Persia in BNW

Did Persia get nerfed? I never played as Persia in G&k, and thought about giving it a try now, but what I see in my games is that Golden Ages are not that much of a big deal any more, with less gold-producing tiles to get the gold bonus, so Persia seems to have taken a big hit in usefulness.

 

Great artists (Golden age machines) have separate great person counter and separate faith counter .. Take a minute and reflect on what that means ... Darius is still a beast ...

 

That extra movement for units is still outstanding.

Rolling seige units into range AND being able to fire on the same turn is devastating.

 

Yeah, I love that. One time Ramesses had almost every ancient, medieval and renaissance wonder built in Thebes, including all the defensive ones, plus all defensive buildings and a respectable army and fleet in attendance. Thebes was hemmed in on all sides by an agonising combination of minor lakes and forest hills. It was accessible by sea, but only through a 1-tile icebound passage around a remote cape to the north, the central couple of tiles of which were ocean. I was ripping through him when my golden age ended, whereupon my entire land offensive crawled to a halt and was largely annihilated (the greatest defeat I have ever suffered in Civ 5 while attacking.)

Meanwhile, my magnificent fleet was caught by his own in the act of rounding the northern bottleneck and was half destroyed also. (He lacked ocean-going ships at the time or I'd really have been in the poo.)

The next fifty or so turns (on Marathon) were an agonising ordeal as the remnants of my army camped out on his perimeter while I whittled away his territory with citadels to get into a position to take him out when the next golden age rolled around. But when it came... it was glorious. His capital fell in four turns and I lost just two units.

 

Darius is still one of the best, most fun leaders.

Satrap Court is good Granted it'd be better if it replaced Market instead of a Bank to make sliiiightly more sense and be better (it still wouldn't be anywhere near Bazaar tier), but it's okay. Immortals are still great, but they really lost out a lot since the senseless Pikeman-into-lancer change.

 

It makes perfect sense. It's the whole anti-mounted line...spearmen - pikemen - lancer - anti-tank gun.

 

No, it really doesn't, because pikeman is not just "an anti-cavalry trooper" but a regular frontline melee unit by its role.

 

Not really. It is in the class of anti-mounted, hence it's bonus versus mounted. You have classic infantry line of warrior - swordsman - longswordsman - etc. Then you have the anti-mounted line, and the ranged line (archers, etc.), and the siege line (catapults, et al.).

Of course, you could use pikemen as a front line troop, but that isn't what they're best at.

 

Yeah, they are good against mounted, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, essentially, a very general melee troop and that's what many people use them as. You don't produce anti-tank guns or lancers to take cities with your siege units, but for pikemen, it's a whole different story.

 

It makes sense cos Lancer is pikemen put onto horses

 

Actually I think lances were something in between of a spear and a pike. A pike is too heavy to be used one-handed so I guess lances are a lot lighter.

 

I have not played him since BNW but I can tell for sure, from my games -not so many but still some- that he remains one of the most dangerous opponent. Allying with the CS seems to be is first goal and it's working always fine for him.
However I must admit I was a bit disappointed not to see him fight for their control as he should have and did in the previous version of the game.

 

"Spear" in french is "lance".

 

And... so?

 

Maybe English military strategists made a difference between a "lance" and a "spear", but in french you can barely tell apart...

 

Yeah, but the same word in different languages can have different meanings. In English, lance refers exclusively to polearms used by the cavalry, while spear is a more general term.

 

It's that because Swordsmen are so terrible and longswordsmen come much later than pikemen for most tech paths.

English military strategist of that time spoke French because they were snobs and didn't want to talk in the language their common people spoke.


And just to be clear, lances are heavier than infantry spears, too heavy to be thrusted quickly, because the momentum of the horse did that for the rider. But in core design, they are basically the same thing. So exactly the opposite of what vaiko guessed.

 

Uh, I said they're heavier than spears all along, but lighter than pikes.

 

AFAIK:
Pole arms:
Lance - a very long pole arm designed to be used by charging cavalry (and to be discarded in melee).
Pike - a very long pole arm designed to be used by infantry in a tight formation to protect against charging cavalry or infantry.
Spear - a pole arm of varying length and weight used extensively before the invetion of pikes/lnaces. Could be thrown.
Javelin - a throwing pole arm, usually shorter and lighter than spear.
(Halberd) - similar to pike and spear but topped with additional blades (axes, spikes etc.)).

 

indeed you did