*Newb* Can you 'escort' units?

[Robmonster]

Afternoon all,

I just picked up Civ5 and have a quick question.

I’m running the Learn As you Play tutorial and one of the voiceovers I heard shortly after producing my first new settler unit said something along the lines of “You should escort your settler with a military unit”

How do I do that exactly? Do I have to manually manage their movement to make sure they are in the same location or is there an Escort command I can give to a military unit?

I’ve played some of the early civ games so I’m not a /complete/ newb but it seems much has changed.

Rob

 

[Brichals]

You can stack 1 military and 1 non military (i.e. worker, settler, great person) unit on top of each other. That way if a nasty barbarian tries to steal your worker he will have to deal with your warrior first. Unfortunately you can't bind them to 1 group so you have to babysit them manually but it's not that much hassle.

You don't have to babysit them all the time, but if you send your settler out into the fog of war without a unit protecting it there is a good cahnce it will get stolen, and that is enough to cause a rage quit in most cases.

 

[ShahJahanII]

Just make sure your settler and escort unit are on the same tile. They don't have to be on the same tile though, since your military units can see about 3 tiles away, so you can make sure there are no barbarians around, if there are, just pull you civilian to safety. Sadly, there is no escort button.

 

[Uberfrog]

One extra thing to mention is, by the time you have the Optics tech, and the ability to embark units on water tiles, it is not possible to stack a naval unit (e.g. a trireme or a frigate) on the same tile as an embarked unit, which can make defending a large invasion fleet (or even just a sailing worker) tricky. You have to manually scout with your warships to make sure there aren't any barbarian galleys or enemy ships lurking about.

The AI is not very good at navies yet, but I have had a couple of soldiers swept up by a roaming destroyer I didn't know was waiting just out of view.

 

[Maktaka]

You can stack 1 military and 1 non military (i.e. worker, settler, great person) unit on top of each other. That way if a nasty barbarian tries to steal your worker he will have to deal with your warrior first. Unfortunately you can't bind them to 1 group so you have to babysit them manually but it's not that much hassle.

You don't have to babysit them all the time, but if you send your settler out into the fog of war without a unit protecting it there is a good cahnce it will get stolen, and that is enough to cause a rage quit in most cases.

On that note, when a Worker/Settler/GP is captured by a barbarian, they get converted into a worker and will stay a worker forever if retaken by a different civilization. Recapturing the units yourself will return them to their original unit type, so a settler lost to barbarians isn't gone forever, just temporarily indisposed provided you hunt down the thief promptly.

 

[seasnake]

You can stack 1 military and 1 non military (i.e. worker, settler, great person) unit on top of each other. That way if a nasty barbarian tries to steal your worker he will have to deal with your warrior first. Unfortunately you can't bind them to 1 group so you have to babysit them manually but it's not that much hassle.

You don't have to babysit them all the time, but if you send your settler out into the fog of war without a unit protecting it there is a good cahnce it will get stolen, and that is enough to cause a rage quit in most cases.

That said you'll probably send 10 settlers at the most all game, so really it's worth the time you'll spend escorting them to make sure they get to the right spots.

 

[Robmonster]

Thanks for all the help with this, I appreciate it.

R

 

[Brichals]

On that note, when a Worker/Settler/GP is captured by a barbarian, they get converted into a worker and will stay a worker forever if retaken by a different civilization. Recapturing the units yourself will return them to their original unit type, so a settler lost to barbarians isn't gone forever, just temporarily indisposed provided you hunt down the thief promptly.

On top of this a stolen settler will go back to the nearest barbarian camp and wait there for you to go and get him back, unless another civ gets there before you do.

 

[civnoob13]

An escort button is one of the things that is really needed for civ 5. It is a good game, but there are so many simple errors. One of the most annoying for me is how cities constantly starve themselves and you have to manually go and correct it. And THEN, the next turn the city finds another way to starve itself so you have to literally go around locking every tile. And there isn't even an option to unlock on the rare cases when you'd want to.