Panzer-> I've never had tank vs tank battles.
Always tank vs unit that gets defensive bonuses.
Maybe on multiplayer, if you stack is counter attacked by enemy tanks....
And of course it comes so late.
The later it comes, the better it should be, since presumably you'd have had a lot more time to reap the reward from gains from an earlier UU.
Jaguar -> My play style is such that I want a good attacking unit.
Who cares if I have a good medic unit, if my units just outright die. I'm fine with UUs that are good stack defenders/defensive units (like the landsknecht), but the Swordsman is meant for taking enemy cities. Lowering the base strength to 5, means I might as well use axemen.
A UU unit that is normally used for city raiding, that has a reduced base strength (and lacks a proportionally higher city attack bonus), is crap IMO. I'd rather have Dog soldiers and Gaelic warriors over Jaguars.
Landsknecht-> Meh, Its the equal of Macemen, and good vs knights. not really that useful... My stacks would contain macemen anyway (my stacks outside cities are all for taking cities). I suppose it makes a good city defender, for a city facing large numbers of enemy units - as it is more versatile than Macemen (or is it? macemen fare better vs crossbowmen, if those are attacking you)
Gaelic - Its OK, only because I like Guerilla 3 so much, it is a city raider unit replacement, and the hardest cities to take are hilltop cities - which G3 helps a lot with, and the 50% withdraw helps taking any city. Better than Landsknecht and Jaguar IMO.
East Indiaman - This unit is great, I don't know what is with the haters...
So its a transport, so what? Before warlords and triremes, all naval units before Frigates were some form of transport.
It is the supreme Naval combat unit of its era - 6 strength, vs the galleons 4- thats a 50% combat advantage over any unit of the same tech level- these ships are great combat ships for smashing up enemy invasions, or plundering during war.
You can move units around without worrying too much about privateers - which is especially valuable if others have chemistry, but you don't (or if for some reason you have no iron for frigates).
Note that the Ship of the Line gets bonuses vs Frigates.
The indiaman, being cheaper, and not subjected to the 50% modifier, has better combat odds vs SOL, and is cheaper- making it the best anti SOL unit you have.
Privateers can also fill this role, but are higher in tech.
A galleon tech level unit forming your most effective anti SOL unit if you don't have SOL yourself- yea, its a good unit.
And then of course, it can pass through enemy territory, and has extra space.
This unit rocks on maps with multiple land masses - which goes well with the UB, and makes the netherlands Rock on archipelago-like maps.
Seal- March and free strikes combine well with my repeated shoreline attacks on adjacent cities that I often do to reduce enemy strength before actually taking the cities- but by that point I've won and am toying with the enemy (also, on speeds faster than marathon, the turn wastage of this is significant)- a "meh" unit, at least it doesn't obsolete- however, since the addition of Mobile artillery, its gotten worse.
It used to be a good stack defender against enemy artillery stacks (made better by its first strikes) - now in BTS there is mobile artillery-> higher base strength, and seals lose the 50% bonus they had vs artillery - Ie, seals got nerfed by BTS, they don't "obsolete" but they do become nigh useless in late tech levels.
Musketeer - Meh- faster stack reenforcement, and shifting of defensive units when a more powerful enemy declares war- useful, but no that great.
Numidian- I generally like free promo units (jaguar excepted)- high withdraw odds of flanking 2 - I ussually build a lot of these, the free promo sticks with them the whole game - if I built enough, and they stick around long enough to upgrade to fire strike immune high withdraw odds gunships, I think they certainly were worthwhile.
Suggestions for improvement:
Panzer - free Ambush promotion (and reduced the innate bonus), so at least its benefit stick around longer.
But that doesn't really help the fact that I don't need ambush on tanks (its good for defensive units though)
So, since tanks are used for blitzing, how about free first strikes -
Even better make it like an Oromo Warrior-Tank - Start it with free Drill I&II, so it can really attack 2x per turn with good odds, often, and stacks of them take less damage from enemy siege.
How great would panzers be if the innate +50 vs armored went away, and they had 3 free promos: Ambush, Drill1&2
Though that might make for OP modern armor, maybe it should be innate bonus+ first strike, rather than free promos
Landsknecht: increase base strength to 8, lower bonus vs mounted, melee to +50%?
But then this makes macemen useless (in reality, pikemen formation were the premier attack units, not "macemen").
Maybe do what BTS did to the phalanx- move it from an anti-mounted position(spearman), to a anti-melee(axemen) replacement with defense vs mounted.
Ie Lansknecht = Macemen UU, with +50% defense vs knights, or something like that.
Or.. Germanic pikemen formations (especially the Swiss, which were technically part of the HRE) were well drilled-> give them a free drill 1 promo? (hey, its better than nothing, and fits in with the extra training these units got in their era).
Musketeer-> Would go from "meh" to "YEA" if it instead got a free morale promotion-> imagine upgrading to 2 movement riflemen/infantry, and 3 movement mechanized infantry!
Seal-> take its 1-2 first strikes, and turn it into drill 1+2 (making the more powerful 3 and 4 promotions easier to get, and granting protection vs collateral damage).
Give it a +50% to +75% bonus vs mobile Artillery, so it can continue its role as a stack defender vs enemy artillery (or just give it a generic vs siege bonus, and get rid of the arty and machine gun specific bonus)
But even then its late, and still rather "meh"-> So I'd further fortify it with a free woodsman I, and guerilla I, to further improve its stack defense ability.
Jaguar-> change the +10% city attack to +25% city attack.
Ballista Elephant-> give it a 10% bonus vs war elephants, otherwise it is easily negated by an opponent using the non UU version of it
