@ Bhruic
You know, I had said earlier that I wasnt trying to pick on you or single you out, but now, after looking back through the whole thread, Ive decided to set that restraint aside.
Lets start at the beginning, shall we? It seems to me that you (as well as one other poster who has since bowed out) are unfamiliar with the phrasing I used in my OP. In common parlance, the statement: Resolved: X is Y is meant to communicate that the subject is asserting the validity of a proposition. This is a widely used format for phrasing opening terms in a debate. It is implied (and my case has demonstrated this) that this assertion is not meant to stand on its own, but rather to lead to an explication as to why the original resolution is correct. In a formal debate setting, my opponent would make his own case, starting with the proposition Resolved: X is not Y. In this medium, communicating anonymously on a message board, it is left to the individual poster to decide for himself whether he agrees or disagrees with the proposition and, if he is in disagreement, to present his case as he sees it. This, you have not done.
Exhibit A:
Bhruic said:
The whole "crapiest UU" thing is kind of silly to begin with.
This is the first sentence of your initial reply to my OP. Right off the bat, youve shown a disinclination to even engage in honest terms of debate. At this point, the well-mannered individual would refrain from posting further in this thread, as you have clearly demonstrated your contempt for the explicit reason for its existence. Much like most would find it to be poor form for an art critic for the New York Times to attend a Jackson Pollock exhibition on invitation and loudly exclaim: Dood! Its just a bunch of f*cking squiggles! ROFLMAO!
You follow up that statement with this:
Bhruic said:
In some cases they'll be useful, in some cases they won't. The only way you can compare them is to compare the situations. And that's hard to do with everyone having different game experiences.
Youre absolutely correct. I wish I had said something like that. Oh wait I did:
bovinespy said:
Obviously, better is a pretty loaded word, and I can already hear some of you starting to chant the mantra: Every UU is useful and powerful in certain situations.. True enough. But certain situations are more common than others, and accordingly, those UUs which are useful in a wider range of circumstances than others can, I think, fairly be labeled as being superior UUs.
Hopefully, you will make note of the phrase wider range of circumstance in the preceding quotation. It will be important later.
Exhibit B:
In your response to my lengthy follow-up to my original (admittedly overly brief) OP, you respond to my statement from my 2nd post, Now, of course, no UU is truly crappy when compared to the base unit which it replaces. They are all improvements over the standard units. by saying:
Bhruic said:
That's certainly a debatable statement.
Indeed it is (as have been all of my non-quantifiable responses in this thread). If only there was a place where one could freely argue the merits or demerits of that statement
You follow this up by quoting my statement: In making the classifications, I have not attempted to list every characteristic, which would defeat the purpose of grouping similar UUs, but rather what I feel are the most salient features of each. Your response:
Bhruic said:
Which conveniently let you "overlook" some of the important features of various UUs. For example:
Jaguar
5 str (base 6) = 20% str decrease
Dog Solider
4 str (base 5) = 25% str decrease
Numidian Cavalry
5 str (base 6) = 20% str decrease
Even setting aside your obvious errors of calculation (i.e. the proportional decreases over base unit strength for the three units listed is actually 16.7%, 20%, and 16.7%, respectively), you have also omitted mention of the Jaguars free Woodsman I promotion, the Dog Soldiers non-requirement of Copper or Iron, and the Numidian Cavalrys free Flanking I promotion. Which leads me into your insultingly dismissive response to my summation: This is what I am talking about. Look at all the other groups Ive laid out, and then compare them to the last group.
Bhruic said:
"This" is what you're talking about? The fact you made a bunch of arbitrary groups, and the Khmer Elephant doesn't happen to fit into them? That's hardly convincing. And it completely ignores all the other variables that go into determining the usefulness of a UU.
Given your haphazard analysis of merely three of the UUs presented, I find it surprising that you would use the word arbitrary in any critique of my proposition. I have classified the UUs into 7 groups. While the last two groupings are indeed somewhat arbitrary (as I conceded in my original analysis) I stand by the validity of the first five groupings. Are you seriously going to tell me that there are no templates or patterns into which the UUs can be classified and sorted? Can you really not see that the bonus the Praetorian gets is similar in nature to the bonus the Cataphract gets, and that neither bonus is similar to that which the Impi receives, which is in turn similar to that of the Musketeer? Really? If that is indeed the case, then I cant see how you and I are playing the same game.
Exhibit C:
Further evidence of your intellectual dishonesty is evinced by post #57:
Bhruic said:
I wish people would quit judging by their own experiences and assuming that everyone has the same thing happen. I generally play with 2x the number of "default" AIs
Of course, I'll be the first to point out that your experiences might be different
If I have a choice between building a Swordsman or building a Jaguar, there is no situation where I'd choose the Jaguar. That certainly doesn't qualify them as a good UU in my books.
Wow. Simply wow. How do you fit all those self-contradictions and internal inconsistencies into one post? As I had indicated earlier, my primary criterion for evaluating the relative values of the UUs is their flexibility and usefulness across a wide variety of possible game environments (an assertion which, it should be noted, was in general agreement with the content of your first post to this thread). Think of 100 starts with completely random parameters (perhaps I should have made this explicit earlier). Given this framework, there certainly will be a non-insignificant proportion of games where you will face a lack of Iron and a prevalence of forest or jungle. In these circumstances, are you sincerely telling me that if youre playing as Montezuma, youre not going to appreciate the situational advantage of the Jaguar? Please keep in mind this thread was an attempt to classify the utility of various UUs across a wide spectrum of situations. Your experiences with your admittedly atypical set-up (i.e. double the number of AI opponents) have no bearing in this case
because they are atypical.
Personally, I think the Jaguar sucks. But then again, Im the kind of player who will re-start if he gets a crappy starting spot. Im also no fan of the Keshik, as pillaging just isnt my style. However, I can see through my personal prejudices to recognize that, given a random environment which I can not pre-select, in many situations, having the ability to deploy those UUs (and others) represents a significant augmentation of my war-making capability.
All this leads me to Exhibit D, your final post (to date) in this thread. In response to my statement, Right. Just as you repeating the opposite doesn't make your assertion true, either., you come back with:
Bhruic said:
Of course. But since you're the one making the assertion, the burden of proof is on you. That's "proof", not "opinion"
Actually, the burden is on
you to disprove my assertions by making a comprehensive counter-argument. Which you have failed to do.
You then reply to my statement, This is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is an analysis of the realtive strength of Unique Units when compared to each other. The strength or weakness of the base unit is not what is being considered in this thread. Only the quality of the "uniqueness" of each UU as an upgrade over the base unit it replaces is significant. with this:
Bhruic said:
Not at all. The abilities of the base unit are highly relevant. If you've got a UU that gives +1000% attack vs every unit in the game, it sounds amazing. If that unit turns out to be the Scout, suddenly it's completely useless. The value of a UU is based on two criteria - how useful the base unit is, and how improved the UU is over the base unit.
By throwing out what is commonly referred to as a strawman, you have attempted to obfuscate the weakness of your counter-argument, such as it is. Two things should be kept in mind when considering this statement. First, the discussion we (most of us, anyway) are having is concerned with the relative merits of the 34 Unique Units that Firaxis has actually deemed appropriate to include in the game as we know it, on this 27th day of September, 2007. Your counter-example of a super-scout is ridiculous and irrelevant, because Firaxis would demonstrably not include such a worthless UU. Second, your assertion that the relative value of a UU can in any significant way be based upon the usefulness of the base unit is simply
false. Base units are those which any civ possessing the required techs and/or resources can build.
Any civ. We are looking at relative, not absolute, advantages here. Otherwise, Modern Armor FTW, d00d!
Finally, because Im getting tired:
Bhruic said:
I've already pointed out that your framework is flawed. Why would I argue within a flawed system?
Hmm
there are a number of possible responses here.
A) To demonstrate the logical fallacies and inconsistencies that this framework presents.
B) To demonstrate that, even given the OPs framework, his conclusion is flawed.
C) To demonstrate your ignorance of the fundamentals of adversarial debate for all to see.
I hope its not C. That would be embarrassing
).
