useless units?

[Hamato]

Do you also find some units not worth building? I'm talking especially about those machine guns which I can't find any use for. They have strength 18 but usually I have assembly line before railroad so I can use strength 20 infantry. Ok, machine guns have +50% against gunpowder and infantry "only" +25% BUT machine guns can only defend which makes them much less flexible. One could think they're good city defenders but they can't even get city garrison promotions which infantry can get!
Wait, I just see one use for them: They are siege weapons (but can't bombard...) so don't suffer from enemy units with pinch promotion (of which I expect some at that time of the game). Still, I think that infantry fits better into the role of a city defender with city garrison 2 or 3 so the only use of machine guns is defending strategic spots or ressources not located underneath a city AND not located under a hill or mountain because then, an infantry with woodsman 2 / guerilla 2 is again better.

Next example: Musketman. I don't think anyone ever gets gunpowder without having engineering which would open up research for chemistry after gunpowder, leading to grenadiers that are 33% stronger than musketmen.
Heck, I often have replacable parts discovered before getting gunpowder, so I can go for rifling right after that for the even stronger riflemen (56% stronger than musketmen!). I only use musketmen when I'm suddenly attacked before finishing research on the next better tech. But even then musketmen don't come into play in large numbers because longbowmen can't be upgraded to musketmen but only to riflemen so musketmen have to be build!

That concludes my (almost) totally useless units. For other units I can see uses but these make me wonder why they were included.
What do you think about these units and which do you find useless and why?

 

[Zanmato]

I don't think it's the fact they are useless but the fact is they can become obsolete in a short period of time. There seems to be a much better unit a few turns down the tech tree, more so in mid-game stages. I find myself only building a couple of those units before they could do with upgrading again. Could always use them as cannon foddler I guess.

 

[Thalassicus]

They also upgrade to SAM infantry

Some of the units I've never built more than one or two of:

Musketmen- I usually get Grenadiers 5 turns after
Riflemen - I and all the other players usually have Grenadiers 20 turns or more before these guys. No point in building 14-strength units when everyone has 12-strength units that counter them +50%. They might serve some sort of limited counter for Cavalry for a while, but Infantry are just around the corner
Machine Guns - I usually go down the Infantry path first since it gives Factories
SAM Infantry - I always have had oil
Marines - haven't played on Archipelego often

What I think they should do:

- Allow units to upgrade to Musketmen
- Remove Rifling, moving Riflemen to Replaceable Parts
- Lower the cost of machine guns from 125 to 100 hammers, and allow them to upgrade to Mech Infantry
- Improve SAM infantry interception chance from 40% to 50%

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Yeah, i'd have to agree that musketmenn and machine guns are pretty useless, as they appear at about the same time as other units that are just better overall. I think these are the two most pirime examples of useless units. Other units i'd say tend to be obsolete before you even have a chance to build them would be chariots (with the exception of the war chariot, which is not bad seeing as it's half the price of a horse archer) and normal fighter planes.

 

[bigargon]

pikeman very useless and under powered

 

[Sayounara]

Yeah, i'd have to agree that musketmenn and machine guns are pretty useless, as they appear at about the same time as other units that are just better overall. I think these are the two most pirime examples of useless units. Other units i'd say tend to be obsolete before you even have a chance to build them would be chariots (with the exception of the war chariot, which is not bad seeing as it's half the price of a horse archer) and normal fighter planes.

lol I never reasearch horseback, so chariots are always useful to me. And right on. War chariots kick ass. I just rushed a Deity Duel map with war chriots to a 325 BC win. =D

Agreed Machine Gun is too weak and muskets are too short lived. I don't build a lot of warriors either, but these guys can upgrade pretty fast so no matter.

Also I have absolutely no use for SAM. I get Robotics before Rocketry haha.

 

[Ozyman8]

Machine guns, useless? I build them in every game that goes that long. Machine Gun + Combat I costs 125 hammers and provides 28.8 strength. Compare that to Infantry + Pinch which costs 140 hammers and only provides 20/25 stength depending on whether the enemy has pinch.

You don't build infantry OR machine guns, you build infantry AND machine guns. Machine guns are excellent complements to an assault or slow pillaging force (preventing counter-attacks) and for cities with more than one defender. It's also easy to upgrade older units to machine gun.

If I could tweak the unit?

1. Give Machine Guns a +25% bonus against cavalry/cossacks. From a game perspective you commited to a 100% defensive unit so machine guns should excel at that task, at least for awhile. From a historical perspective, machine guns are excellent defenders and you would have to be crazy to charge one on a horse while carrying a non-automatic rifle.

2. Allow machine guns to co-exist with sam infantry. It annoys me that I lose the ability to create machine guns once I discover sam infantry. Machine guns are *much* stronger vs gunpowder. Rocketry is a catch-22. You get those excellent gunships but lose your machine guns.

 

[Ozyman8]

"Machine guns transformed warfare by vastly
increasing infantry firepower. The experience in
European colonial wars of the last century
strongly suggested that greater firepower made it
too costly for massed infantry or horse cavalry to
cross a killing zone only a few hundred meters
wide. The immense advantage of weapons such
as the one produced by Hiram Maxim moved Hi-
laire Belloc to quip:

Thank God that we have got
The Maxim gun and they have not"

 

[Bain]

Ironclads and submarines

the strength of submarines was that battleships simply didn't have weapons to attack them. In Civ4 this doesn't apply.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

Submarines were one unit that really was well represented by a/d/m. High attack, weak defense. Now they're useless!

But they can go under ice.

 

[Bain]

why make your submarine unattackable when you can have unattackable submarines by never building any ? =P

 

[eumaies]

Subs are lots of fun in this version!

They were never good before -- always too slow.

now they're fast, strong, can withdraw and add a real diplomatic element. An unsuspecting "Friend" might have your sub fleet knock out his transports early in the war without ever realizing he should have been patrolling.

 

[flytyer]

Wow. Am I ever on the opposite sides of this one! I build machine guns AND subs. HAHA!! I like the machine guns combined with another unit so I have a stong defense coupled with a unit that can attack. Also, I think subs are just cool to have around...no particular strategy here I just like a lot of subs around my shore and the fact they can go under the ice is an added benefit.

 

[Bain]

strong?

They might actually LOSE to a transporter with 2 promotions in a coastal area. now they're just fast but weak

and who would ever send loaded transports around without destroyers or battelships protecting them (which you simply can't destroy with a submarine, gg realism)

 

[kb2tvl]

I don't think mac gunners are that bad. You can build one and save a turn over a rifle. In that case, you get a garrison unit slightly quicker. With defenisve bonsus, a mac gunner can get up to 100% bonsus. I do wish that there was a +1 strength at each new military tech up to sam inf. So, a mac gunner may get up to +4 strength.

 

[obsolete]

The most useless unit... Im surprised no one mention this one yet but.. that spaniard looking guy... I forget what you call him. Take a crap scout, and upgrade him. You get a mounted guy with a sword, and still he cant even attack! Haha. What a waste of hammers and time. I don't know why he even hold's a sword. He still has ZERO attack value...literaly.

 

[chewbaccad]

Ironclads are probably the only unit I don't build and put to use. I think I've built one (just to see it) out of the 15-20 games I've completed... They're simply too slow and too limited.

 

[automator]

SAM Infantry - I always have had oil

What's wrong with SAM? They're great in defending newly taken cities against choppers while your tanks are healing. Leave your tanks without a SAM guarding and they'll get demolished.

And why the hate for Marines? Against a well placed city on a river, having an amphibious promoted unit to attack is quite nice, and I tend to not amphibious promote other units.

 

[Wodan]

Misc responses....

Pikemen are awesome. They're cheap and they kill those raiding knights and elephants.

Ironclads are great for sea resource protection, that's about it. Their one saving grace is that they upgrade to destroyers.

Machinegunners and SAM infantry... I usually don't build a lot, but if I did, it wouldn't bother me. I would simply use those guys as garrisons for my inner cities. (Remember the good old days in Civ3 when you could leave most of your cities ungarrisoned?

Explorers... yeah... useless in Civ3 and still useless in CivIV. I guess -maybe- on a New World map. Still, I'd rather just land a Knight or Cavalry. They can kick some butt while they're exploring.

Subs... Somebody said in another thread (I haven't tried this myself) that a Spy on a sub can sabotage sea resources. Not all that great, but nice to kill that oil platform if you really need to, and without going to war.

Wodan

 

[xGBox]

Yeah, explorers are seriously useless. By the time you get explorers, you should've explored pretty much the whole world for what it is. All the tribal villages should be gone before you reach the classical era. There's really only a use for these guys if you were playing some sort of super huge pangaea.