The most powerful uses I have for supermedics are wars where I'm using spies, flankers, and counter unit pounders (shock/pinch/CR) for a quick blitz. When I'm running around with the slow siege + whatever SoD all a super medic does is reduce the amount of siege I need to keep up my rate of conquest; most of my actual attackers (minus expendables and can openers) can get by with only promo healing. That reduction is big, but not as huge as with two move wars, particularly before tanks, really benefit from quick heal times to get the curis back to the front.
Thus when I really need the uberMASH, I need him to be able to keep up. So options are:
1. Mounted/chopper. Easier to get, never defends, and can come with +2 xp from stable. Losing woody III hurts, when you have mass amounts of redlined flankers.
2. Mobility. Allows you to enjoy all the normal uberMASH goodies, but requires even more XP from a weak unit.
3. MechInf/MSAM. Allows you to enjoy all the normal uberMASH goodies. He is upgradeable from earlier unit types though a late built one is easy to manage with red cross.
4. Paratrooper. The weird guy, but quite powerful. As long as you aren't razing, he should be able to keep up. Be careful of AA, often it is best to airdrop him one square away from the target spot and walk up to the city full of SAMs. He comes pretty close to tanks (and facism/flight are great war monger techs) and is cheap enough to be mass built in your secondary military production cities (normally I like to have both IW and HE in seperate cities with mills, mines, and WS on diked rivers letting me pop a CRIII MA once per turn from each, a seperate B cap can also make the first tier cut); this allows you to spam expendable wIII/mI paratroopers without too much difficulty.
Civ/leader specifics:
1. Shaka. Easily the best fast uberMASH in the game. As long as you have no Fe you can keep building impis until somewhere out near assembly line (mil sci/rifling or RR/Rifling). Mo/C1/MIII is an easy shot and can be upgraded to Mo/C1/MIII/WIII with not too much trouble (and if you plan for it you can get some good mileage out of barb killing for a woody III unit). For saving a GG I actually prefer Shaka to Monty. A Woody III impi can normally get good mileage killing left over mounted units or seriously redlined archers; 4 promos out the door (not hard in a war mongering game) let's you spam build WIII/MI/CI/Mo.
2. Boudica/Churchill. No surprise here, when you need an additional promo the value of Cha and less required promos gets larger.
3. Monty. If you think you are going to go on a curi rampage, getting a nice WIII/CI/MI/Mo is simple and easy. However, Monty does lose out to the Chas because that last promo is so costly.
4. Agg/Pro leaders in general, still better than nothing, but not as powerful as Cha.
If you are playing on slower speeds this is not an issue, but on normal, fast is its own strength. Two move warfare is more than twice as quick as one move war (not just because you can walk to the target faster, but because he whips fewer defenders); however you have no collateral damage until radio/flight so you tend to get lots of units redlined from either doing flanking suicides or just barely cracking. The true value of a supermedic can be seen by smacking a city, healing all the redlined withdrawals quick, smacking the inbound enemy SoD, healing all of your redlined withdrawals, smacking the enemy cap and then healing all your withdrawals in the span of ~10 turns. Please note that going mobility makes leadership that much more effective.
@dankok. Which AIs have trees left by maces? At least in my games the AI has normally clear cut everything long before I want to go on a mace rampage. Even then it isn't that terribly bad. Most often the AI will first attack with siege which means that your uberMASH will take the damage from that and fall down the defender. If you have good stack defenders (shock maces, formation pike, etc.) almost certainly your woody III medic will see action only against siege (not having a charge defender virtually garuntees that woody III will fight a siege unit and then leave the hard lifting to the real defenders.
Thus when I really need the uberMASH, I need him to be able to keep up. So options are:
1. Mounted/chopper. Easier to get, never defends, and can come with +2 xp from stable. Losing woody III hurts, when you have mass amounts of redlined flankers.
2. Mobility. Allows you to enjoy all the normal uberMASH goodies, but requires even more XP from a weak unit.
3. MechInf/MSAM. Allows you to enjoy all the normal uberMASH goodies. He is upgradeable from earlier unit types though a late built one is easy to manage with red cross.
4. Paratrooper. The weird guy, but quite powerful. As long as you aren't razing, he should be able to keep up. Be careful of AA, often it is best to airdrop him one square away from the target spot and walk up to the city full of SAMs. He comes pretty close to tanks (and facism/flight are great war monger techs) and is cheap enough to be mass built in your secondary military production cities (normally I like to have both IW and HE in seperate cities with mills, mines, and WS on diked rivers letting me pop a CRIII MA once per turn from each, a seperate B cap can also make the first tier cut); this allows you to spam expendable wIII/mI paratroopers without too much difficulty.
Civ/leader specifics:
1. Shaka. Easily the best fast uberMASH in the game. As long as you have no Fe you can keep building impis until somewhere out near assembly line (mil sci/rifling or RR/Rifling). Mo/C1/MIII is an easy shot and can be upgraded to Mo/C1/MIII/WIII with not too much trouble (and if you plan for it you can get some good mileage out of barb killing for a woody III unit). For saving a GG I actually prefer Shaka to Monty. A Woody III impi can normally get good mileage killing left over mounted units or seriously redlined archers; 4 promos out the door (not hard in a war mongering game) let's you spam build WIII/MI/CI/Mo.
2. Boudica/Churchill. No surprise here, when you need an additional promo the value of Cha and less required promos gets larger.
3. Monty. If you think you are going to go on a curi rampage, getting a nice WIII/CI/MI/Mo is simple and easy. However, Monty does lose out to the Chas because that last promo is so costly.
4. Agg/Pro leaders in general, still better than nothing, but not as powerful as Cha.
If you are playing on slower speeds this is not an issue, but on normal, fast is its own strength. Two move warfare is more than twice as quick as one move war (not just because you can walk to the target faster, but because he whips fewer defenders); however you have no collateral damage until radio/flight so you tend to get lots of units redlined from either doing flanking suicides or just barely cracking. The true value of a supermedic can be seen by smacking a city, healing all the redlined withdrawals quick, smacking the inbound enemy SoD, healing all of your redlined withdrawals, smacking the enemy cap and then healing all your withdrawals in the span of ~10 turns. Please note that going mobility makes leadership that much more effective.
@dankok. Which AIs have trees left by maces? At least in my games the AI has normally clear cut everything long before I want to go on a mace rampage. Even then it isn't that terribly bad. Most often the AI will first attack with siege which means that your uberMASH will take the damage from that and fall down the defender. If you have good stack defenders (shock maces, formation pike, etc.) almost certainly your woody III medic will see action only against siege (not having a charge defender virtually garuntees that woody III will fight a siege unit and then leave the hard lifting to the real defenders.
