GenEngineer
Prince
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2014
- Messages
- 456
Well, but most units in civ5 were not necessary if you just wanted to win domination as soon as possible. But a lot of the units were still nice to build and useful in some situations. Likewise, the special bonuses of the hybrid units make them useful even if you don't necessarily need to build them to win. For example, the architect's ability to buff adjacent units or the drone cage's ability to heal adjacent units is quite useful even though they are not absolutely necessary if you want to win.
This, but the question then becomes if the rest of the path is worth it. If the techs leading up to it aren't attractive, then it becomes a harder sell that they're worth getting. Mind you, the fact that a hybrid playstyle will slow down affinity progress might mean that there is an interest in grabbing some later techs to catch up.
Personally, I feel that this was the right idea (add more stuff to 'useless' techs to make them better), but there was one point where they could have gone farther. I know the hybrid affinities aren't supposed to be on the same level as the core 3, but 5-6 buildings for each hybrid affinity would not only help flesh out the hybrids in a conceptual manner, but also provide the opportunity to make even more techs have value (as well as test out some weird mechanics for buildings like the hybrids did with units, but that's secondary). The new orbital units and ocean buildings might do the same thing, but only time will tell.