Umm, Jaguar warriors?`This has to be a bug right?

[Dracleath]

That's the problem now though, Jags aren't the same type of unit as the one they replace.

Generalized strength 6 city raider unit != Specialized low resources strength 5 guerrilla unit.



Nothing really says UUs have to replace a current unit. There really is no current unit that fits the role the jaguar plays for it to replace.

Was thinking that in addition to priesthood it should perhaps require hunting as well so that it's not a simple straight shot for aztecs to go med-->priesthood.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Well, seeing as the ai had no resources on it's little peninusula and I had him bottled up in is starting city with no other cities, somehow I doubt cutting off his roads would have really helped that much .


The ai was winning >50% with archers. Just basic archers defending his city.

Nice try though.

I had to ask about the resources, because I wasn't there and didn't know...

Archers defending a city? Try a BASE 4.5 strength, then add the city's defense bonus. >50% is EXACTLY right, statistics-wise.

Personally, I don't play as the Aztecs. Other civs have weak UUs too. I don't think they have a penalty, as you seem to think. They just don't have a "great" advantage.

 

[Dracleath]

The assertion was that jaguar rushes were a deadly strategy. My point was that this is not true. I wasn't expecting jags to destroy everything, the entire point of the excercise was to show that they weren't any better than swordsmen at rushing.

I find it a strange sequence of events:

I say jags don't really get out any faster or aren't any better at rushes than other IWS.

Forum Response: You newb you don't know anything we tested this for ages no one rushes like jags. Jags totally pwn everyone in the early game.

I play a duel pangea game with roman praets and get a conquest victory in 1500 bc.

Forum Response: Try it with jags it will pwn so much more than that, you'll have your guys to the enemy base so much faster you'll pwn everyone.

I play a game with aztecs with the same conditions and the jags aren't effective at dislodging the enemies archers without catapults.

Forum Response: You newb! you suck at city assaults, you don't know how to rush, learn to play the game.

Que?


Tell me how it's not a disadvantage to be stuck with a very limited unit which is inferior to axemen, which come a tech before, until civil service in the place of your best overall melee unit and best city raider?


The fact that jags are inferior to comparable units isn't for discussion.

It's a simple mathematical fact that swordsmen outperform jags in every application, with the jags only achieving parity when defending on jungles or forests, and even this evaporating if you promote both the jags and the swordsmen. This is not disputable point.

It's a simple mathematical fact that axemen perform equally or nearly equally at any application which is not defending on a forest or jungle square, have a +100% bonus against melee units, and cost 5 hammers less, and are availible one technology earlier. This is not disputable point.



The only disputable point here is whether the ability of jaguars to be built without iron provides enough of an advantage for the aztecs as a civilization to make up for the fact that they lack swordsmen units. Others argue yes, since the aztec units can take cities early that this is enough of an advantage to make up for the loss.

I argue no, as jags routinely lose to archers and almost always lose to axemen, making the jag rush easilly defeatable, since they can't be built in sufficient quantity to be effective at taking the enemy capital without support or exceptionally large buildups, and since swordsmen, axemen, horse archers, etc can generally be put on the ground with comparable speed and better performance in the vast majority of games.

I support this by posting my own experiences as evidence.


I hence propose that in order to make up for this, aztecs should get swordsmen and perhaps for flavor purposes jags should be moved to another technology, perhaps something on the religion or hunting trees.

If anyone has any compelling reason that this shouldn't be the case then I'm welcome to hear it, otherwise I think it should be brought to the attention of the developers and recommended that the developers take action in a patch so that the aztecs both ai and humans are competative with other civilizations and aren't unneccessarilly weak competitors.

 

[Mujadaddy]

I agree that Jags don't seem very effective--I do not KNOW this, however, as I don't play Azteca.... Try playing Egypt without any Horses on your continent and see what kind of "advantage" you get

I play a game with aztecs with the same conditions and the jags aren't effective at dislodging the enemies archers without catapults.

Forum Response: You newb! you suck at city assaults, you don't know how to rush, learn to play the game.

Que?

Ok, that was me ... I was explaining how I found fault with your tactics when you DID use the Jags... I didn't say j00 4r3 t3h n00b, I didn't say "YOU SUCT" -- I tried to offer constructive suggestions to not LOSING ALL YOUR UNITS when you assault a city.

Tell me how it's not a disadvantage to be stuck with a very limited unit which is inferior to axemen, which come a tech before, until civil service in the place of your best overall melee unit and best city raider?

Resources. I agree, it sucks to NOT have swordsmen,and I don't consider the Jags in ANY way superior to the Swordsmen... but... they're what you get if you want to play Aggressive/Spiritual...deal with it, mang...

The fact that jags are inferior to comparable units isn't for discussion.

Let's discuss it anyway...

It's a simple mathematical fact that swordsmen outperform jags in every application, with the jags only achieving parity when defending on jungles or forests, and even this evaporating if you promote both the jags and the swordsmen. This is not disputable point

Jags get a free promotion. And don't require Iron EVER. By the time the Swordsman GETS that first promotion, the Jags can pick Combat II...which makes them EXACTLY EQUAL to a one-promotion (Woodsman I) Swordsman...but they STILL can be manufactured without Iron. (oh, and they DO get +10% city attack naturally, like Swordsmen. Next?

It's a simple mathematical fact that axemen perform equally or nearly equally at any application which is not defending on a forest or jungle square, have a +100% bonus against melee units, and cost 5 hammers less, and are availible one technology earlier. This is not disputable point.

First of all, it's only a 50% bonus against melee... Second, the same thing can be said about swordmen!! Thirdly, EVEN Axemen require a resource, either Bronze or Iron! Next?

The only disputable point here is whether the ability of jaguars to be built without iron provides enough of an advantage for the aztecs as a civilization to make up for the fact that they lack swordsmen units. Others argue yes, since the aztec units can take cities early that this is enough of an advantage to make up for the loss.

I argue no, as jags routinely lose to archers and almost always lose to axemen, making the jag rush easilly defeatable, since they can't be built in sufficient quantity to be effective at taking the enemy capital without support or exceptionally large buildups, and since swordsmen, axemen, horse archers, etc can generally be put on the ground with comparable speed and better performance in the vast majority of games.

I support this by posting my own experiences as evidence.

I defer to your experience--I haven't tried it... I, personally, wouldn't want to TRY to play without swordsmen...but every Civ has advantages and disadvantages (except for the Praetorians )

I hence propose that in order to make up for this, aztecs should get swordsmen and perhaps for flavor purposes jags should be moved to another technology, perhaps something on the religion or hunting trees.

If anyone has any compelling reason that this shouldn't be the case then I'm welcome to hear it, otherwise I think it should be brought to the attention of the developers and recommended that the developers take action in a patch so that the aztecs both ai and humans are competative with other civilizations and aren't unneccessarilly weak competitors.

As someone already said, the UU's replace something already in place, so it would probably be a lot of coding trouble to ADD them to the "Aztec-only" tech tree... My suggestion would be to 1) Take AWAY the +25% Woods bonus BUT 2) Give them Woodsman 2 right out of the box... That way they have Combat 1 (5.5 strength) AND they have +50% in woods AND they move double.

But even THAT might be imbalancing

 

[Dracleath]

Everyone with aggressive gets 1 promotion on swordsmen though. You can't use that as an advantage for jaguars, one because it means that if in any expansion a leader is added for them that isn't aggressive then the unit will be weak, two because the exact same can be said for swordsmen from tokugawa, alexander, genghis, kublai, etc who have the promotion 1 AND 1 extra attack.


I doubt adding swordsmen to aztecs is that hard, I'm pretty sure it's possible to do it just by editing xml files. I'll play around with it a bit and see if I can do it, if I can the devs definately should be able to. At worst I think it would involve making a new class in civ4unitclasinfos.xml and putting the jaguars alone in it. We'll see though, if I get something working I'll post it here.

 

[Vector B J]

Why do you even care about Jaguar Warriors if you don't even use Aztecs. You're just blowing up some huge argument which, to be fair even YOU don't care about Dracleath.

 

[henry k c]

Jaguars Rule! Iron is not that common in this game, and if you do have it it will probably take you 20 turns to connect it ( with the fewer workers). Jags are like a lame version of axemen that you can build anywhere you want.

 

[Dracleath]

Yep I was right. You can have jags as UUs without having them replace anything.


Steps:

In unitclassinfos.xml make a copy of the swordsman unit class, rename it to jaguar. Set defaultunit to NONE.

In unitinfo.xml go to the Jaguar entry, change unitclass to Jaguar.
In the civilizationinfo.xml go to aztecs, change unitclass swordsmen to unitclass Jaguar.

Viola.

Only oddity is that it doesn't show the jag as being an aztec unique unit in the civilopedia or civ select screen, this seems to be a bug/oddity with the NONE tag for defaultunits.

 

[Dracleath]

Why do you even care about Jaguar Warriors if you don't even use Aztecs. You're just blowing up some huge argument which, to be fair even YOU don't care about Dracleath.

Reading poster names is HARD.

 

[Mujadaddy]

I doubt adding swordsmen to aztecs is that hard, if I get something working I'll post it here.

Hmmm, I read your mod...does it give you Swordsmen AND Jaguars? That's cool...then you can choose...

Everyone with aggressive gets 1 promotion on swordsmen though. You can't use that as an advantage for jaguars, one because it means that if in any expansion a leader is added for them that isn't aggressive then the unit will be weak, two because the exact same can be said for swordsmen from tokugawa, alexander, genghis, kublai, etc who have the promotion 1 AND 1 extra attack.

Honestly, I'm in somewhat agreement with you ---- Swordsmen is NOT something I want to be without, ESPECIALLY considering that Praetorians are out there... I would rather see Aztecs get Jaguars instead of WARRIORS and just have them cost the same

 

[Mujadaddy]

Clarification: By "have them cost the same" I meant that Jaguars should cost the same, NOT that Jags should be as cheap as Warriors, lol...

 

[Alphidius]

Try playing teams with the AI. In one game, I had my Jags over at my teammates side to protect their cities from Barbs while they still have yet to hook up Iron.

On a sidetrack, the AI is pretty good in Co-op. They are always friendly & even offer resources to me when they have spare!!! My horde of Jags will be moving in on the opposing team soon!!

 

[Akaoz]

According to the xml files Jaguars are city raiders... Huh, why doesn't the manual (or civpedia?) list them as such?

 

[Mujadaddy]

According to the xml files Jaguars are city raiders... Huh, why doesn't the manual (or civpedia?) list them as such?

Manual, Appendix, page 202:
Jaguar Str5 Move1 Cost40 Melee Iron Working None Aztec unique unit (Swordsman), +25% jungle defense, +10% city attack

What manual are you reading? (Oh, and the civilopedia suXX0rz)

 

[Dracleath]

Yeah you can build both Jags and swordsmen. I initially tried just giving the aztecs swordsmen in addition to jags in the civ files, but apparently you can have only one unit per class and the last one listed overwrites previous ones.

Creating a new class with default unit as NONE solves this and functionally works perfectly, but the game doesn't detect the new unit as being a UU for civilopedia purposes some strange reason, which is just cosmetic and hardly noticable but would be nice if it were fixed in a patch...

 

[Dracleath]

But yeah I agree with you, I don't know about warriors as they are a bit useful for city defense early but if they absolutely have to replace something having them replace axemen, remain at the same cost as swordsmen, and swapping the 10% vs cities for a 25% or 50% vs melee would be really superior to what we have now.

It would solve a few problems:

1. Jags no longer as good of a city rush unit early (not that I really think they were that much before)

2. Aztecs get swordsmen.

3. cheaper cost vs lack of copper offset each other much better than lack of iron vs lack of attack power.

4. Jags really wouldn't be appearing any earlier, because if you're actually going to bother building a second city (and you definately should or else you aren't going to be making enough jags to do much of anything) they aren't coming out earlier than you'd be able to get to iron working regardless.

 

[Rowain deWolf]

How do you know you'd have been in trouble in either of those cases?

Simple because it is much easier to kill Str3 Units then killing Str 5 Units.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Dracleath ... I'm loathe to modify the game until I get better (read: Perfect) at it...

But as far as replacing the Axemen....just me, but I think that would be WORSE than losing Swordsmen---Axemen are a VERY strong early unit, and basically the only counter in the game to Praetorians... I don't know, though...Let me know how it goes

 

[Dracleath]

copy your assets directory, then create a directory in mods and paste your entire assets directory into it, then modify to your hearts content .

The game will generally tell you where a mistake is (at least what file) if you mess something up, so as long as you're conservative in your changes between startups you'll be fine.

 

[Gogf]

Getting iron is not always easy. In my current game on Prince, I did not get iron until I had riflemen (I did manage to trade for copper early on, which very likely saved me).

The Aztecs are still one of the most powerful Civs. Spiritual is without question the best trait. Agressive can also be very effective, if you're planning on using your sword/jag.

You're also guaranteed a five strength unit, which you are not with any other civ.