- Makes the comparison with France even stronger (French UA in Goths UA + French CS bonus in Goths UU2)
I think we both agree that this is more of a France problem. If we ever manage to get that France UA rework off the ground, having a UU that has the same bonus as a global UA from another civ is totally legitimate. No one accuses the Tlingit Xaa of ripping off Denmark for this.
- No true synergie with the rest of the kit. It is just an attack-focused Knight.
I disagree. You said yourself, the Goths do everything. With 4UC and the Gulthsmitha, they benefit more from kills, and the Groethungi pairs well with the other extra component in that it is kill-centric, while the main kit is more city-focused
- Its performance as a UU isn't very impressive, especially for a Militarist civ like the Goths, who needs to have something reliable to establish their domination
I've never had a problem with the unit's performance. chalk this up to different tastes, I suppose
- It is a Knight replacement, even though the events it represents happened during the 4th century AD (so a big anachronism), but we can't make it a Horseman (too big of a powerspike in the early game, for a civ that is meant to scale) nor an early Knight (that would be too powerful for the Classical Era).
I wanted something later to pull the Goths into the early medieval era at least, since the Visigothic and Ostrogothic kingdoms continued well into the medieval era. It's not totally clean, but I can find almost no names or unit information for Gothic military organization outside the Roman era, though we can be well-assured that the Groethungi and the institution of cavalry both survived into the medieval era as well. As for anachronism, there are far worse culprits than a mounted melee unit existing during the migration era being called "medieval".
I'm reticent to throw away the unit, perhaps selfishly, because I spent a lot of my own time modifying the unit textures and icon in order to make this unit. The Groethungi wasn't simply lifted from somewhere else. I also think that the presence of a Gothic cavalry unit is better than an archer unit, and even the Gadraught infantry, because mounted units were the mainstay of the Gothic militaries both before and after the Roman period. When they were incorporated as Auxilia and Foederati, they were horsemen. When they made kingdoms of their own, the cavalry were the core of the Visigothic and Ostrogothic military power as well. It's an important unit type to have as a UU because it gets something correct about the centrality of this unit type to the wider culture.
Hell. We could just call the Groethungi unit I made for this "Millenarius", change the civilopedia text, and call that a day.