Apologies if this post is redundant with acluewithout's civ of the week threads, which are great by the way; they are funny, entertaining and enlightening. I think its a little different as those threads review/rate civs whereas this thread (and possibly future ones) focus on the discrepancy between how a civ is expected to perform based on how they look on paper versus how they actually perform in game.
On paper: I've been neglecting playing as Macedon because I found his abilities on paper to be less than amazing. The two early game UU's are more expensive than their replacements, have the same combat strength (maybe the hetairoi is +1 depending on which patches/versions you have, but even then, +1?), and have bonuses that are only moderately consistent. Furthermore, while early game UU are better than late game ones, having two that are active at the same time makes you either divide your production between them or do without one which effectively negates this bonus (reminiscent of CIv5's Rome on release, do I use my limited iron for the unique catapult or the unique swordsman...)
Then there is the UB, which replaces an encampment building (big strike right there, have to make more of a type of district which is less useful than other districts) that gives a few beakers when you complete a military unit and its bonus applies to the horseman replacement as well as melee and ranged units. Science boosts are always great, but the way I play I didn't see this amounting to much. I usually spit out an early squad that can take cities, then focus primarily on infrastructure as the squad gets upgraded and promoted and every now and then sprinkle in some new reinforcements as needed. On Deity, the initial squad needs to be created before an encampment would come online, so its only the reinforcements that would trigger the science bonus, so very little there.
The leader bonus is a mixed bag with the one bonus that I felt did stand out. You get one free unit... not one per city or one per completion of a district or something... just one. All your units heal when you capture a world wonder, but how often is that going to happen? And the one bonus that stands out- no war weariness period. This means that if you have a self-sustaining econo-production and aren't relying on big trades to support yourself, you can effectively ignore all ramifications of declaring and being at war (with the exception of others declaring on you, which for Macedon usually just speeds up your victory time.) You can also play much looser since experienced players usually try to (and usually succeed in) campaigning against civs and not losing any units in the process partially because you've invested in generating that unit and don't want to lose the investment, but mostly because once you start losing units your war weariness really ramps up.
Finally, the civ bonus seems like it isn't beneficial to experienced players. Most of us have the routine down for builds and actions to hit most of the eurekas and inspirations and consequently won't benefit from this bonus much. Maybe this will help less experienced players more.
in game: The units are fantastic. While they are more expensive, it's only 10 or 20 percent more, so it's not like the eagle warrior (which is so worth the extra cost but alas, you will have quite a few less of them) or the MCU (whose cost is altogether prohibitive.)
There's already alot of raving over the hetairoi. It really needs a general to thrive which would be cumbersome, but having the UB gives you extra incentive to build your empire in a manner that encourages GG production, and the hetairoi generates GG points by itself, and not one or two, but five per kill. The free promotion was much more helpful than I thought it would be- every hetairoi starts with barding and become pretty tanky, which allows them to survive and get future promotions. I do have mixed feelings about them upgrading to knights instead of cavalry. On the one hand, earlier is better and knights are fantastic units to time-push with, and all your upgraded knights have that extra promotion. On the other hand, you lose the ability to time push cavalry as nothing upgrades to them, and that's often a game-clinching push for me. Also, horseman (replacements) upgrading to knights makes for a rather short window of opportunity.
I didn't hear much raving over the hypaspist which made it all the more of a pleasant surprise. While I've never had a game where not having horses was an issue, I frequently have woes over lacking iron, so that freedom is situationaly quite a blessing. They can also be mass-upgraded from warriors, which creates an early time-push. Their flanking bonus makes them slightly superior to most units they;d fight in the open field at the time, and the flanking bonus combined with the district bonus (which may as well be "city bonus") stack to make them very effective at taking cities, particularly when you have four of them adjacent to each other surrounding a city to besiege it and with minimal archer support.
' The UB was a little more than my low expectations. It encourages making encampments, so you'll enjoy the extra housing and production that you often wouldn't (at the expense of other districts, though.) Having the bonus apply to the horseman replacement removes the proverbial encampment dilemma of "barracks or stable?" What I overlooked was how the science bonus from this complements the aforementioned looser playstyle that you have because there's no war weariness, so the bonus compounded more frequently than expected.
As for the leader bonus, no war weariness did exactly what I thought it would. Wars can be drawn out much longer and there's no fear (well, much less fear) over losing units. From a meta standpoint, this could actually be much better than that as you are building up war weariness in your opponents but that's hard to evaluate as you can't see the effects. The wonder-heal bonus was quite situational as expected, but every time it happened it was much more impactful than anticipated. The AI usually builds wonders in stronger cities so you often find yourself in the position of questioning the final few blows against it, and when you do and succeed, you need to break for several turns as all the units involved need to heal. Every time this bonus hit, I was taken aback for a second as I was thinking I need to stop and heal but instead just kept it in high gear. And the free unit was quite nice due to the previously mentioned gripe about having a shorter window of opportunity.
But the most significant bonus that they have and the one that far exceeds how it appears on paper is the civ ability. While experienced players have their routine down to get most of the eurekas and inspirations, the key word is "most." There are some eurekas and inspirations that we know we're not going to get for one reason or another. Maybe we're on a pangaea with no coastal targets so there's no need for any naval units. Often I don't want to invest in a military engineer to create two forts that will never be used. Many of the later ones can only be activated by a spy or great scientist. And so on. In all these cases, we begrudgingly eat the difference. But with this ability, I went from the late classical era to the modern era without missing a single boost. Some of the (worse) great scientists just give you 3 free eurekas and inspirations, so this ability is kind of like getting a free great scientist for every city or two that you capture. Furthermore, I found myself having quite a few more envoys with city states, which gave more and earlier envoy-level bonuses, suzerein bonuses, and made merchant confederation generate lots of extra gold.
All in all, Macedon looked, on paper, to be a fairly average civ with an inclination to war frequently and aggressively to take advantage of some rather situational and marginal benefits. In actual gameplay, their advantages to war and bonuses from war make them a real powerhouse in a loose, rampaging playstyle which normally puts you in a pretty good position anyway but for Macedon, it is enhanced even further. I was hitting some ,milestone techs pretty early. For example, industrialization hit around turn 115 (give or take) which is pretty much on par with how I perform with more science-focused civs. While they are geared towards a domination victory, the game mechanics make it so having a lot of cities with lots of districts put you in a good position for any victory condition whether you build them or conquer them (in Macedon's case, a whole lot of the latter.) For space victories, the early and often thrust against any viable target will get you lots of cities to plant campuses and more trade routes to help build space parts. For religious victories you just kill off the other civs that found a religion and spread yours to the remainder of the map. Culture victories are a little trickier because you don't want to have civs be completely eliminated for less tourism targets, but as long as you leave opponents with a garbage city in the tundra somewhere and liberate them as needed, you'll do fine there too, and have more land and cities for more theater squares, resorts and parks, plus you'll probably capture some GWoA in the process.
On paper: I've been neglecting playing as Macedon because I found his abilities on paper to be less than amazing. The two early game UU's are more expensive than their replacements, have the same combat strength (maybe the hetairoi is +1 depending on which patches/versions you have, but even then, +1?), and have bonuses that are only moderately consistent. Furthermore, while early game UU are better than late game ones, having two that are active at the same time makes you either divide your production between them or do without one which effectively negates this bonus (reminiscent of CIv5's Rome on release, do I use my limited iron for the unique catapult or the unique swordsman...)
Then there is the UB, which replaces an encampment building (big strike right there, have to make more of a type of district which is less useful than other districts) that gives a few beakers when you complete a military unit and its bonus applies to the horseman replacement as well as melee and ranged units. Science boosts are always great, but the way I play I didn't see this amounting to much. I usually spit out an early squad that can take cities, then focus primarily on infrastructure as the squad gets upgraded and promoted and every now and then sprinkle in some new reinforcements as needed. On Deity, the initial squad needs to be created before an encampment would come online, so its only the reinforcements that would trigger the science bonus, so very little there.
The leader bonus is a mixed bag with the one bonus that I felt did stand out. You get one free unit... not one per city or one per completion of a district or something... just one. All your units heal when you capture a world wonder, but how often is that going to happen? And the one bonus that stands out- no war weariness period. This means that if you have a self-sustaining econo-production and aren't relying on big trades to support yourself, you can effectively ignore all ramifications of declaring and being at war (with the exception of others declaring on you, which for Macedon usually just speeds up your victory time.) You can also play much looser since experienced players usually try to (and usually succeed in) campaigning against civs and not losing any units in the process partially because you've invested in generating that unit and don't want to lose the investment, but mostly because once you start losing units your war weariness really ramps up.
Finally, the civ bonus seems like it isn't beneficial to experienced players. Most of us have the routine down for builds and actions to hit most of the eurekas and inspirations and consequently won't benefit from this bonus much. Maybe this will help less experienced players more.
in game: The units are fantastic. While they are more expensive, it's only 10 or 20 percent more, so it's not like the eagle warrior (which is so worth the extra cost but alas, you will have quite a few less of them) or the MCU (whose cost is altogether prohibitive.)
There's already alot of raving over the hetairoi. It really needs a general to thrive which would be cumbersome, but having the UB gives you extra incentive to build your empire in a manner that encourages GG production, and the hetairoi generates GG points by itself, and not one or two, but five per kill. The free promotion was much more helpful than I thought it would be- every hetairoi starts with barding and become pretty tanky, which allows them to survive and get future promotions. I do have mixed feelings about them upgrading to knights instead of cavalry. On the one hand, earlier is better and knights are fantastic units to time-push with, and all your upgraded knights have that extra promotion. On the other hand, you lose the ability to time push cavalry as nothing upgrades to them, and that's often a game-clinching push for me. Also, horseman (replacements) upgrading to knights makes for a rather short window of opportunity.
I didn't hear much raving over the hypaspist which made it all the more of a pleasant surprise. While I've never had a game where not having horses was an issue, I frequently have woes over lacking iron, so that freedom is situationaly quite a blessing. They can also be mass-upgraded from warriors, which creates an early time-push. Their flanking bonus makes them slightly superior to most units they;d fight in the open field at the time, and the flanking bonus combined with the district bonus (which may as well be "city bonus") stack to make them very effective at taking cities, particularly when you have four of them adjacent to each other surrounding a city to besiege it and with minimal archer support.
' The UB was a little more than my low expectations. It encourages making encampments, so you'll enjoy the extra housing and production that you often wouldn't (at the expense of other districts, though.) Having the bonus apply to the horseman replacement removes the proverbial encampment dilemma of "barracks or stable?" What I overlooked was how the science bonus from this complements the aforementioned looser playstyle that you have because there's no war weariness, so the bonus compounded more frequently than expected.
As for the leader bonus, no war weariness did exactly what I thought it would. Wars can be drawn out much longer and there's no fear (well, much less fear) over losing units. From a meta standpoint, this could actually be much better than that as you are building up war weariness in your opponents but that's hard to evaluate as you can't see the effects. The wonder-heal bonus was quite situational as expected, but every time it happened it was much more impactful than anticipated. The AI usually builds wonders in stronger cities so you often find yourself in the position of questioning the final few blows against it, and when you do and succeed, you need to break for several turns as all the units involved need to heal. Every time this bonus hit, I was taken aback for a second as I was thinking I need to stop and heal but instead just kept it in high gear. And the free unit was quite nice due to the previously mentioned gripe about having a shorter window of opportunity.
But the most significant bonus that they have and the one that far exceeds how it appears on paper is the civ ability. While experienced players have their routine down to get most of the eurekas and inspirations, the key word is "most." There are some eurekas and inspirations that we know we're not going to get for one reason or another. Maybe we're on a pangaea with no coastal targets so there's no need for any naval units. Often I don't want to invest in a military engineer to create two forts that will never be used. Many of the later ones can only be activated by a spy or great scientist. And so on. In all these cases, we begrudgingly eat the difference. But with this ability, I went from the late classical era to the modern era without missing a single boost. Some of the (worse) great scientists just give you 3 free eurekas and inspirations, so this ability is kind of like getting a free great scientist for every city or two that you capture. Furthermore, I found myself having quite a few more envoys with city states, which gave more and earlier envoy-level bonuses, suzerein bonuses, and made merchant confederation generate lots of extra gold.
All in all, Macedon looked, on paper, to be a fairly average civ with an inclination to war frequently and aggressively to take advantage of some rather situational and marginal benefits. In actual gameplay, their advantages to war and bonuses from war make them a real powerhouse in a loose, rampaging playstyle which normally puts you in a pretty good position anyway but for Macedon, it is enhanced even further. I was hitting some ,milestone techs pretty early. For example, industrialization hit around turn 115 (give or take) which is pretty much on par with how I perform with more science-focused civs. While they are geared towards a domination victory, the game mechanics make it so having a lot of cities with lots of districts put you in a good position for any victory condition whether you build them or conquer them (in Macedon's case, a whole lot of the latter.) For space victories, the early and often thrust against any viable target will get you lots of cities to plant campuses and more trade routes to help build space parts. For religious victories you just kill off the other civs that found a religion and spread yours to the remainder of the map. Culture victories are a little trickier because you don't want to have civs be completely eliminated for less tourism targets, but as long as you leave opponents with a garbage city in the tundra somewhere and liberate them as needed, you'll do fine there too, and have more land and cities for more theater squares, resorts and parks, plus you'll probably capture some GWoA in the process.
