Is anyone else confused by the Mayan UU?

Contox

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 22, 2009
Messages
61
Okay, so the Mayan UU replaces the spearman, and it has +100% against mounted units and its immune to first strikes.
This doesnt make much sense to me, because there WERE NO HORSES in the Americas. At least not until the Spanish came. This could be historically accurate if the Mayans did well fending off the conquistadors, I dont know. But it doesnt make much sense for the game. I never like playing as the Mayans in the Earth map because the first time their UU is actually useful is when you can sail to the Old World, and by then, the unit has been obselete for hundreds of years.

Any thoughts?
 
Just because the original function of the Mayan UU wasn't used as a counter to horses, dosen't mean if they did it wouldn't have a large bonus against them. The spear is a very versatile and strong weapon. And this 100% vs. horses just shows that even though the Mayans never encountered horses before, or even designed the weapon to fight them, that the spear had great advantages when they did face of against horses (i.e Conquistadors). So basically the weapon's original function for the Mayans was just to kill other people, but even though they never encountered horses until close to the end of their civilization, doesn't mean if that weapon was used against horses it wouldn't have large bonuses against them.
 
Besides, this is a game not a historical simulator. There's already a number of Axemen/Swordsman UUs so Firaxis had to come up with something that fit into the overall gameplay. Since the Holkan used spears, a Spearman replacement would be the logical choice.
 
Just because the original function of the Mayan UU wasn't used as a counter to horses, dosen't mean if they did it wouldn't have a large bonus against them. The spear is a very versatile and strong weapon. And this 100% vs. horses just shows that even though the Mayans never encountered horses before, or even designed the weapon to fight them, that the spear had great advantages when they did face of against horses (i.e Conquistadors). So basically the weapon's original function for the Mayans was just to kill other people, but even though they never encountered horses until close to the end of their civilization, doesn't mean if that weapon was used against horses it wouldn't have large bonuses against them.
That or they still remember the days when they killed mamoths ( phants units are mounted too :D )
 
mostly i'm just confused by wtf do I do with this UU? Is it really any better than a regular spearmen?
 
mostly i'm just confused by wtf do I do with this UU? Is it really any better than a regular spearmen?

It ignores first strikes...but that's it. Mostly it's effective anti-barb that usually lets you be more lax about finding metal at first. If you get spawns that favor chokes it is excellent for that too.

Otherwise, it isn't too impressive.
 
The mere fact that axes beat spears is already messed up, so the context of a UU has nothing on that :p.

So would something like this be more realistic? :

Axes:
Str: 5
+25% vs. melee

Spears:
Str: 4
+100% vs. mounted
+50% defense vs. melee

Swords:
Str: 6
+10% city attack

Makes sense, right? Axes have the fewest requirements of the bunch, so they should be the "weakest," per se...although they still get a higher strength than spears. Axes can still take out swords in the field, though, and when attacking spears they are even in the field (when defending, they still handily beat spears).

Spears can close up in hoplite formations, so they also get +50% defense vs. melee. Makes them good for defending against swords as well.

To make this re-vamp balanced, you'd need to modify dog soldiers (Str 4, +50% melee, starts with shock?), phalanxes (make them a replacement for spears again, and maybe have them start with shock and cover in addition to the regular +50% def. vs. melee), praetorians (make them a 7-str. swordsman), holkans (resourceless, immune to first strikes, starts with sentry), and preferably modify the ballista elephant as well (targets mounted units in stacks outside of cities, req. archery in addition to construction and HBR, and also gets 1 first strike).

This revamp would also incidentally make the jaguar as it is right now a little better (now not so utterly pwned by axes).
 
Old organized spear formations would smack the crap out of swords and axes...the problem is that doing that wouldn't be good for game balance. Indeed, your suggestions inevitably went for balance rather than historical accuracy. It's a necessity in a good game.
 
But these suggestions do make spears *slightly more* historically accurate while maintaining balance, do they not?

Indeed, as it stands now, classical warfare is a one-trick pony: axes, axes, axes. Spears and swords have niche applications, but about 90% of what I end up producing in the classical era is axes. Neither historical accuracy nor balance are served by the current setup as well as they could be.

I suppose one could interpret your historical analysis as suggesting: if there had to be a one-trick pony for the classical era, it should be spears, not axes. So, heck, give spears +50% vs. melee in general. Or, since spears, having shields and shield-formations, would be stronger than axes against archers too...

Axes:
Str: 4
+75% vs. melee

Spears:
Str: 5
+50% vs. mounted*
+25% vs. melee

Swords:
Str: 6
+10% city attack

*Note: I could make this +75% vs. mounted, but that would be unfair to horse archers. Still, +50% vs. mounted would be contigent on bumping war elephants down from a strength of 8 to maybe a more reasonable strength of 7...otherwise, a spear would not be able to take down a war elephant, and war elephants would be even more unstoppable than they already are.
 
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