let's see... pikes require iron(maces can be done with copper too); xbows require iron; knights require iron('xcept for saladin's joke). Cuirassers require iron. All of the wooden ships from astronomy(frigate, privateer, ship of the line... heck, even the ironclad requires iron in an unexpected way
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I remember even now the only game in which I actually lacked iron... ok, I lacked copper too. Heck, even asoka thought in that game I'm riped for conquest(was like, wtf, since when is asoka ever declaring...). Point is, not requiring iron is a... ugh, hey, noone likes camel archers... they don't require either horses nor iron, yet they're weak. Why? Because you always have iron. The rng gods are nice and always put iron near you. It's like the sun and the moon... there's always iron near you...
It's an uber unit for hiding in the woods. Fine... pitty that hiding in the woods never won a war. I mean, yeah, sometimes the ai put some 1-2 whatever unit in the woods and sit there... I always wondered why the heck does he expect me to attack since his units do nothing but eat his money. Also, you can't pillage with them either. They still move one, so either you sit in the forest or you get out and get creamed. Plus, beside vital resources I never pillaged a cottage except late game stalling with carriers razing every improvement on some other continent I didn't plan to conquer... Why would you pillage your future cottages anyway?
Ok, you get m3/w3 for an uber doc. Really, it's too little for an uu.
Worse - they start with 1 worker on immortal, don't they? The 1st thing they do is chop their forests. Heck, even you who have more brains then the ai still have to chop in order to rush things...
The uu is just bad; which wouldn't be an issue per se, since there are also other crap uus. However, a bad uu, with a bad combo of starting techs, with mediocre aggresive, ok paired with the very much to my liking spiritual... something has to be beefed up at monty. Lately I've been able to win most of my random leader games on immortal. Yet, I don't play with saladin and I still don't play with monty; ok, the rng gods can give me a less chessy leader, that's why I set random leader to start with. However... it can be that bad... monty is... overall, too bad.