Useful promotions?

Poomermon

Warlord
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Messages
145
I don't really promote my units at all. I think that early promotions like shock and drill kinda suck and for the really good promotions you need shock/drill 3 first. Also getting lots of xp for a single unit is too hard without honor tree double experience or abusing a xp farm which I find too tedious. Another thing to remember is that ranged units promotions become useless once you start upgrading them to riflemen. Bottom line is that I almost always save my promotions for the insta-heal. But maybe other people have better experiences of highly promoted units. So are there good promotion paths for your various units (melee, ranged, naval)?
 
Generally I tend to pick Drill most of the time, Medic on 2nd lvl, finish up Drill, March, Blitz and then Mobility.

Any unit with those promotions can handle hordes of units the AI sends your way. Insta heal may be good on the short term but it prevents your units from annihilating opponents in one attack later.

I generally don't pick shock because units in open terrain result in major victory odds for you most of the time.
 
Shock and Drill do 'kinda suck', but they're required for two good promotions, Medic and March.

Logistics is a necessary promotion for naval units, as it lets them attack twice and retain their movement points.
 
Shock and Drill do 'kinda suck', but they're required for two good promotions, Medic and March.

Logistics is a necessary promotion for naval units, as it lets them attack twice and retain their movement points.

This.

Oh and medic promotions stack. I was able to abuse this and hold off infantry with riflemen because my riflemen would heal 4 ~ 5 hp per turn.
 
Drill is for attacking, Shock is for defending. They don't suck. Shock will allow your unit a healthy chance of staying alive after it's attacked and killed a unit in open terrain. It will also be better for a unit attacking a city so it'll take bombardment better (since it will likely also be in open terrain for a while).

Putting your unit on Forest or Hill already gives them fantastic defense. You rarely need more. If you want such a defensive unit, Drill will make them really, really tough, but at the expense of being super-vulnerable on open terrain.

I vary my picks depending on where the battle is going to be and how my army composition currently is.
 
Shock and Drill are both situational, but when they are used, they are powerful. I prefer to only use Instant Heal if it's either that or losing the unit.
 
I only use insta-heal to save the unit. The good promotions are really, really good.

Drill is actually incredibly good if you're on defense, also.

XP isn't too bad if you have a small efficient army. At the higher difficulties, they will be plowing through a LOT of AI units.
 
Drill is for attacking, Shock is for defending. They don't suck. Shock will allow your unit a healthy chance of staying alive after it's attacked and killed a unit in open terrain. It will also be better for a unit attacking a city so it'll take bombardment better (since it will likely also be in open terrain for a while).

Putting your unit on Forest or Hill already gives them fantastic defense. You rarely need more. If you want such a defensive unit, Drill will make them really, really tough, but at the expense of being super-vulnerable on open terrain.

I vary my picks depending on where the battle is going to be and how my army composition currently is.

It all depends on situation. There are many situations where you will want drill for defense - like you said, super bonuses in a rough area, but also many times you will want to put shock on units such as cavalry so they can annihilate units that typically counter THEM (like pikemen) in the open field.
 
Shock and Drill are very valuable. The problem is that unless you're running honor double xp a lot of the time when you want to promote you'll also want a full heal. If you're running double xp you'll get the first shock/drill early, and do not need to heal so much later, and this lets you get to shock/drill 2 and then you need to heal even less, et cetera. It's something of a snowball effect where having the first +20% makes it easier to take the second +20% and you need less heals generally. Before I started running double xp I basically just spammed full heal on all non ranged units.

As to whether double xp + serious promotes or no double xp (and running say, patronage instead, and maybe a barracks in a high production city) + spamming full heal promotes is better? I don't know. On deity you can do a lot of killing with ranged units that pretty much never need the full heal and just meatshield with melee. A drill 3 rifleman at a chokepoint is basically unstoppable with any comparable units, though.
 
Drill is for attacking, Shock is for defending. They don't suck. Shock will allow your unit a healthy chance of staying alive after it's attacked and killed a unit in open terrain. It will also be better for a unit attacking a city so it'll take bombardment better (since it will likely also be in open terrain for a while).

Putting your unit on Forest or Hill already gives them fantastic defense. You rarely need more. If you want such a defensive unit, Drill will make them really, really tough, but at the expense of being super-vulnerable on open terrain.

I vary my picks depending on where the battle is going to be and how my army composition currently is.

Very nicely put. I was just going to write this, thanks for saving me the trouble :)

For ships I've found no need for anything other than the land bombard option so far. I usually build my triremes up to 30 exp by skirmishing with barbarians. They get upgraded to frigates when the tech is available and then use them against coastal cities (and cities 1 hex inland too) until they have 60 exp. Then I pick the extra range which is very useful. Then upgrade to destroyers which gives a free indirect fire promotion and that is nearly as good as a battleship, 3 tiles range, indirect fire (hills in the way are so annoying :mad:) and 40% more damage.
 
Another thing to remember is that ranged units promotions become useless once you start upgrading them to riflemen.

I generally don't upgrade them until Infantry are running around. A few Xbows with 3x terrain + logistics/range are still useful deep into the Renaissance. They'll only hit Rifleman for a few points, but sometimes a few points make a big difference.

If you are the English, veteran Longbows are useful into the Industrial Era. A range of 4 covers a ton of ground, keeps those weak units away from the (now deadly) counterattack, and they do just as much damage to embarked units as Artillery. Once they have either range, logistics, or indirect fire, it's pretty easy to get the remaining big promotions because they get to shoot every turn. Even plinking workers gives experience.
 
Drill is for attacking, Shock is for defending. .

I'd say quite the opposite. Drill lets you hide in deep cover on the defense, and if they attack you they have to overcome your defense in the terrain and the drill bonus, making you very hard to dislodge.

Drill is also good for weak early ranged units, so they can survive melee combat by hiding in the woods even better.
 
I usually split my forces, half drill, half shock in case I need one promotion over the other. Once I'm able to get march, I've hit paydirt. Anything else beyond that is gravy.

For ranged units, the ones to get are: 1) logistics 2) range 3) indirect fire. All of them are very very good promotions. I tend to give all my ranged units drill and place them on hills. Logistics is the only promotion that applies to both archers and rifles and beyond, so it's the first one I get. Plus it's awesome.

With naval units, I'll split targeting/bombardment 1:3 since the AI sucks at naval warfare anyway. For naval units, logistics is much more important than range because they have more movement and more room to move around anyway.
 
Not only that, but you get the standard ranged attack vs. units experience from it.

They really need to fix that.

Yeah, ranged units should go capture the workers/settlers, not shoot at them.
 
Back in Civ4 I really didn't care about promotion with the huge amount of units available in battlefields. Promotions are 2 slow. and the CPU automatically assign them defense when your SOD is attacked and dies more then often.....
Now CIV 5 is completly different. Well promoted units WILL last you the whole game and will win you all important battlefield.
I always have 2-3 warriors each specializing in a type of terrain (shock or drill). with the Honor tree, you ll reach the blitz and heal every turn pretty fast. Upgraded, those warriors will win you the game. (no doubt!)

A well promoted units with a GG can easily reach double the strengh of a regular one and its not hard to get when you plan for it early in the game.. Try to sling for early military tech and you ll roll over your opponents unobtrusively.
 
I'd say quite the opposite. Drill lets you hide in deep cover on the defense, and if they attack you they have to overcome your defense in the terrain and the drill bonus, making you very hard to dislodge.

Drill is also good for weak early ranged units, so they can survive melee combat by hiding in the woods even better.

It really depends. If you're making them come to you, and you're suffering something like a 3 on 1 attack plus bombardment, then yes, Drill can be vital for defense since you will need both the Drill bonuses and the terrain bonuses. The unit might not survive attack, even then.

When you're the one attacking, then it's a different story. Drill lets you attack entrenched units better, while Shock allows you to survive attacking units in open terrain, which is the best time to attack them.

Or you can use Horsemen and then retreat them behind Drill units. That works, too.
 
Yeah, ranged units should go capture the workers/settlers, not shoot at them.

Ranged units have their choice of actions: they can shoot the worker and/or capture them. The same goes for cities.

I've found it handy to always use the 'M' and 'B' keys before using a ranged unit, since the right-click doesn't always do the action I want.

If you want an archer to shoot a worker, press 'B' then click on the worker.

If you want an archer to capture a city, press 'M' then click on the city.
 
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