotions can they get? If they can also get the archer promotion then they'd be worth it, I believe pikeman are the first units that have that promotion available. Just a thought because it's a pain to take any cities unless you have units with seige or archer bonuses. Oh, and the terrain bonuses Islandia was referring to are the defensive bonuses for hills that horse archers can use.

 

Harry Haller: Youve got it all wrong. Your unit doesent get stronger its the archer getting 50% less strenght after all mods.

 

The expansions to CivIII had some UUs that cost more than the units they replaced, and while this occasionally was curse (particularly for the Carthaginians), it was generally more than worth it. The Ottoman Sipahi were lethal.