Janissaries

[Gwil]

Do people use these? I recently played as Ottomans and completely overlooked them, treating them with the same "skip over these" attitude as I do with Muskets. However, I figure with a HE/MI/Barracks + civics city, you could have ultra cav/knight or longbow busters. I'm also unsure about the shield cost for these guys too. I tend to ignore a lot of UUs on the basis they don't fit the strategy for the map or the timeframe i'm in as a rule, but having looked closer at these I can see there is perhaps potential..

Are they a white elephant like muskets or have people found uses for them, and if so, how?

 

[majk-iii]

If you're just a little bit ahead in tech (and are playing at least epic), they are like monsters... given that they have bonuses against all earlier units.
Otherwise, if you're behind and/or are playing a normal or quick game; They'll just never come to be of any particular use.

 

[oyzar]

You can beeline for them pretty easily(as you know its pretty easy to be first to liberalism at least up to emproer). They are draftable so if you research gunpowder after getting eduction and then get liberalism for nation hood you can draft them like mad from your big cities(with the ottoman UB there is no reason to not have big cities). The can pretty easy tear up the old world with the help of some pults. And they also makes it easier to take down civs lagging in tech. They do have some uses on normal i am quite sure.

 

[Evanesce]

Definitely; if you beeline for Janissaries, you'll have a single unit that'll tear through anything pre-gunpowder, and due to their draftability, you can have an army of them very quickly. Musketeers can be used in the same fashion; 2 move + draftability lends itself to a very quick strike against an opponent lagging in tech. With Napoleon, you also get the Combat I bonus, so it's easy to pick up a couple promotions right away.

 

[Mehmed100]

If you have a signifigant tech lead, these guys can be monsters. They are good at killing all sorts of units. I must admit though, i would prefer a CRIII Maceman to one of these when attacking a city. There is a reason why I called my username Mehemed100 though.

 

[vormuir]

Janissaries are solid. I wouldn't call them one of the great UUs, like Praets or Redcoats, but they're definitely in the middle and maybe a bit above.

Ordinary Muskets kind of suck because there are contemporary units that are better at everything. Need a unit to attack cities? Macemen can get those precious City Raider promotions, making them far better than Muskets despite their slightly weaker strength. Need a unit to fend off mounted raiders? The lowly Spearman is nearly as good as a Musket, and much cheaper, while the Pikeman leaves him in the dust. Need to defend a city? The Longbowman performs just as well as the Musket (6+50% vs. 9) and is cheaper.

So, most of us only build Muskets as a backup unit, something you stick in a Stack of Doom as a defender.

But Janissaries... mmm. A Musket with 25% vs. melee, archery and mounted units? That's a Musket that can actually do stuff.

They do require you to beeline Gunpowder, because they're only good as long as nobody's building a lot of gunpowder units. But during that window, they're very nice indeed. Just with Combat I, they're better than City Raider II Macemen. Throw in Cover and they can rip open a city full of Longbowmen like a bag of Cheet-Os.

Also, you no longer have to do that silly scissors-paper-stone thing. You know, "I need Macemen to capture the city, Pikemen to defend against raiders, Crossbowmen to fight off enemy melee units..." No. While the Janissary lasts, you don't really need anything but Janissaries. They're as good as Pikemen at killing cavalry, better than Crossbowmen at killing melee units, and so on. Crank 'em out and stack 'em high.

The only reason they're not in the top five UUs is because they have a short-ish lifespan. But otherwise, they're great.


Waldo

 

[vormuir]

Totally random history nerd note:

Historically, the janissaries started as an elite corps. They were sort of the Green Berets of the Ottoman army. There were only a few thousand of them at a time.

That stayed true until the days of Suleiman the Magnificent (Mehmed's great-grandson). Suleiman had the bright idea of drastically increasing the number of janissaries: if five thousand super-soldiers were good, a hundred thousand would totally rock. Right?

Well... in the short run, yes. In the long run the janissaries turned into the Praetorian Guards of the Ottoman Empire, making and deposing sultans.

Sadly, Civ IV does not allow military units to rebel. Wouldn't it be cool, though?


Waldo

 

[CivSetä]

Janissaries are very useful indeed, I was surprised how much they they can handle. In my recent game (emperor, standard continents) I was first to get liberalism, picked up Gunpowder and started building janissaries. I had already completed a stack of 15 cats, so it took less than ten turns of brutal slavery to make my stack of doom complete. I took easily one neighbour civ, and possibly could have wiped the second opponent in my continent if I wanted to. But there was that annoying Mr. Musa in another continent, so I had to concentrate on science issues to keep up in a space race.

 

[aelf]

I agree with what has been said about Janissaries. Drafting is almost essential if you want to get the most use out of them. If you bring enough of them to battle early enough, they will do a lot of whooping. Don't forget that there is no hard counter for muskets (eg. pikes for knights).

However, sometimes I wonder if they are better or even as good as Musketeers. Musketeers have 2 moves so you can probably put them to use slightly earlier, making their window of effectiveness a little bigger (unless your empire is that small, it does make a difference). And since muskets don't get CR promotions, Jannisaries are not actually that great at taking cities. They're great for support, but I'd rather have the versatility of the 2-move Musketeers. I know I'm not going to use musket units to attack much, so I'd prefer that they can choke the enemy, pillage his improvements, quickly reinforce my stacks and quickly fortify captured cities.